How to profit by making better use of your mental “peripheral vision”

Regular readers will know that I’m a birder and sometimes draw analogies between what I’ve learned from watching birds and the topics I write about here.

This time it’s peripheral vision: literally seeing things out of the corner of your eye. At work, you can use your mental “peripheral vision” to be aware of things others will miss. To spot trends and unexpected movements in events. To notice developing patterns and links between items that don’t immediately appear connected.

What will this do for you? It will make you far sharper and quicker to home in on what really matters. It will help you to see what others miss; or see it earlier, before most people are even aware of it. Best of all, it will make you much more aware of the possibilities — especially the creative ones — in any situation.

All it takes is to slow down and be more aware of what you don’t see in an instant snapshot of the situation — which is all that most people have time for today.

Understanding how peripheral vision works

You may not have noticed this consciously, but your eyes can only hold a small area in sharp focus. Try looking now at a point about 10 or 15 feet away. Don’t move your eyes. How much is in sharp focus? Typically, it’s a circle maybe a yard in diameter. If you want to see a larger area clearly, you’ll have to move your eyes or your head.

When I’m out birding, I’m trying to be aware of birds that might be anywhere in a large area all around me. Listening helps enormously. Experienced birders use their ears as much as their eyes. By hearing a bird, you can begin to work out where it might be. Even so, you may only know the call is coming from somewhere on your left. That could include many large trees, deep thickets — or, where I live, a hillside covered in cactus and mesquite.

If you try to search the area visually (and everyone does that), that small circle of sharp focus must be moved back and forth all the time. The bird may move while you’re looking somewhere else. You may miss it even if it sits still (especially then). That’s where peripheral vision helps. You may not be able to focus clearly outside a small area at one time, but Nature has given you something just as useful: the ability to be aware of movement just about anywhere in your visual field.

Watch a group of birders in action and you’ll see people who are primarily looking for movement. Because you can register movement throughout your visual area, it gives you a much wider perspective. Birds, especially small and vulnerable ones, tend to move a great deal. They’re afraid they’ll make a good target for hawks if they stay still. The skillful birder spots the movement out of the corner of her eye and immediately swings her circle of sharp focus to that spot.

Inexperienced birders look in specific places for clearly recognizable birds and miss most of them as a result. Their more experienced colleagues look for anything that moves. They don’t just see more birds, they see butterflies, bugs, squirrels, lizards, deer and heaven knows what else.

Applying the same principle to work

At work, you can use your mental “peripheral vision” to be aware of things others will miss. The key is the same: to be aware of movement. For example, a change in sales figures, or production output, or customer returns can alert you to something you should investigate.

Never mind which direction the change takes, up or down. A change from what’s usual is always worth investigating. If customers change their buying behavior, focus in right away. If competitors seem to be shifting their positions, make sure you take notice. If a subordinate’s or colleague’s behavior changes, take a look. Good birders stay alert, focused, and notice as much as possible around them. Good managers do the same.

Today’s typical devotee of Hamburger Management has no time to wait and watch for movement or changes. He or she takes a quick look at a situation, mentally fits it into some pre-determined pigeon-hole or category of events, and jumps right into action.

Resisting the temptation to jump to conclusions

If what is there doesn’t fit into those preconceived categories, all it takes is to ignore the “awkward bits” and force a fit. See event, fit it into existing set of ideas, jump directly to stock response. Quick, simple, easy . . . and deadly. Perhaps someone should have pointed this out to the executives of Société 3.

As a way of operating, Hamburger Management makes everyone into a beginner. There’s no time to spot what isn’t immediately obvious. Looking for trends is left to computer algorithms (and you only have to be a user of Amazon.com to know what odd results even the most sophisticated software can throw up in predicting something relatively simple, like what books you might buy next). Creativity is so crippled as to become virtually useless.

All that’s left is “monkey see, monkey do” as a way of life.

As you walk through your working day, how much do you see . . . or miss?

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