The Art of Noticing
On paying attention, subjective enjoyment, and whether noticing details actually matters
Savoring and Shrugging
Some people experience life through detail and nuance. They pay attention to tiny flavor notes in their coffee, get genuinely moved by the textures and colors of a meal, or feel deeply stirred by specific instruments in a song (I’m really pulled by human vocal and choral backdrops even when I don’t immediately recognize them for what it is; e.g., check out Explained Theme Song, 가라사대, or Falling Through).
These are the folks who seek out nice artisanal coffee shops, tasting menus, or immerse themselves in art, music, or movies with intense curiosity. Sometimes, I’m like this, though I don’t have the intense or intentional drive to cultivate sophisticated tastes and precise language and representation as many do: I enjoy sometimes noticing the little things, and if I’m lucky, sometimes lose myself entirely in something beautiful or interesting.
It seems though that there are also many who simply don’t experience the world this way. It's not that they don't enjoy things—they do—but for them, coffee is coffee, music is background noise or a good vibe, and art, at most, pleasant decoration. The idea of deeply dissecting experiences can even feel tiring or artificial. With a lot of avant garde or even just contemporary things, this is pretty much how I always feel right now.
Some of this might just come down to personality or wiring—maybe some people are born inclined to savor experiences in fine detail, while others naturally resist or shrug off intense sensory analysis. But reading Sasha Chapin’s wonderful essay, How to Like Everything More, made me think more deeply about whether there might also be an acquired element to savoring—if learning to appreciate things in a detailed, attentive way is actually a kind of skill that anyone could get better at with practice. I’d highly recommend reading it for practical and concrete things to try, if this topic compels you.
Chapin argues that enjoyment isn’t just innate but can be consciously improved, like a muscle you strengthen by using it often. He lists several specific micro-skills, like deliberately shifting your attention to less obvious details, or allowing yourself to be temporarily infatuated with the creator of something you’re experiencing, or experimenting with imaginative associations—seeing sounds as colors, or feeling paintings as temperatures. In other words, he suggests training yourself to enjoy things more by changing how you pay attention.
This resonated deeply with me because I often feel stuck between these two worlds. On one hand, I know exactly what Chapin means: sometimes I get so absorbed by sensory pleasures that the world shrinks down to a single sip of coffee or a musical harmony that feels like sunlight breaking through clouds. Yet, strangely, I’m also someone who struggles terribly to recall details later—I’ll deeply enjoy a movie or TV series, then promptly forget almost every character’s name or even major plot points. Faces stick in my mind, but names slip right past. I wonder if this selective memory reflects something deeper about the way enjoyment works; perhaps savoring an experience deeply in the moment doesn’t necessarily translate into permanent retention.
Possibly, the difference between savorers and shruggers isn’t just about how intensely they feel things, but about where they choose to put their mental energy. A savorer consciously invests effort into the act of enjoying—perhaps even turning pleasure into work. A shrugger, meanwhile, might prefer to let the experience just pass through them comfortably, choosing ease over intensity. How do these two modes of experiencing the world work and enrich each other? Maybe the savorer could benefit occasionally from the relaxed simplicity of shrugging, while the shrugger might discover moments of delight by tuning into deeper layers of experience.
Inspired by Chapin’s micro-skills approach, I find myself reflecting on enjoyment as something trainable—an area of life we can intentionally shape. Enjoyment can be something we actively create through our style of attention. If that’s true, what new kinds of pleasure or appreciation might become available by experimenting, even gently, with the ways we experience the things around us?
Paying Attention as Practice
In his post, Chapin talks about enjoyment not as some fixed trait you’re either born with or not, but as a series of small habits of attention—little choices about where you direct your focus. The idea resonates with me because I've felt how true this can be, especially around food. At first, paying careful attention to what you're eating can seem pretentious, even annoying—food is just fuel, right? But if you pause briefly to notice the subtle things you might usually overlook—the gentle warmth of good olive oil or that slight floral note hidden inside decent espresso—the experience deepens. Might feel less corny or pretentious to reframe from some imagined “unfolding symphony” of flavors into simply learning to notice what’s already there, right beneath your usual threshold of awareness.
Chapin calls these tiny skills "micro-skills" of enjoyment. For example, rather than simply "being mindful," he suggests specifically noticing elements of an experience you might typically overlook. Listening to a song, instead of locking onto the lead singer's melody, notice the bass line or how backing vocals weave subtly through the music, enriching the emotional atmosphere. Watching a film or TV show, briefly shift your attention from the main action to the subtler details—how characters react in the background, how the lighting affects mood, or what the quiet pauses between dialogue communicate.
This kind of intentional attention isn't limited to music or visuals, either. Chapin also talks about allowing intensity in rather than resisting it—learning to enjoy heavy metal or opera not by tolerating them, but by leaning into their intensity, becoming curious about their textures and emotions instead of feeling assaulted by them. Maybe a painting initially seems ugly or incomprehensible, or a perfume strikes you as overwhelmingly pungent. Rather than immediately turning away, Chapin suggests letting curiosity take over. Wonder about why the artist chose such abrasive colors, or why that particular scent is so sharp. So many things that come off disagreeable become deeply fascinating when we shift from resistance to curiosity.
I've felt something similar even with things I typically forget—movies, TV series, characters’ names. While I easily lose track of narrative details, I often vividly remember the emotional shape of a scene or the visual mood. Maybe that's because I've unconsciously chosen to savor particular aspects of the experience, even if I don’t fully retain the details. Chapin’s idea about consciously practicing these micro-skills makes me wonder whether I could more intentionally channel this kind of selective attention into deeper enjoyment or even richer memories.
His essay made me wonder if those of us who already naturally savor experiences might deepen that pleasure by exploring how exactly we savor. Could actively noticing, cataloging, or even inventing new vocabularies for our experiences (Chapin suggests quirky terms like "photocopier musks" for perfumes) sharpen and clarify our joy? It's appealing to think that the quality of enjoyment isn't purely a personality trait or luck of genetics but a craft, something you can intentionally get better at through small practices and conscious shifts in how you experience the world.
Enjoying without rules
This week, I’ve been wondering why it feels natural for some to sink deeply into the details of their experiences, while for others, it’s almost uncomfortable. It’s easy to assume that paying attention to details and nuances requires extra effort, but maybe for some people, the opposite is true—maybe what’s hard is allowing yourself to trust that your own subjective experiences are valid, even when they don’t fit neatly into objective categories. I personally felt a lot more of this pre-college and for much of college.
It’s easy to shy away from saying things like, “this painting feels warm,” or “that song reminds me of purple velvet”—the worry is understandable: does that sound too vague, or even pretentious? But being open to subjective and personal associations isn’t a weakness at all, I think it’s an underappreciated strength. When I allow myself the freedom to interpret art, food, or music in a personal and idiosyncratic way, it often opens a richer, deeper enjoyment than any supposedly “correct” interpretation could provide.
I think one reason people hesitate to savor things more intentionally might be that they’ve internalized the idea that there’s a “right” or a “wrong” way to enjoy something. For instance, the hesitation that might come when looking at abstract art or tasting something unfamiliar at a new restaurant: it’s common to worry you’re not quite “getting it” the way you’re supposed to. But what if the whole idea of “supposed to” is misguided? Enjoying art isn’t a test, and appreciating beauty or flavor isn’t about having the right answer—it’s simply about noticing how something resonates (or doesn’t) with you, personally. Perception and experience is a personal and sacred thing! It starts with objective things out in the world, but it’s always filtered through our top-down mental constructions, which I talked about recently in “Your mind shapes everything you see”.
At the same time, it makes sense that not everyone finds the kind of reflective attention equally enjoyable. Life can feel overwhelming enough without constantly analyzing sensory details or aesthetic nuances. Enjoying things casually—treating coffee as something you drink rather than a complex experience—can also be perfectly fulfilling, even relaxing. Noticing subtleties and nuances might enrich certain experiences, but it can also pull you out of the comfortable ease of just being present. Maybe people instinctively know which way of interacting with the world helps them live best, and not everyone needs or even benefits from deeper reflection.
Rather than seeing these different styles of enjoyment as opposing camps, it might be better to think of attention as fluid. Some experiences call for casual ease, others benefit from deeper reflection. Recognizing that each moment can ask something different of us might help remove the artificial pressure to be one kind of experiencer or the other. The skill might not be in always savoring intensely, but in being aware of when it makes life better—and when simply experiencing something lightly is exactly enough.
Remembering vs. Experiencing
One thing I've noticed about my own appreciation of things—whether it’s music, movies, or art—is that there’s a huge gap between how deeply I experience them and how clearly I remember them afterward. This has been especially salient to me in recent months, as I’ve met loads of new people and had social interactions nearly every night (the degree to which I’ve never experienced ever before in my life). Faces are vivid to me—I’ve recognized a stranger from a momentary passing glance days later—but names of people, restaurants, shows escape me, and storylines from even my favorite shows vanish almost entirely within weeks. It’s as if my brain eagerly grabs onto impressions, feelings, and atmospheres, while discarding specifics that don’t neatly fit into some internal schema.
This puzzles me. Why do some people retain precise details—plot points, character backstories, exact song lyrics—while others, myself included, can barely recall the basics, even from experiences we genuinely loved? Maybe this selective memory reveals something fundamental about how enjoyment works. To me, it suggests that savoring something deeply in the moment isn't necessarily about storing it away for future reference. Instead, it could be about letting it saturate you fully, even if the specifics dissolve quickly afterward. (MBTI lovers, BTW, I’m an INTP heavy on the xNxP, and maybe this tracks with some others of this archetype. garbage at trivia, decent at reasoning and riffing off of some internalized model).
Is this trade-off common? Maybe the more vividly you experience sensations or emotions, the less you bother filing them away in detail. Or maybe the reason details escape me so readily is that they don’t easily attach to anything stable in my mind—there’s no existing mental "hook" to hang them on. I think after a representation of an idea or person solidifies enough in my mind, details are more readily retained. I’m kinda riffing but these are vague (and definitely incomplete) hypotheses I can nod at. This contrasts with trivia-minded friends who seem to naturally retain everything because their minds effortlessly build structured webs of information, connecting new details to things they already know. At the far extreme end, people with eidectic memories. Is there a word for the opposite of that? That's me. Where do you think you fall on this kind of scale?
Differences on this dimension I’m describing may shape how we engage with art, music, … life. Someone who remembers everything in precise detail might get repeated pleasure from revisiting those memories, enjoying their favorite movies or albums again and again with new insight. But those of us who mainly hold onto feelings, moods, and fleeting impressions might find our joy less in memory and more in fresh encounters—discovering something anew every time, even if we’ve experienced it many times before.
Does Deep Appreciation Make Life Better?
All of this makes me wonder, ultimately and practically: does cultivating a deeper appreciation of details, nuance, and beauty actually improve life in any meaningful way? The easy answer seems like it *should* be an obvious "yes," but the question deserves more care.
I remember going to a contemporary art museum a few years ago and feeling genuinely frustrated by some of the pieces that everyone around me seemed profoundly intrigued by. Standing there staring, I tried to force myself into appreciating something subtle or profound—maybe a hint of emotion or a striking use of shape or form. But nothing clicked. I felt like a bit of an imposter, irritated at my inability to grasp what others were seeing. Looking back, I think my mistake wasn’t failing to appreciate that art, but thinking there was something wrong with me because I couldn’t, or that there was some objective singular and coherent thing others were seeing that I was failing to grasp.
I think the value of attention and deeper appreciation isn’t that it inevitably enriches every experience, but that it gives us another option. It provides the freedom to approach certain experiences slowly and intentionally, to hold onto things lightly or intensely depending on what feels right. Appreciation isn't a duty; it’s more like an invitation we can accept or decline. There’s something reassuring about knowing that the depth of your enjoyment is something you can gently practice rather than a standard you must meet. I hope some of you, reading this, will find that this opportunity for appreciation and attention to the present, to art, to vibes, to minute details carefully engineered, and general blobby feelings in our minds and bodies, is always there, should you choose and practice recognizing it!
If deeper attention can make the small moments in life—like sipping coffee, listening to a song, or looking at a painting—even slightly richer, that's enough. It doesn't have to transform every experience. It may mostly just help us notice a few more moments worth savoring, but that alone might make it worth exploring.