Episode 1 : Observation
How to kick ass a little bit everyday
Today we are gonna reflect on Observation. Observation is all about how to kick ass a little bit, everyday.
So here’s the problem: Throughout our lives come across magical situations and magical places all of the time — but if we don’t do anything about it there right in the moment, we risk just having it be … gone. So in the end, the whole conversation around “observation” is actually about presence. Its about making yourself take notice of a moment by taking one small action right in the moment — Taking a picture, making a little sketch, turning the feeling you have in that moment into a small rhyme or even taking a photo on your phone sending it to a friend that the situation reminds you of. It doesn’t matter.
It’s about noticing and harvesting an impulse and turning it into a result that remains after the moment is gone. A sequence of small concrete results that turn intuitions, sensations, impulses into crystalized litttle jewels that will have the effect of turning us into smart active observers of the world at the same time setting us up to create more delicate and powerful, bigger results down the line. Embark mindifully into the journey of knowing ourselves just a little bit more everyday. But self knowledge is not all, I know — We need to create something of concrete value to communities that we care about. Let’s not beat around the bush too much to admit that there are things we want. Status, Relevance, Safety, Money — whatever — we want something. But for now, what is important is to find things we want for reasons that we can love and respect ourselves for. This is important because it’s the base on which we will build any kind of success. We need to feel deeply about what we want to achieve and make it personal so we can integrate conscious and unconscious aspects of the effort into making them real. Once this comes together the feeling of sacrifice to achieve them tends to disappear. If you really want a very concrete, pragmatic, long view results in your life — I think it actually starts in every little moment and living them. Being truly there. Or at least that is the skill that is being trained in this pillar.
Observation is about remembering to ask yourself: What is beautiful here? What is terrifying here? What inspires awe in me here? How can I capture it? How can I enhance it? How can I touch it with my own consciousness in a small way — in a way that it could be shared with somebody else later — so that it can last more than just one instant. That is the game of making “observations” — it’s the magic of binding time. Time binding is according to some, what makes us uniquely human — to be able to capture learnings and lessons in each moment and pass them on to the next generations. To be human is to be a natural time binder. Just look at your twitter or instagram feed. My intuition is that passing lessons to the next generation is the emergent result of us time binding to pass lessons to our not so distant future selves. To talk to our different personalities in different states and try to integrate them into the somewhat cohesive wholes that elevate us beyond immediate bodily needs and impulsive reactions to pain and pleasure.
The more observations we allow ourselves to accumulate — the higher the resolution that can be painted about our past selves to our future selves, when we bother to look. By getting apt at doing this, we create a larger relationship surface that is allowed to travel through time. If you are sitting at home right now — you are surrounded by actions, decisions and other choices that travelled through time. Everything you’ve purchased can be seen as acts of observation — but not only, also if you chose the place they are in — you chose to place them in certain ways — or if they are clean and organised right now or not — its all your choice. Independently of what opinion we have about these choices all you to do is master the process of making more of these observations. Making them mindfully. Being mindful about the ones you are involuntarily doing at all moments, it becomes more than just about travelling through time — its about the intersection — a bigger relationship surface — between angry you and joyful you. Between hopeful you and depressed you, afraid you and grateful you. Any emotional state brings with it a bias — by making observations under different biases we are able to have more delicate topology of our possible states of being and we allow these different selves to experience each other.
Just by setting this as an intention can transform your instagram feed into a lot more than just vanity. This comes naturally for some — but how do you become a star maker of observations over night? Well you don’t, but you have to start somewhere and here is how I suggest you do it:
Pick a set of tools that are easy, abundant and relaxing for you to use. Don’t pick anything that makes your stress level rise too much — or don’t design the process in a way that it’s uninteresting or feels like a chore. Imagine a mid-path between anxiety and boredom — there is an optimal channel where you are doing something for fun — but it is still challenging and interesting to you. Most games use this type of mentality in their designs — but the best games allow the player to find their own challenge level — and it’s your job to make your life the best of all the games!
If you constantly find this balance both your ambition and your skill level will naturally grow! As long as the process is also learnable.
So you’ve picked a tool — maybe it’s voice notes, maybe it’s a camera, maybe it’s a set of coloured pencils that you want to use to simbolise you state of mind, maybe you’re just writing perverted little poems on your phone whenever you take a break. Whtever
Ask yourself: Is there a path ahead? Do you enjoy the idea of exploring this tool further? Because making observations can be seen as an excuse to explore possibilities with tools that you enjoy. That’s it. I know I dumped a lot of philosophy on you. But in the end, there’s also this very sensorial side. Just make many observations and share them with people when you have a chance — but informally — “Hey I made this” and watch how they react — let it sink but don’t think too much about it.
Just remember — the beginning is suppose to be awkward, bad, weird, unprecise and risky. This is by design. I’m asking you strongly to embrace risk taking at this point. Whatever you do is not gonna be anywhere near where you can take the tool — but it also might contain some important signs for what will make your work special down the line. Let me be a little brash: I am asking you to leave a nice, stinky trace of fuckups for a wiser future version of you to find. I have all my sketchbooks going back till when I was 16 and I’d likely not even know who I am without them. But of couse half of it is just a bunch of drawings of naked ladies — I was sixteen.
And I actually regret deeply not embracing this fetish based mindset. So I ask you: Let it affect your tool choice. If you had to pick between a charming fountain pen that feels really seductive to you but is hard to control or a ballpoint that you have total control over and you can use with your eyes closed — I could forgive you for going the easy-control route. Its comfortable and if it makes you work more, its going to be a good choice. But let me give you a tip that will lead you to the best of both worlds:
In Observation mode: GET THE HARD TOOL, USE IT PRETENDING THAT ITS EASY. LET THE RESULTS BE THEY WAY THEY ARE, FIX NOTHING, MOVE FORWARD. Keep trucking. It will pay off, even if the result freaks out friends and foes alike.
Grab that fountain pen and be shameless with it — pretend it’s under your control.
I still use instagram as a time binding tool — I collect relevant moments. But now, when I’m sharing moments with other people I use an instant film camera! I’ve grown fond of looking at them and remembering, especially as my life became more and more unpredictable and filled with chance encounters that will never repeat themselves. 80% of these shots are bad — they have something wrong with them, but 50% of those are wonderful precisely because there is something wrong with them. And they would’ve never happened if I was taking shots on my phone to put on instagram. And they’re physical and this excites me very much. This excitement affords me the courage to spend the money, have this camera, take these shitty pictures — because in the end it’s so delightful for me it doesn’t matter that there is something wrong with them.
That is the key with observation: To “dance like nobody is watching”, to “Shoot from the Hip” — We need to proctect the observation practice from excessive calculation. And also protecting them from the opinions of others might be a good idea. At least in moments where you feel like you can’t handle them. But the trickiest part is protecting ourselves from our “inner censor” — at least at the observation stage. Believe me, self deprication and self limitation will have their time to shine in this program — but when doing observations we wanna keep it impulsive, childish, reckless, wild, sauvage — If you can at least find it in you the space to be a total punk and love yourself doing it — thats it. The magic touch. After all the only ones who know where the line is are the ones who have gone over it. Go over it. It’ll be our little secret. And those are my tips to find and be found by your own tools.
I hope that you already have a few ideas in your head of what these tools might be and what sort of situation asks for them. Now all you need is a place to store them and watching them pile up. It’s so much fun to start down the path of a Collection. You’re not practicing — you’re hunting. But in this type of collection all the pieces are unique. The repository is taking the step of displaying this collection, even if just to yourself somehow. I add beautiful moments to instagram, yes, but shared moments with people go to the polaroid pile. I than organise these polaroids inside old windows that I find on the streets of Berlin. These provide a high quality low reflection glass case and a solid frame where I can both look at the pictures and keep them protected at the same time. I can see more than one picture at once, I am not just flipping through a book. And I can take little reflection breaks while walking through the house and get grabbed by these windows of memories. They take me on immediate mini-trips in space time to something shared with someone or something learned from a person. And those flash-mindset-expansions feed right back into whatever I am doing at the moment — a guitar lick, a painting, a organisational design issue with a client or even what I am going to cook for dinner. All types of action can get catapulted to a higher order of awareness just by being exposed to a cool well placed collection of observations. That is why I believe that sometimes a well crafted repository is more important than the quality of the observations themselves in the beginning.
At first its not that important to design this repository too much — again, just make sure you do it. Do something. The constraints of the repository kind of give themselves — time, materials resources and attention are all limited. So for now just focus on doing something.
Choose one of your collection practices, you’re likely to already have one.
Choose a tool that is exciting to you even if you kinda suck at it.
Make sure to record and display results to yourself somehow.
Alright, so you started doing it, you started seeing it — you have your repository. This will, overtime (and not too much time) allow you to start seeing your process from above. Even tweets are perfect for this. It’s the pattern finding that is made available by the repository that will launch the next steps of your unique researching, processes and deliveries. And it all starts here with a ultra indulgent, mega personal, impulsive observations driven by childish fascination just piling up overtime and finding a way to reach a future version of you and give it a systemic perception of what you’re life is actually about. You’re mileage may very, but results tend to be surprising.
A wise older artist once told me “All you have to do is ‘Stay Healthy, stay sane until you see the line that connects everything”. I believe that this practice you help you see the line.
Okay — so let’s get concrete and move into this episode’s exercise. Hope you’re taking notes. This is a practical one:
What is imperative here is that you find something that will fit your daily life as flawlessly as possible — take advantage of every shortcut until you feell like making observations is an integral part of your life and adjust as needed.
If you need any help to become a dreamer give us a shout in any of the community channels.
