Non-Obvious 2018 Edition. Rohit Bhargava

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       Empathize with Magazines. One of my favorite ways to see the world through someone else’s eyes is buying niche magazines to learn about unfamiliar topics. Simply walking into the magazine section of a bookstore offers plenty of options. For example, Modern Farmer, Model Railroader, and House Beautiful are three vastly different magazines. Flipping through the stories, advertisements, and imagery in each will do more to take you outside of your own world than almost any other quick-and-easy ten-minute activity.

       Ask Bigger Questions. A few years ago, I was invited to deliver a talk at an event for the home interior paint industry. It’s an industry I know very little about and so it was tempting to show up, deliver my keynote, and then leave. Instead, I stayed and walked around the exhibit hall asking questions. In less than thirty minutes I learned about how paint is mixed and what additives are typically used. I heard about the industry debate between all-plastic cans versus steel and the rise of computerized color-matching systems. Thanks to that small investment of time on my part, the talk I gave was far more relevant.

      Be Curious: What to Read

       Historical Fiction. Every great piece of historical fiction was inspired by a writer who found a story from the past that was worth sharing with the world. By reading books such as Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City (about murder at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair) or Simon Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman (about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary), you can give yourself a wonderful gateway to start thinking about the world in unexpected ways.

       Curated Compilations. There are many books that bring together real-life stories or essays to help you think about new and interesting topics. A collection of shorter topics and stories is sometimes far easier to use for engaging your curiosity than a longer book. For example, the This Will Make You Smarter series edited by John Brockman or any book by You Are Not So Smart podcast host and psychology buff David McRaney are perfect, bite-sized ways to inspire your curiosity without requiring a huge time investment.

      How to Be Observant

      Being more observant means training yourself to notice the details that most others often miss.

      I was invited not long ago to a formal dinner connected to an event in New York. The venue was a beautiful restaurant, and after our meal the waiter came around to take our dessert orders from one of two set menu options. Less than ten minutes later, a team of six people, not including our waiter, came and delivered all the desserts to our large table of thirty people, getting each order perfectly right without saying a word to anyone.

      As they delivered the desserts, I started to wonder how that one waiter who took our orders had managed to relay all those choices perfectly to a team of six in such a short time.

      By observing the wait staff for a moment, I quickly figured out the simple trick our head waiter had used. If you had picked dessert option one, he had placed a dessert spoon on the table above your plate. If you picked option two, he placed the spoon to the right of your plate.

      When the team of food runners came to the table, all they needed was the “code” to decipher the spoon positioning and they could deliver the desserts to the right people with ease and accuracy.

      Perhaps you already knew that spoon trick, but imagine if you didn’t. Simply observing it gives you a glimpse into the little processes that we rarely pay attention to that keep the world moving along. Now, you might be thinking, Who cares how waiters deliver dessert?

      Of course, understanding how dessert is delivered will hardly change your life, but imagine that moment multiplied out to a thousand different situations. Observing details can lead to understanding something insignificant, but it can also lead to your next big business idea.

      Learning to be more observant isn’t just about seeing the big things. Instead, it’s about training yourself to pay more attention to the little things. What can you see about a situation that other people miss? What can the details you’re noticing teach you about people, processes, and companies that you didn’t know before?

      This is the power of making observation a habit.

      3 Ways to Be More Observant

       Explain the World to Children. If you’re fortunate to have children in your life, one of the best ways to hone your skills of observation is to explain the world around you to them. For example, when one of my kids asked me recently why construction vehicles and traffic signs are orange but cars that most people drive aren’t, it forced me to think about something I would otherwise have easily ignored, even if I didn’t have the perfect answer to the question.5

       Watch Processes in Action. Many interactions in life, from how the coffee shop makes your latte to who gets an upgrade on a flight are controlled by a scripted process. Next time you engage with one of these processes, pay attention to the details. What does a typical interaction look like? How does it differ from person to person? Learning not to ignore these common processes in everyday life is great training for being more observational in situations where it really matters.

       Don’t Be Observationally Lazy. Aside from being really good at capturing our attention, our devices can keep us from seeing the world around us. Rather than switching to autopilot to navigate daily tasks like walking down the street or buying groceries while trying to avoid any or all eye contact, train yourself to put your phone down, see the world, and maybe even have a conversation.

      Be Observant: What to Read

       What Every Body Is Saying, by Joe Navarro. If you need to learn the art of interpreting body language or detecting lies, a former FBI agent like Joe Navarro is probably the ideal teacher. In this bestselling book from 2008, Navarro shares some of his best lessons on how to spot “tells” in body language and use them to interpret human behavior. His work on situational awareness and teaching people how to be more observant to assess people and situations for danger and comfort is a book that should be on your reading list no matter what you do. It also happens to be a perfect supporting book to teach you how to be more observant.

      How to Be Fickle

      Being fickle means capturing ideas without needing to fully understand or analyze them in that same moment.

      People often cast the idea of being fickle as a bad thing. When we hear the word, we tend to think of all the negative situations where we abandon people or ideas too quickly, but there is an upside to learning how to be purposefully fickle.

      On the surface, this may seem counterintuitive. After all, why wouldn’t you take the time to analyze a great idea and develop a point of view? There are certainly many situations when you do this already.

      But you probably never do the opposite. A key element of becoming an idea curator is saving ideas for later digestion. As you will see in Chapter 3, where I share my specific methods for curating trends, this idea of saving an idea so I can return to it later when it may have more value is a very fundamental part of the method I use for trend curation.

      Often the connection between ideas will only come from the discipline of setting them aside and choosing to analyze them later, when you have more stories and added perspective to see the connections. Being fickle isn’t about avoiding thought—it’s about СКАЧАТЬ