I’ve written about the power of noticing before:

Beyond all this, I spend a certain amount of time and effort on a meditation cushion, where mental noting has been a tremendous relief and balm over the years. Briefly, mental noting is a practice of noticing and ‘tagging’— without discussion or judgement—sensations and thoughts as they arise.

Capability and joy come through seeing things with a little less presumption, a little less judgement, and a little less hurry towards sense-making.

Noticing while out and about

A great way to try different ways of seeing and experiencing is to play some of the games in Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing. One example is the “secret scavenger hunt” of looking for security cameras while running an errand: which cameras want to be seen?—and which want to remain hidden?

The easiest starting point for The Art of Noticing is a series of 12 short audio segments from Waking Up. Walker explains his premise and shares a bunch of little games you can play anytime. Listen here:

The Art of Noticing | Waking Up
Open the door to a deeper understanding of yourself—with guided meditations and insights for living a more examined life.
Note: Waking Up is a paid service. By using the link above, you can access a free trial, with no payment method required. Waking Up will also give you access for free if you cannot easily pay for it.

The ant’s puzzle

How is observing the bottoms of coffee mugs (a Rob Walker staple) similar to looking carefully for those places where workplace environments produce errors, injury, and waste?

And what do both of these have in common with the experience of sitting quietly for a moment and paying careful attention to the quantity of thoughts that arise unbidden and just as quickly fall away?

I don’t have a tidy answer. I wish I did.

I can see that these three are related somehow, meaningfully. It is as if they were three legs of a stool that I—as an ant—endlessly crawl to and fro and back to, without apprehending the larger structure. I will keep trying, and I encourage you to give it a go as well.

August 30, 2024: Edited for length.
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