“To be or not to be?” is the fundamental choice Hamlet asks about his existence. But this line isn’t really about life and death. It’s about engagement versus avoidance. Confronting difficult truths versus not knowing. Taking action versus hoping problems resolve themselves.
Every day you face your own version of this soliloquy:
Do I act, or do I look away?
Sometimes it’s better to look away if you don’t want to go there. Like when riding a bike and where you look tends to be where you go.
There are many factors that can affect how you see something. Is the glass half empty or half full? It all depends on how you look at it.
Our brains can be easily tricked into NOT seeing what we’re looking at. It’s called inattentional blindness. And it’s how our brain conserves energy by editing things out.
In a past blog, I wrote about the famous experiment: viewers are asked to count how many times a basketball is passed between players. Midway through, a person in a gorilla suit walks directly through the scene. Stops. Beats their chest. Walks off.
Half the viewers don’t see it. They’re so focused on counting passes that a gorilla becomes invisible. It’s why it’s always good to have a different perspective. One that is objective and not affected by all sorts of potential biases—confirmation bias, survivorship bias, or just the bias of being too close to something to see it clearly.
Because Hamlet’s choice was to avenge his father’s murder or pretend he did not see what he saw. In the end, it revealed the worst of humankind’s potential: betrayal, madness, and the destruction of everyone around him.
I guess it’s a pretty heavy example for why you need an objective way to see your foot traffic and track real-time conversion rates.
Regardless, your choice remains the same one Hamlet faced:
To see or not to see?
THAT is the real question.
