“Almost anything you pay close, direct attention to becomes interesting.” — David Foster Wallace
I’ve found this to be true recently and just stumbled across this quote tonight.
Everything is interesting. Everything. Yet, you can’t go about your day thinking everything is interesting or else you’d never get anything done, due to being memorized by how a pencil is made (which is incredible if you think about it).
To get through each day, everyone gives the minimum amount of attention required to everything. There are so many things you do in a day or at a time that it’s exhausting to expend more effort than required. And why expend more energy when good enough is good enough?
To become highly observant takes a single focus, exerting full attention. When you really think about almost anything, it becomes interesting. It’s how a show about “nothing” became so successful. Everything is interesting, you just need to focus enough attention on something until you find an insight. Give more attention than the minimum amount necessary, because that’s what everyone does. If you do what everyone does, you’ll see what everyone sees. Focus more, you’ll see more.
“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.” — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle