I’ve got a little exercise I do when everything around me’s looking kinda bland. In fact, the blander the better.

A wintry landscape is perfect but you can try this anywhere, indoors or out.

It’s pretty simple. I start by looking for anything that’s red. Once I’ve seen all the red there is to see, I work my way through the rest: orange yellow green blue purple.

Here’s what happens.

I’ll think to myself ‘there’s nothing here that could be red’ and I start to look… and almost inevitably I will see something red. Though maybe it’s more orange… and it begins a conversation in my head about whether it is red…or orange.

After I’ve found all the red stuff I move on to the next color.

It’s not so much an exercise about color. It’s really a way to see how much I didn’t see before I started looking.

So try it right now: look around you and find everything that’s red. Make sure to determine if what looks red is really red to you, not any other color (If you don’t, making your way through all the colors gets lame really fast) and then move on to orange.

See anything new?

P.S. I included this photo in case you’re really at a loss for something to look at [click on it to make it bigger]. But the real world is a far better place to try this out.