A late night rerun of Will Smith’s “I Robot” got me thinking. In this scene, Will and a young girl are trapped in a car sinking deep into the river. A robot arrives to the rescue, but can only save one of them. Being a logical machine, the robot calculates probability of survival and picks Will as the best option. Will survives, but laments that the robot’s programmed rationality was decidedly inhumane.

Humans make the same sort of calculations, automatically, every second of the day. There’s too much in this world. Too many objects, too many thoughts, too many limitations,  too many patterns, fears, emotions. Our mind automatically sifts through this multitude of data and decides what’s relevant and what’s noise. It constantly prioritizes sounds we hear, things we see, surfaces we touch. On the basis of learning and behaviour patterns, it diverts our attention to some things and ignores others.

The buzzing sound of an insect warrants attention, but the hum (which might be louder in absolute terms) of a car might not. We automatically decide what to focus on and what gets blurred to the background.

A veteran ad man once told me that the search for a crucial insight or the big idea begins even before you get the brief. You just have to absorb all this information that you would otherwise be discounting. For the sake of efficiency, our brains often overlook things that are  going to make all the difference in the world, but are seemingly camouflaged as background noise.

The eureka moment can strike when you’re in the most mundane of environments, doing the most routine of tasks. It doesn’t need to be dramatic. It doesn’t need to come out of pie charts and focus groups.

You just have to notice something that you’ve been ignoring for a long, long time.

Photo Credit: Sharon Maas