Have you seen this email? It has been making the rounds for a while:
A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.
Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule. A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk. A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.
The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.
In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.
No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the top musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written,with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars. Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.
This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?
According to developmental molecular biologist, Dr. John Medina, author of Brain Rules, our brains can only focus on one thing at a time. Sometimes we’re not focused – lost in the blur of work and life. At other times our focus defaults to what it has always seen, to look where it habitually looks. As Medina says, “Our previous experience predicts where we should pay attention.”
Our brains are not capable of multitasking. Sure we can walk and talk at the same time, but when it comes to higher level processing, we just can’t do it. Medina emphasized the point, “Driving while talking on a cell phone is like driving drunk. The brain is a sequential processor and large fractions of a second are consumed every time the brain switches tasks. Cell phone talkers are a half-second slower to hit the brakes and get involved in more wrecks.”
Interestingly, today’s workplace encourages this type of multitasking. Email. Phone. Text. Internet search. LinkedIN. Facebook. Twitter. All at the same time! Yet the research on multitasking shows that your error rate goes up 50% and it takes you twice as long to do things. Think about it, when you’re always online, you’re always distracted. So is the always online organization the always unproductive organization? What are we missing?
When we look, what do we see?
In Other Words…
“For any man with half an eye,
What stands before him may espy;
But optics sharp it needs I ween,
To see what is not to be seen.” – John Trumbull, McFingal (1775-1782), Canto I, line 67.
“Men who love wisdom should acquaint themselves with a great many particulars.” – Heraclitus
“To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.” – Benjamin Disraeli, Sybil, (1845), Book I, Chapter V.
“Wise men hear and see as little children do.” – Lao Tzu
“A moments insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
“As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.” – Albert Einstein as quoted in Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces (2003) by Carolyn Snyder
“All things I thought I knew; but now confess
The more I know, I know, I know the less.” – John Owen (1616–1683), The Works of John Owen, Bk. VI, p. 39
“A word to the wise is infuriating.” – Hunter S. Thompson
In The Word…
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” – 2 Corinthians 4:18
