Noticing is trainable, which is annoying, because it means I have no excuse. Over six weeks I tried five different noticing protocols on the same forty-minute walk and scored each on how much I could describe afterwards.
The winner is embarrassingly simple: pick one category and only look for that.
The protocol
- Before you leave, choose one category. Doors. Repairs. Things that are green.
- Walk normally. Do not hunt; just let the category sit in the back of your head.
- When you get home, write down everything you saw in that category, unedited.
- Do not change the category for a week. This is the hard part.
Week three was 'temporary repairs'. I have never recovered.
“Attention is a shape you decide on beforehand, then walk into.”
That's it. That's the paper. The rest of the notebook is drawings of drainpipes.