Out of sight, out of mind

That which is no longer directly perceived, ceases to exist.

Not literally, of course. But the way the human brain works is, it quickly forgets things that are no longer visible or present. If we can’t see it, it’s not there.

Psychologists would call this a lack of object permanence. And the principle primarily applies to infants playing peekaboo, although interesting to consider its adult implications.

Because oftentimes, a big reason people struggle to focus their attention on things is not because they’re stupid, forgetful and lazy. But because things are not directly visible in their immediate environment.

Even if they know intuitively that those things exist, they still may not consider the significance of those things if they’re not within their perceptual field. Out of sight, out of mind.

I used to have a coworker who was a master of fighting this tendency. Casey indexed high on emotional intelligence. He was always mindful of people’s workloads and tried to avoid overwhelming himself or the rest of us.

One of his techniques for doing so was over communicating on the shared team calendar. Anytime he had an upcoming project that required preparation, he would create an additional task on the schedule to allocate time for the necessary prep work. This ensured he didn’t overlook that crucial phase, and kept himself and the rest of us aware of his progress.

Casey even put his out of office notifications on other people’s calendars. All of us would be invited to his vacation, so to speak. Which seemed excessive initially. I was like, dude, that’s wonderful you’re going to the beach with your family seven weeks from today, but I don’t really need to know that.

But then I realized, wait a sec, this is actually a gift. My coworker is trying to help all of us maintain object permanence. He’s anticipating the out of sight out of mind problem. This calendar reminder is notifying everyone on the team well in advance of an event, helping him and the rest of us stay prepared and ensuring tasks are not forgotten.

Casey is essentially telling us, hey guys, we all get busy. Myself included. And sometimes we need additional prompts to stay on top of our responsibilities. Let’s use these reminders to ensure that we all have the necessary information and ample time to prepare.

That’s the mark of a true leader. Imagine if all of us practiced empathy in that way. Imagine if everyone offered that level of clarity and focus to their colleagues.

Doing so would help people more effectively prioritize tasks and better understand their significance within the larger context of the entire team.

There would be an order of magnitude less confusion and frustration.

Are you keeping things present and visible day to day to counter rising environmental noise?