Power of Ignored Skills : Change the way you think and decide

by Manoj Tripathi

Observation is an action or a process of carefully watching someone or something.

Whether you observe actively or passively, your observation skill helps you in your personal and professional life.

The human race has evolved from a cave-dwelling troglodyte to today’s modern humans capable of making space stations.

It was through verbal communication and memorising it.

Therefore, observation worked as a building block of knowledge.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his brilliantly written book, Blink, has explained the importance of the phenomenon called ‘thin-slicing’. He argues that the human brain can process a small amount of information, a thin slice, and draw incredible conclusions. This is made possible through a repository of data in our mind, which is accumulated through years of observation.

Evidently, the knowledge we have today is an outcome of continuous learning, which was saved and communicated throughout human history. Thus, the power of observation and the ability to communicate has helped humans conquer the world.

If there was a single most crucial thing, which Howard did right in his lifetime, it is that he observed. He used the power of his observation to unfold the possibilities of future, unbox something extraordinary, and so did Newton in the earlier story.

The most common, and straightforward method for getting information about everything around us, is to observe. Hence, observation acts as a fundamental and the primary way of getting information about anything.

Theoretically, the most common form of learning is observational learning. Observational learning describes learning through watching others, retaining the information, and then later replicating the observed behaviours.