The zucchini was staring me in the face

My mail was sitting on the coffee counter outside my office door.

I looked into the office next to mine and thanked my friend Kim for getting it.

Then she casually asked, “Do you know where the giant zucchini came from?”

I spun back around.

And there it was. A zucchini bigger than my forearm, sitting right next to my mail.

I squealed. I truly hadn’t seen it.

My eyes almost certainly landed on it. But my attention was on the mail, and apparently there was no room left for giant vegetables.

There’s actually a name for this: inattentional blindness.

In one famous study, people were asked to watch a video and count how many times a ball was passed between players.

About half of them completely missed the guy in the gorilla suit who walked through the scene, thumped his chest and walked off.

Which made me wonder: How much do we miss simply because our attention is somewhere else?

Maybe you walk into a networking event looking for someone you know and miss the person who’s trying to catch your eye.

Or you’re so focused on getting through your to-do list that you don’t notice the invitation, opportunity or interesting idea that pops up along the way.

None of this means we should try to notice everything.

We can’t. Our brains have to choose.

But every once in a while, it might be worth pausing and looking around.

You might be surprised by what’s right in front of you.

In the meantime, we finally discovered who left us that zucchini.

It was a client of Kim’s who gets a kick out of growing ginormous veggies.

We’re looking forward to pumpkin season. 😁