Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Life is full of interesting things. All we have to do is notice them. To do so, I have learned to keep my “notice-er” engaged. I have also learned how to keep and use the noticed things.

At a recent public gather, a friend stood to give a five-minute speech. This five-minute speech occurs at every one of these gatherings, and several of us take turns giving the speech. He began with,

Every time I am asked to speak, I find something interesting happening the week before.

I find a simple explanation to this interesting coincidence. The week of his speech, he had turned on his “notice-er.” He had paid attention to his surroundings and noticed things of interest instead of being oblivious to them.

I learned the use of the notice-er from author and consultant Jerry Weinberg a decade ago. I was attending a one-week writing workshop led by Jerry. He would send us out at our lunch break with the assignment: “notice five things.” Everyone in the workshop was able to complete the assignment every day, i.e., we each noticed 25 interesting things during the week.

Since that workshop, I have kept my notice-er turned on most days. This noticing is great when looking for topics to describe. The down side is that it is easy to have your mind over load with interesting things. Jerry supplied a technique to deal with all these interesting noticed things – the fieldstone.

I use 3×5 cards to record fieldstones (since described by Jerry in a book). I have stacks of hundreds of these cards dating back to that week of the writing workshop. I blog about two such fieldstones each week. The trouble is that I notice more than two things each week. Hence, my pile of fieldstones is growing instead of shrinking. Perhaps one day I will have the time and energy to transform these piles into a set of books.

Until then, I will keep noticing with my notice-er, keep collecting the fieldstones, and keep writing. Life is so interesting and writing is so enjoyable.