A few weeks ago, Seth Godin wrote about “The things you can’t see“, talking about small everyday items that only some people are able to notice. One example he gave is the alignment of moldings in a house, which is something I almost certainly wouldn’t notice (but a good builder would).
That made me think — what small things would I notice that others might not?
Three things came to mind.
- Website speed: While we can all notice when a site is slow, I often can pinpoint the reasons a bit based on how images are loading in and what items show up first.
- Accessibility: I’ve turned my eyes toward this a lot more in recent years, so things like #lowercasehashtags really stand out to me.
- Tile grout: Years ago, we worked with a company that produced a huge range of colors and styles of tile grout. Now if I’m out and about I’ll notice when businesses used plain white grout when they could have styled things a bit better.
The challenge with this post is that I don’t know what I’m not noticing in the world. It’s almost like a form of survivorship bias; I know about some of the things that I used to not notice, but I have no way of noticing the things I’m not aware of.
What do you notice now in your day that other people might not pay attention to?
The website speed is interesting. 10 years ago, I absolutely would have noticed. But the net and sites have gotten so much faster, that its become harder for me to tell a difference from site to site unless is significantly slower.
As to your question, since I began woodworking in earnest, I notice subtle details and defects in furniture and wood things that many others don’t.
Websites are certainly different these days. “Slow” is a few seconds, which a decade ago would have been screaming fast. I can often tell in HOW a site loads where the problem is, but it varies a lot.
Woodworking is a great example, as I’m sure you would see things that I would completely miss.