Inputs and attention.

I’ve found input to be quite interesting. Input in the sense of how much and what kind of information we’re picking up. How we’re good at picking up different kinds of information, and the amount we can pick up.

For instance, the traffic in India is crazy. I thought I was picking up a lot of signals when driving back home, but that’s nothing compared to what they have to pick up whilst driving here. And I realise it’s all practice, and getting used to.

I’m really good at taking in a lot of information in audio or text form. I’m quite good with visuals, at least when it comes to details. Yet I can’t for my life learn a new language however hard I try.

I have a friend who’ll hear a sentence in a language he’s never heard, and he’ll figure out what it means. Both by making connections to the things around him, as well as with references to all the other languages he knows. He’s great at taking that kind of input and deriving the necessary information to make sense of it.

I guess being in these environments, people need to start adapting their input to it, realising what’s important to focus on when driving and so on.

The other thing that strikes me is the variety of inputs all digested at the same time. Again referring to the traffic in India, honking is used for all sorts of purposes. Before you make a sharp turn, you honk. When you see people on their way to walk out on a road, you honk. When someone is in your way, you honk.

The drivers, and all the people in the traffic, use both their visual and auditory inputs to make decisions. In Sweden, we all seem to rely on our visual input, as honking is very uncommon.

I don’t really have a point to this other than giving some attention to the inputs we have. What we focus on is what we focus on, and if we’re able to take in more inputs, our focus could become both more or less sharp.