Watching for clever ideas as you move around your world is important, but so is listening for clever ideas. At least a third of us learn best through hearing, but everyone can attend to sounds. To quote the entertainer I hear on the subway today, “Our lives are songs, so enjoy the music.”

Western education doesn’t emphasize listening skills. It’s “Reading, Writing, and ‘Ritmatic,” but nothing about how to be attentive to what you hear. The appreciation for oral transmission of knowledge is fading. Calling students to learn with a bell permeates many cultures from the Confucian times when teachers rang an ornate bell to summon their students to the school bell that teachers rang outside the little red school house on the American prairie in pioneer times.

So, when you travel, when you walk around, even when you on in a car, train, plane, or bus, listen for clever ideas. I heard them in the Zurich airport when the cow bells were ringing as I transited between terminals and in the Vancouver airport with sounds of the Northwest Indians ringing out as I exited the international terminal.

By Dr Sabra Brock, co-founder of Idea Spies