Understand: the ability to connect deeply to your environment is the most primal and in many ways to most powerful form of mastery the brain can bring us. It applies equally well to the waters of Micronesia as it does to any modern field or office. We gain such power by first transforming ourselves into consummate observers. We see everything in our surroundings as a potential sign to interpret. Nothing is taken at face value. We can break these observations down into various systems. There are the people with whom we work and interact–everything they do and say reveals something hidden below the surface. We can look at our interactions with the public, how they respond to our work, how people’s tastes are constantly in flux. We can immerse ourselves in every aspect of our field, paying deep attention, for example, to the economic factors that play such a large role. We become like the Proustian spider, sensing the slightest vibration on our web. Over the years, as we progress on this path, we begin to merge our knowledge of these various components into an overall feel for the environment itself. Instead of exerting and overtaxing ourselves to keep up with a complex, changing environment, we know it from the inside and can sense the changes before they happen.
* Source: Mastery by Robert Greene
When it comes to observing your environment, it is incredibly interesting how useful you can navigate through life based on the ability. Not just to read off the signs from your environment, but to hone what connections can be applied from these observations (in order to use them as guidelines): connections which can then become powerful tools.