Too little
Following the plan blindly
“Nothing is at the feeder, so nothing happened.”
The expected location becomes a filter that erases another relevant event.
Attentiveness
Notice what the task has not taught you to expect.
A considerate readiness to notice what merits attention.
Attentiveness keeps you responsive to what merits notice, including details outside the narrow path of a plan. Scientific observation benefits from a prepared focus and a willingness to register the event that arrives at its edge.
Attentiveness gives contact with the actual scene
The feeder is empty. You keep the binoculars trained on it while a small bird settles on the top of your clipboard. The bird has entered the study from an inconvenient direction. Lowering the binoculars does not abandon observation; it returns observation to the place where you are actually sitting.
Finding the balance in Attentiveness
During an imagined bird count, a bird lands beside the observer’s notes instead of on the expected feeder.
A fitting response
Responsive noticing
“A bird landed here; I’ll record where and keep it distinct from the feeder count.”
You notice the event without silently changing the meaning of the planned count.
Pursued too far
Recording everything indiscriminately
“Every movement must enter the dataset in the same way.”
The wish to miss nothing destroys distinctions that make observations comparable.
Noticing an exception and deciding where it belongs are separate acts. A margin note can preserve the surprise without confusing the main record.
What Attentiveness makes possible
Attentiveness keeps methods connected to circumstances. A changed sound, an unusual posture or a detail at the edge of a photograph can raise a question that the main measurement does not answer. Careful noticing also improves collaboration: you become more likely to hear the qualification someone almost leaves unsaid. A separate margin note can also let the next observer recognize the event without mistaking it for part of the planned count.
Attentiveness in ordinary life
A changed setup
Before repeating yesterday’s procedure, notice whether the arrangement is actually the same.
A hesitant answer
A colleague says the count is complete, then pauses. Give them time to explain the qualification rather than rushing to the next item.
Nearby virtues, different work
Curiosity
Curiosity follows the new question. Attentiveness first allows the unexpected event to register.
Discernment
Discernment judges its evidential significance; Attentiveness prevents the event from disappearing before that judgment can occur.
Attentiveness and its counterfeits
Counterfeit Attentiveness: the relentless scan
Constantly searching for errors in other people can resemble vigilance while missing the work’s purpose and their actual contribution. Attend to what is relevant and considerate.
How to cultivate Attentiveness
Look at the setting as well as the expected target.
Keep unexpected events distinct from planned measurements.
Leave a moment for someone to finish a qualified answer.
Try it today
Revisit an ordinary observation or photograph you already own. Notice one detail you passed over and decide whether it changes the question or belongs in a separate note.
Questions worth returning to
- What did the plan lead me to ignore?
- Where should this unexpected observation be recorded?
Keep the practice proportionate
Observe wildlife without attracting, handling or pursuing it for the exercise.
Quotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
I suspected several more, which may perhaps appear in a finer evening, but they were not distinct enough to take account of.
In her comet report, Herschel separates suspected stars from those she can record distinctly. Attention includes noticing the difference between an impression and an observation another reader can use.
As our senses are the only inlets by which we receive impressions of facts, we must take care, in observing, to have them all in activity, and to let nothing escape notice which affects any one of them.
John F. W. Herschel · Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy · § 112
Herschel urges an observer to attend beyond one expected signal. Read as an aspiration to responsive noticing, the sentence widens attention around the prepared task.
Because it was unexpected, it was a shock or an interruption needing to be accounted for, identified, or placed.
John Dewey · How We Think · Chapter One
Dewey’s example begins with a sudden sensation of coolness. Noticing the interruption is what turns an ordinary change into a question about its cause.
… when I go indoors, I must be careful not to damage her burrows, not to tread upon the miner absorbed in her work.
Jean-Henri Fabre · The Wonders of Instinct · Chapter 1 · trans. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
Fabre notices the wasp’s burrows at his own threshold. Attention changes an ordinary movement through a familiar place, rather than merely adding an interesting description.
On the favourable side of the balance, I think that I am superior to the common run of men in noticing things which easily escape attention, and in observing them carefully.
Charles Darwin · The Autobiography of Charles Darwin · Written May 1, 1881
Darwin names sustained noticing as one of his strengths. The emphasis is on what might escape attention, even when an observer already knows where to look.
To inventory the facts, to describe exactly and minutely their respective traits, to magnify artificially those that are obscure and feeble, to reduce artificially those that are so conspicuous and glaring as to be distracting,—these are ways of modifying the facts that exercise suggestive force, and thereby indirectly guiding the formation of suggested inferences.
John Dewey · How We Think · Chapter Seven
Dewey describes changing what receives prominence so that neglected details can inform thought. The conspicuous feeder should not make the bird beside the notebook disappear.
Time is so important an element with the astronomer, that all else is subordinate to it.
Maria Mitchell · Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals · Chapter XI
Mitchell has been watching a clock that gains time, while a visitor imagines simply scanning the heavens. Attention to an unglamorous instrument can be central to the observation.
Continue through the catalog
Practice this collection
Choose this approved collection as an optional workbook program, or select individual virtues in My Virtues.