The Noticing Game

A Simple Thing You Can Do to Better Appreciate Life

Welcome to The Nonlinear Life. In case you missed it, read my introductory post.

Every Friday on The Nonlinear Life we talk about life as we live it today. We explore the urgent and emotional issues at the nexus of family, health, work, and meaning. We call it This Life.

---

Next Tuesday marks a forgotten milestone. Ninety-three years ago, on September 28, 1928, the bacteriologist Alexander Fleming returned to London from a brief vacation in his native Scotland. Fleming, whom TIME Magazine once called “a short (5 ft. 7 in.), gentle, retiring Scot with somewhat dreamy blue eyes, fierce white hair and a mulling mind, which, when it moves, moves with the thrust of a cobra,” was also a legendary slob. And to no one’s surprise, on this trip, he left a stack of uncleaned Petri dishes in the sink of his lab.

But Fleming was also legendarily observant, and on this return home, he noticed something about the staph bacteria that he had smeared on the dishes.

The bacteria were dead.

Sir Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin.

Fleming’s observation would transform science, as it led him to discover penicillin. As the Smithsonian would later describe the significance of that origin story: “Fleming’s discovery of the effects of penicillin, the compound produced by the fungus, was a function of his eye for the rare, an artist’s eye.”

An artist’s eye, what a lovely phrase. And an even lovelier thing to cultivate in all of our lives.

As some of you might know (and others might guess), I love little more than a lively dinner table conversation topic. Actually, there is one thing I love more: A topic so rich and inter-generational that it can be played over and over again. In other words: a family game!

Over the last few years, we’ve played a regular game on Friday nights in my family. It’s called The Noticing Game. It’s the simplest game I’ve ever come up with.

First, we light candles, eat challah, and bless the wine. That has nothing to do with the game; it’s just how we mark Shabbat in our home. Then everyone goes around and mentions something new they noticed that week about our neighborhood, our community, the weather, or the environment. Since our everyday conversations tend to focus on our family, pop culture, politics, or language, on this night, we try to focus on physical or seasonal changes in the natural world.

The experience has allowed me to appreciate even more the power of noticing in our overstimulated world. As Sherlock Holmes loved to say, “You see, Watson, but you do not observe.”

Simply seeing? Elementary. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's infamous consulting detective memorialized in statue form outside London's Baker Street tube stop.

The importance of noticing has drawn increased academic interest in recent years. As one pair of researchers recently put it, “Noticing is the process of actively selecting and interpreting relevant information from the broader environment.” Higher-level noticing, they add, involves the ability to develop an awareness of and discern differences among concepts, principles, and other abstract ideas.

One thing I’ve noticed about noticing is that everyone is for it. Physicists like it. (In one study, students who notice more details about a Lego cantilever perform better on tasks.) Career counselors like it. (“The Professional Benefits of Noticing More Details.”) Mindfulness gurus like it, too. (“Noticing doesn’t simply flick a switch,” Deepak Chopra wrote. “It invites you to rethink, reframe, and go deeper than your normal reaction. In an instant you call upon the mind’s natural ability to reflect.”)

As for my family, the things we notice around our dinner table tend to be more local, though no less important. Here are some recent examples:

The holiday lights on the trees are up already.

Just saw the first pumpkin!

It’s starting to get dark a little earlier.

Hot chocolate is everywhere! The cold must be coming.

And here are some tips to make you a better noticer:

1.Take a walk.

This summer, I read Blue as the Lake, a memoir by a new hero of mine, Robert Stepto, the Yale literary critic and professor of African-American studies. One passage has stuck with me: “Children who do not walk places, either in the city or countryside, do not see things well enough to study them, and generally miss out on the stimulations a walker navigates both toward and around – a shiny dime, a patch of poison ivy, a handbill for a gospel concert, deer trackers, the presser in the back of a cleaners who always waves when he sees you.”

In years of playing The Noticing Game, I’d say that 90% of things mentioned are observed while on foot. So, get hoofing.

2.Take control.

Neuroscientists have observed two types of noticing. The first comes from top-down attention; the second from bottom-up. In bottom-up attention, our focus is involuntarily claimed by whatever is going on around us: a thunderclap, a gunshot, or all those inviting notifications that beep from our phones. Especially all those inviting notifications that beep from our phones.

Top-down attention, on the other hand, is more intentional, more inner-directed, more chosen by us.

You surely won’t be surprised to learn that at a moment when bottom-up attention-seeking stimuli are bombarding our senses, the top-down observations we make are more meaningful, more conscious, and more lasting.

To tap into your artist’s eye, harness your top-down attention.

3.Take note.

Finally, look for newsworthy details. Arthur MacEwen, whom William Randolph Hearst made his first editor of the San Francisco Examiner, once said, “News is anything that makes a reader say, ‘Gee whiz!’” To be fair, anything that makes someone say Gee whiz these days would be noteworthy since no one actually says Gee Whiz anymore.

Still, it’s a noble goal and a great benchmark.

Something worth noticing is something worth repeating. Anything else is old hat. The Noticing Game may not be new, but it’s certainly encouraged all of us to take more notice of the world around us.

HELPING FAMILIES TRANSITIONS TO FALL: Other Articles in This Series

Helping Families Transition to Fall – September 9

Adult Back to School – September 13

The Hardest Part of Forgiveness – September 15

Three Questions to Ask Your Children Every Week - September 17

You’re In an Autobiographical Occasion. Now What? – September 22

'The New Normal:' The Problem with Everyone's Favorite Phrase – September 27

☀

Thanks for reading The Nonlinear Life. Please help us grow the community by subscribing, sharing, and commenting below. Also, you can learn more about me, read my introductory post, or scroll through my other posts.

You might enjoy reading these posts:

You're In An Autobiographical Occasion. Now What?

The Three Most Important Words to Say to Someone in a Life Crisis

Three Questions to Ask Your Children Every Week

Or these books: Life Is in the Transitions, The Secrets of Happy Families, and Council of Dads.

Or, you can contact me directly.