There is a much reviewed article from the Washington Post on the world-class violinist Josh Bell who played his multi-million dollar violin in the subway station for change with a hidden cam capturing people's reactions. He made $32. Seven people stopped to listen. 27 gave money (obviously averaging pocket change), and 1,070 people walked by hardly noticing. 37Signals points out that the article mentions that every single child that passed by tried to stop and listen, but was always pulled away by a parent.

Possibly the most interesting thing pointed out is that this violinist typically receives $1000/minute while playing. People pay a lot of money for the opportunity to hear him play. Some of those people walking by might even have been willing to purchase a ticket to his performance at some point in their life. In the music hall, the might have been listening anxiously, soaking it in. But in the subway, their mind is on something else and the violin ranges from a possible annoyance to nice background music. But the focus doesn't change, except for 7 out of about 1,100. It's amazing how the setting and mindset can so drastically alter our reactions to a stimulus.

Let's say that you're trying to stop eating chocolate. You can walk into See's Candies with one mindset and have no problem walking past the free samples they are handing out to pick up a gift box for someone else. With another mindset, walking into the store at all is death to your goal. Your mindset completely changes the outcome even though the stimulus is the same. Sitting down at the computer or TV can either be highly productive or a complete waste of time, and the difference isn't what's on TV. You can always find something good and something that acts as a leech on creativity and motivation. It would have been interesting to find out why those seven stopped to listen. Did they do something different earlier that day that set them apart from everyone else? Do they have different personalities? Did they simply have an open schedule are were looking for something to do? I think it comes down to mindset. What a perfect opportunity to learn more about the why and how our focus can shift.

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