If you don’t know what’s going on around you, you cannot expect to stay one step ahead of the potential dangers fast approaching. Unless you are constantly on the lookout, threats – and opportunities – are likely to pass you by and leave you thoroughly unprepared for whatever happens next.
We recently drew the link between spatial awareness and your personal safety – and spatial awareness, of course, very much depends on constant and well-honed powers of observation.
You might think that it takes little more than just keeping your eyes open. But simply looking where you’re going is likely to fall pretty far short of truly observing everything around you – so let’s see how you can develop your observational skills.
Training your powers
Although it might strike you as strange, observation is actually something you can train yourself to do – and to get better at.
Close and careful observation means watching people, things that happen, and the situations in which events develop. While we are observing every detail of this, we are also thinking critically about what is going on, who is doing what to whom, and what might happen next.
The closer you are paying attention – through this process of critical observation – the more you will come up with new ideas, suggests a blog posted by the Life Hacker.
There are also lessons to be learned from the unlikely perspective of the budding author. Train yourself to be more observant on a day to day basis, and you will focus – in the most economic, timely and no-nonsense way – on what really matters, suggests a posting on The Future Bookshelf.
Sorting the wheat from the chaff
Observation training means learning to sort out the important from the ephemeral.
Being observant doesn’t necessarily involve making a mental note of absolutely everything that’s happening – but the important things.
Learn to distinguish between the people, events, and developing situations, that are relevant or important to you – or might easily become important. Whatever you are observing, remember that your interest, goals, and objectives remain centre stage.
It’s what’s important to you that counts.
Observational challenges
You might also want to train and develop your powers of observation by setting yourself some challenges that might get you looking at the world in a different way:
People watching
- preppers are not typically great ones for seeking out crowds – but in this instance, make an exception, and sit down at a table at an open-air café and people watch;
- how do particular individuals act, how are they interacting with others in the crowd, and what seems to be their method of navigating a way through the throng;
Eye-spy
- revert to one of your childhood games and play a round of “eye-spy”;
- choose an object – anything from a shuttered window to a rusty nail, from a discarded envelope to a wall poster – and see how many times you can spot that object as you go about your day;
Audio observation
- observation means seeing with your eyes and taking in that information – but we’d suggest that observation can be developed through additional senses, too;
- as you are taking things in with your eyes, for example, also try listening carefully to the sounds that accompany events and people going about their business;
- training your ears to listen to new sounds might spark a corresponding note of understanding about what you are seeing – enriching that experience of observation.
People and patterns
As you continue to develop your powers of observation – and that’s open to never-ending development – you might be learning two basic lessons about the world around you and the threats and opportunities it represents.
The first lesson is that it’s the people that make the world go round. Of course, you’ve been taking in all the inanimate objects that make up the physical environment. But what gives it all movement and life – for better or for worse – is the people who are occupying that environment.
Never cease to wonder and never cease to observe the behaviour of others.
The second lesson may be a dawning of the realisation that there seem to be distinct patterns to events. You are likely to observe certain chains of events that lead inexorably to just one particular conclusion. Incorporate your understanding of those patterns into the world you continue to observe.