Inattentional blindness is not finding what you are not looking for. (Serendipity on the other hand is finding what you are not looking for). Inattentional blindness is like the Sherlock Holmes’ dog-that-didn’t-bark lesson. Everyone notices a dog that barks; but almost no one notices the dog that doesn’t bark.

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Let me switch gears a bit and talk about a book I am reading – Upstream. This was recommended by my friend Sorbo.

The basic premise of the book is: upstream problems cause downstream symptoms. You can be busy solving the downstream symptoms but unless you go upstream and fix the real problem, you will not be productive. The book opens with a case study at Expedia which was receiving a high volume of calls and people were busy attending to the customers. But only when they asked why were they receiving so many calls, did they realize that they were all so focused on solving the downstream problem and so no one was asking: what is the upstream problem? Until that point they didn’t find the solution for the problem they weren’t looking for. Inattentional blindness.

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Bengaluru has a garbage problem. People dump garbage on the streets. It’s an ugly sight. And pretty soon we are going to have the local corporation elections followed by the state elections. So there is a drive to make sure that people aren’t reminded of the garbage problem.

Last week on my way to office, I noticed that the municipality workers had decorated a sidewalk and put up a board that said in Kannada : ” Don’t dump trash here”. This is a classic downstream symptom that the corporators and workers are working hard at. Everyday they work hard to clear the mess which piles up. But no one is asking: why is there a garbage problem in the first place?

A few years ago a few fellow residents and I solved a similar problem at our apartment. We too had a garbage problem. And so we taught our large community to segregate their waste; wet kitchen waste would be composted; dry waste and electronic waste would be recycled. We forced everyone to follow the new system. And so after our waste segregation program only 5% of the waste goes to the landfill.

Unfortunately, because our local leaders aren’t asking such questions, they aren’t getting the right answers. Inattentional blindness.

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All of this stuff is nice to read. You probably think, you won’t make a mistake like this. Even I used to think so.

Last Friday it was pouring. Yet, I braved the rains to go to the computer repair shop to get my daughter’s laptop. The laptop was overdue and I was in a hurry to pick it up and reach home before my daughter’s online test. And I had a meeting later that evening. And it was pouring…saying it again for effect. So, I was tunneled into the tasks coming up (pick up laptop – don’t get wet – reach home on time – attend meeting – ask good questions at the meeting – don’t screw up). As I picked up the laptop from the repair shop, I realized I had forgotten the power cord in my office. This is what my inner voice was telling me: I just told you don’t screw up. So again I drove back in the rain to my office and picked up the power cord. And then I rushed home.

On the following Sunday, I couldn’t find my own laptop’s power cord, no matter how much I searched for it. I figured I must’ve left it in office. When I came back to office on Monday, I noticed that I had left my own power cord in office. The irony was, it was right next to where my daughter’s laptop’s power cord was on Friday. But because I was so focused on getting her power cord and reaching home safely through the rain, any surprise that I failed to notice what I was not looking for?

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Have you gotten your will done? Have you written down all your bank accounts, insurance policies, your investments and told your spouse where to find them when you are no more? Chances are that you haven’t. Because we are all so focused on today’s tasks, today’s meetings, today’s emails, today’s tweets, today’s Whatsapp messages, today’s Insta reels that we are almost not asking ourselves: what should I solve today that so that I can have a great time in future?

Life’s big tasks don’t have reminders or notifications and so we tend to ignore those. Nature wired us to focus on the present dangers; because if you don’t survive the present dangers, you are unlikely to have a future. Today’s alerts, popups, notifications have the same effect of capturing our attention as if it were a present danger.

But we don’t live in such hostile conditions anymore. Our feature has become a bug. And so we need to condition ourselves to think of the distant future more than we like to.

For example. here are a few things that don’t come with alert notifications and hence we tend to miss them:

• Preparing a will to make the transition easier
• Succession planning, if you are a business leader
  • A wise friend once told me that succession planning issues have cropped up since the times of Ramayana and Mahabharatha and yet we these issues recurring even today. Think of the Ambani brothers’ fight which needed their mother to step in.
• Making your business anti fragile
  • Most business leaders are so focused on growth that they don’t pay attention to survival. It’s like being singular minded about reaching your destination fast that you forget to pay attention to safety.
  • Ajith Rai of Suprajit Engineering has created a will and a succession plan. He also realized that he doesn’t want to depend on one customer, one product or one country and hence has diversified over the last few decades.
• All aspects of health
• Relationships
• Education (reading, exploring new ideas)
• Long term thinking
  • As told by Antony Deden, there is a true story of a date farmer in the Middle East. Deden, asked him “how many years does it take to get good dates from the trees?”. The farmer said 40 years. Deden was puzzled and he asked “But you don’t look that old to have planted all these trees?”. To which the farmer said ” Oh no sir. These were planted by my grand father, those by my father. And I am planting these for my children.”

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To sum it all up, we are all mostly wired to miss what we aren’t looking for. This can be costly especially when it comes to our blindness towards the long term.

-Cheers!