Who Notices

Passing strangers on the street it is easy to not pay them any mind. Going one step deeper it is fascinating in realizing that everyone we see has their own lives, with their own relationships, with their own interests, with their own view of the world. A spider-web network effect flows out of every single person on the planet. Everyone has their own life and lives in their own world. When zooming out to view the network effects each person possesses, it leads to the question of who really notices what we do in our lives.

We all have our close network of people. Beyond that, we have people we know—acquaintances. Past that, we have a third-level network of friend of friends or people who happen to come across our product or stories on platforms such as social media. Who among our individual networks cares? We could sit down and pencil in some names: Mom, Dad, brother, Grandma, Grandpa, roommates, friend from high school… that one person… what about them? The list is dramatically shorter than we realize once we spell it out. The list of our personal close network effect of people that legitimately care, and care enough to consistently follow our lives in many cases fits on our fingers.

The point of this perspective is to emphasize the idea that we think people care more about us than they actually do. We have ideas in our heads that we are much more important to other people than we actually are. With this idea, we think other people notice things we do on a granular level. This internal feeling we have leads to inaction and a scared feeling when it comes to putting ourselves out there. The reality is unless we do something polarizing, most people in our secondary or third networks, if they notice at all, will simply glance at what we do and move on. Sometimes they will occasionally reach out with congratulations or with words of encouragement. Aside from that, they most likely continue living their own lives regardless of what we do. Most people are too busy thinking about themselves to care about what you individually do.

For this reason, we should not be afraid to put ourselves out there. We should not be afraid to create and post content because of what someone will think. The reality is if someone cares about what we post or do, we are lucky. Who notices is mostly a perception of our own mind. Take a chance and see what happens, there is nothing to lose.