Become a become a better observer and creative thinker.
Each week, let’s choose or adapt one noticing task from the book “The Art of Noticing” by Rob Walker or create your own. Exercising your noticing muscles will help you to increase your curiosity, awareness, and creativity.
We will report back the following week and spend 10 minutes free writing about our experiences. This type of writing is for yourself and a way to free up and relax your mind. It’s also a great way to improve your writing skills without pressure or critique.
Week 1 From Sunny
Take A Photo Walk, With No Camera
Find an interesting backdrop and wait for a compelling subject to wander into it. Camera-free, sit in a particular spot, look around, carefully imagining the pictures you could take, and wait for the “right” moment. When you’ve seen it, move on to a new spot!
Week 2 From Adele
Look for the Plot
When you are walking to the subway or sitting in a cafe, notice who and what is around you? Imagine you are in movie. Ask youself: What is the plot? What’s about to happen here?
Week 3
Take a Color Walk
Give yourself a block of uninterrupted time. Try not to talk or interact with other people during this time. Let color be your guide. Allow yourself to become sensitized to the color in your surroundings. What are the colors that you become aware of first? Choose a color (yellow, for example) and then follow it. See where it takes you. NOTE: please be careful and don’t get lost.
ART OF NOTICING – adapted from Color Walking
Week 4 From Saul
Listen Deeply
In any space you wish, “listen to all possible sounds.” When one sound grabs your attention, dwell on it. Think about what it reminds you of. Consider sounds from your past, your dreams, from nature, from music. How does it make you feel?
Week 5 From Qur’an
Imagine what a person is thinking
Go somewhere (a park, a mall, a gas station, a café), sit awhile, and just look. Pause and imagine what a single person is thinking.
Choose your subject based on observations that consider your subject’s place in the world. Invent a mood and a mind-set, based only upon what you can observe. Imagine the arc of a story and where in that arc this person is right now.
Week 6 From Matthews
Find Something to Complain About
Look for the ugliest building (or car or sweater) of the day, the worst thing, the most broken thing, the thing that’s so bad it makes you mad. That which angers or irritates or annoys you need not conquer you. It may amuse you or inspire you.
Week 7 From Patty
Be a Local Tourist
Visit a tourist location in your neighborhood or somewhere in the NYC area that you’ve never visited before. Some examples might be a walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, visit Brooklyn Bridge Park, a walk on the Highline, visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, take the Staten Island or Goverors Island Ferry, walk around Grand Central Terminal (look up!), go to Little Island, visit the main reading room at the New York Public Library- Midtown, walk around Times Square… Notice the tourists and their energy and excitement.
Week 8 From Ten
Count with the numbers your find
Find numbers in urban landscape and start “counting” – and see how far you get. Look for a 1, then a 2, then a 3 and keep going!
Week 9 From Nathaly
Track the Moon
Try to stay aware of what time of day it is and what cycle of the moon that you’re in… try to look at the night sky each night. Take a pause from you nightime routine and look at the night sky.
adapted from ART OF NOTICING
Week 10 From Dianna
Sketch A Room You Just Left
Take in your physical environment carefully, then move to.a different one. Now sketch the room you just left. It doesn’t need to be a detailed re-creation, but strive to capture the basics of the space, including it’s contents.
Week 11 From Heni
Be Alone in Public
Eat in a crowded restaurant without the company of schoolwork, laptops or smartphones. Or friends. Make a visit to an art gallery or restaurant or a park bench, alone. It’s not a penalty to spend time alone. It’s an opportunity – to exist totally free of anyone else’s expectations, or your smartphone. What do you notice about how you feel (good or bad)? Examine your feelings – and ask why?
Week 12
APPLY THE SLANT METHOD
Develop a “sustained attention muscle” by applying the SLANT method – with authenticity. This handy mental checklist can be used when in conversation or in a class to stay focused, foster deeper engagement, and improve mental processing. It’s also demonstrates kindness and respect.
Sit up
Lean forward
Ask/answer questions
Nod your head
Track the speaker
Week 13 From Morgan
Donate Time
Feeling crunched for time? “[in a study] those who spent time on others reported feeling like they had more time than those who spent time on themselves.” Why would this be? Helping your neighbor clear out his garage is a self-contained accomplishment – something… that has “a specific, tangible impact.” What time donation (however small) can you make this week? Notice how it affects your personal “time famine” or feelings of not having enough time.
Week 14 From Luis
Follow the Quiet
Go for a walk, but make a point to head out in the direction that seems the most quiet (or least noisy). Keep going until you find the quietest spot in your vicinity that you can. Then stop and be in that place. Absorb it. NOTICE. What do you hear – or don’t hear?
Week 15
Print this pagePractice Digital Silence
Consider observing a set period of time each day of digital silence. Start with 5 minutes and work you way up to entire day. Let your people know you’re signing off for X amount of time, and fully silence your devices – put them in the fridge if you must. Go for a walk, read a book, write a story, make a drawing, have a conversation with your grandma, but do it without checking, watching or engaging with your devices. What do you notice?
adapted from ART OF NOTICING
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