This is a famous art trick. You may see an old woman’s
side face in a drawing—or, if you change your perspective, you may see a young
girl looking at the other side in the same drawing.
This famous optical illusion is called “psychological scotoma.”
Once you determine how you see it, you will be stuck inside that perspective.
In your daily experiments, you will see A LOT of things. For
example, when you synthesize your nanocrystals, you might see color changes. Even
in the color change, there is a lot going on such as what was the starting,
intermediate, ending, what is the spectrum, where is the peak top, how narrow
is your peak, how is the optical density, etc.
Life is full of information, but, in experiments, you may want
to get all the information. Problems may include an overwhelming amount of
information, even in a simple experiment, and it is difficult to see what it is
because of your psychological scotoma. There are two solutions for that: Be
super mindful and remember all that happened—or you get prepared for the
change. Instead of cultivating meditation and mindful skills, I chose the
second one; again, the key is organization skills.
 |
| If we can foresee the result of our experiments in a quartz sphere, research is going to be easy... |
Here are some tips to keep you organized:
1. Write down what you will expect
What you are going to make is the form that you will fill
in the result.
2. Also check the event list
Such as “the color was changed from blue to red after the
injection.”
By writing it in advance, you will be keen on the
observation.
3. Write any other things that you realized
By preparing for things to happen, you will realize
yourself that you will be keen on them. Obviously, there is a lot going on if
you are mindful.
4. In the end, conclude your experiments
You want to understand what you observed. As much as you
observe, you will have more evidence to support your hypothesis. Probably
thinking about it might give you another perspective that you want to observe
carefully for the next reactions.
Good luck on sucking up all information from a mindful
experiment!
