I. How to observe properly
• Observation is the action or process of carefully watching someone or something.
In order to start observing people you need to:
1. Put your own needs aside - Being constantly preoccupied with your own thoughts, desires, insecurities and so on is a distraction from observing other people.
2. Don't Be Obvious when observing people - You're not going to get an accurate reading of someone if you make it clear that you're trying to interpret their every move.
3. Look when they think no one's watching - People reveal a lot about themselves when they don't think anyone's going to notice what they're doing.
4. Notice differences - Once you have a baseline reading of someone, you can compare it to later behavior and note the differences.
5. Take note of reactions - While observing someone, notice his or her facial expression the moment he or she is given a piece of news.
II. Mindlessness and Mindfulness
• Mindlessness(passive mind) - the quality of not needing much thought or mental effort.
• Mindfulness(active mind) - being aware of our well-being, which includes but not limited to our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surroundings.
III. Knowing our blind spots
• Inattentional blindness - the failure to notice a fully-visible, but unexpected object because attention was engaged on another task, event, or object.
• Rushing - Rushing leads to mistakes, and mistakes slow you down far more than slowing down does.
IV. How to look
• Slow down - Slowing down doesn't mean being slow, it just means taking a few minutes to absorb what we are seeing.
• Look for patterns - Write down what you observe about people so you can begin to notice patterns.
