A SIMPLE EXERCISE IN DEVELOPING YOUR POWER OF OBSERVATION

Here is a good way to stimulate your powers of curiosity, analysis and imagination.

Reality is partly what you see and partly what you make it to be. Curiosity impels imagination towards eventual analysis.

Look around you and select an object. It could be a table, glass, chair, shoe, or pepper mill as I have selected in the example below.

Observe the object carefully and filter what you see through these five categories: origin, materials, history, use, and future (possibilities).

With practice, you will soon appreciate that there is a story to every object. It may seem mundane at first, but keep enquiring, and you will find that the object becomes fascinating.

These categories are by no means finite; they guide your observations, which in turn, stimulate you to find new categories in which to channel what you perceive.


[Excerpted from the 'SuperBrain Study Skills' seminar participant's manual. The 'SuperBrain Study Skills' seminar is conducted by Dilip Mukerjea in the schools.]