{"id":6465,"date":"2016-09-19T00:00:15","date_gmt":"2016-09-19T05:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=6465"},"modified":"2016-09-17T14:37:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-17T19:37:00","slug":"are-you-paying-attention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=6465","title":{"rendered":"ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wonderful advice that economist Steven Levitt received from his dad:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I remember this one time\u2013I must have been like seven or eight years old\u2013my dad took me to Gibby\u2019s Diner. This was in the closest village called Quaker Street. And Quaker Street is just like one stoplight, a general store and the diner. And all my brother<\/strong>s and sisters had at one point worked at Gibby\u2019s Diner either cooking or as a waitress or whatnot. And for my dad to bring me there alone, the two of us to sit at the counter, to this kind of sacred place. It was surreal to be there. And I remember we sat at the counter, and I don\u2019t remember what I got to eat, but I remember my dad got a cup of coffee with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in it, which looking back I realized\u2013he could have been a Starbucks imaginer. And I was having whatever I was having, and he introduced me to this game he called Powers of Observation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

And the way Powers of Observation worked was he would say, \u201cAll right, Stevie. I just want you to look around and take it in. Just really look around, pay attention, see what you\u2019re looking at, take it in, and get attuned\u2013and listen hard to, OK?\u201d Like I said, I was probably just eight or seven years old, and he said \u201cI\u2019m going to give you five minutes to just take it all in.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

So I sat there and I looked around; and I take it all in. And I don\u2019t really know where he\u2019s going with this. And then after a few minutes, he told me to close my eyes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

He\u2019d say, \u201cOK the waitress, Ann\u201d\u2013you know, we knew her, \u201cAnn\u2013what color is her apron?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

And I said, \u201cWhite?\u201d And he said, \u201cAhh, you\u2019re just guessing.\u201d And I said, \u201cWhite!\u201d And he said, \u201cThat\u2019s right, that\u2019s right. OK. The lady behind us, what did she just order?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cGrilled cheese?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cNope. Chili. OK, how many people have come in since we started playing Powers of Observation?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

And on it went, just like that. And he\u2019d grill me on these facts large and small, any kind of site, smell, sound\u2013anything like that. And the first couple rounds we did this, I was terrible. I couldn\u2019t get anything right at all. I just didn\u2019t have any powers of observation. And then as we kept doing it, I got better. And then about after 20 minutes, I felt that I could take these little snapshots with my mind. And then repeat what I\u2019d seen. My father, that one day, at Gibby\u2019s Diner in Quaker Street, New York, he taught me that memory\u2013or at least observation\u2013is a muscle that you can build. And I\u2019ve been flexing that muscle every day since then. Or at least trying to. So we were a family with practically no money, and without really that much time with each parent, but I will never forget that one day, that incredibly great thing, an incredibly valuable thing, that my father gave me.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The rest is here:<\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/freakonomics.com\/2011\/06\/09\/things-our-fathers-gave-us-full-transcript\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wonderful advice that economist Steven Levitt received from his dad: I remember this one time\u2013I must have been like seven or eight years old\u2013my dad took me to Gibby\u2019s Diner. This was in the closest village called Quaker Street. And Quaker Street is just like one stoplight, a general store and the diner. And all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-learningeducation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6465"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6467,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6465\/revisions\/6467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}