The Invisible Mentor

While reading Did You Spot the Gorilla? : How to Recognise the Hidden Opportunities in Your Life by Richard Wiseman, there was an exercise where you had to fill in the missing numbers on the face of a clock with Roman numerals. I completed the exercise in seconds and thought how easy the exercise was. It turns out that in nearly all instances, except for the Big Ben in London, the number four is represented as IIII on clocks and watches and not IV. Richard Wiseman is from the United Kingdom so I automatically thought that this had to be a UK phenomenon.

The next day I went looking for clocks with Roman numerals and discovered that the number four was indeed represented as IIII. I always prided myself on being very observant, so I was shocked that I didn’t notice this before. I asked many of my friends if they had ever noticed that the four was written as IIII and not IV, and I was very pleased when they all answered no.

It appears that when your brain comes across anything over and over, it tends to switch off. How many things do we miss because our brains are switched off?

Do you function on automatic pilot? Do you take the same route to work each day? Do you use the same process to solve problems? How many times do you use old assumptions when making decisions? What do you do to get a fresh perspective? How do you interrupt your brain to prevent it from switching off?

For the next month I would like all my readers to do something different, just for the sake of doing it different. Let’s consciously interrupt our brains to prevent us from becoming complacent. If you get a chance, also read Did You Spot the Gorilla? It’s a very quick read.

Photo credit: Creative Commons chrisjohnbeckett via Flickr

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