The quote is from comedian Steven Wright.

Wright is right. Think about it the next time someone says that the path to situational awareness is to see everything.

You know what I mean: “Look for out-of-state license plates.” “What color shoes are the people in the restaurant wearing?” “Do you know how many left handers are in the room?”

The trouble is that it’s not the shoes, or the license plates, which are going to hurt you. And, unless someone postulates a very high correlation between being left-handed and committing crimes against others, whether someone is left handed is probably quite irrelevant too.

You can spend a lot of time on that kind of nonsense.

Here’s the reality: you can’t see everything. You can’t memorize everything. The time and effort you spend in attempting to do so means that you’re too busy to separate what’s important from what’s not — let alone actually thinking about the important stuff.

First, figure out what’s important — what’s likely to hurt you. Then pay as much attention to it as you need to. Keep doing that and ignore the license plates.

– Grant 

 
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