The Art of Noticing for Writers: From The Art of Noticing (A Vintage Short)

“Let’s say we go to a bar, and we see people that are dating,” Ariely suggests. We also notice that the place is noisy, that it’s dark, that it’s crowded, that there’s alcohol: all sound observations. “But now, as a social scientist, I want to think of it like a Newtonian physics problem,” he continues, “and say: ‘What are the forces at work? What’

Scheduling creative play • Scheduling personal reflection • Scheduling specific passion-project focus What unites them is a commitment to making the time to attend to what really matters to you—a sort of jujitsu on the culture of scheduling

These “forces” are, strictly speaking, invisible. We’re talking about mind-sets and feelings, instincts that even the individuals involved may not be consciously aware of. Invisible forces are a fun challenge to seek

“To resist metaphor is very difficult, because you have to actually endure the thing itself,” she said. “Which hurts us for some reason.”

FRENCH WRITER Georges Perec, best known for his 1978 novel Life, A User’s Manual, coined the term infra-ordinary to describe the opposite of the “extraordinary” events and objects and communications that dominate our mental lives. Perec’s obsession with the infra-ordinary was in part ideological—it

“As you begin to walk home (possibly getting a little lost along the way as you are buzzed and phoneless),” she writes, “tell yourself that you will encounter three clues to the answer to this question in the next ninety minutes. Tell yourself one will be in the form of a person, one will be in the form of trash or something laying on the ground, a

The students, she suggested, have finally worked around their need to interpret and have simply found a way to engage with the world as it is, through their senses—“just noticing what’s around them,” without comparison, without reference point or metaphorical shortcut.

Try this out. Then imagine a version of Yelp built of reviews of everyday things in general—workaday objects, quotidian sounds, unusual sensations, random encounters. Review a manhole cover or a siren. Review the most interesting thing you touched all week or the most memorable smell you encounter in the next twenty-four

“Through conversation,” Krouse Rosenthal writes, “endeavor to find a collection of autobiographical statements that are equally true for each and every member of the group.” Throw out questions: Are we all from America? Do we all like flannel? This might last thirty minutes or go on for hours. “You’ll know when to wrap it up.”