Here's a neat little exercise that bore unexpected benefit for me today.
So, in William Gibson's "Neuromancer" (probably -the- genre-defining cyberpunk novel), there was a sequence where Miss Molly is wearing this rig that transmits her sensory data to her netrunner guy. It's a similar idea as was explored in the Kathryn Bigelow film "Strange Days" (with Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett).
So occasionally, I find myself imagining what it would be like if my sensory data were being transmitted/recorded for someone else, and I was aware of it. What would I show them? What do I do, what do I notice?
On my trip home from work, biking my nearly 7 mile short route (still working up to my long route on this heavier bike I now have), I fell into that kind of active participatory daydream, and with my music rolling, I thought about what I was doing, what I was seeing, how another person might view it. Thoughts aren't translated, just senses, but you could mouth words and communicate to your "observer." And I realized how my eyes wandered around, how it was kind of cool how I kept an awareness of my environment with peripheral vision, how I looked at the people on the street that I passed. And I thought about doing a kind of "tour" of my route, intentionally gazing at little moments of beauty I encountered.
I found myself looking at it with new eyes. It was a mental shift; when imagining that someone else would be sharing my viewpoint, I paid more attention to that viewpoint, noticing the same things with new eyes, and noticing even the way I noticed things!
I recommend the experiment. It's fun, harmless, imaginative, and you might notice things about your everyday routine that you would otherwise overlook.
Random enough for you?