An opinion I’ve formed watching people work together is this:
People love to point at things.
Seriously. It’s everywhere.
In a room, it might be a giant 8x4’ whiteboard. Online, it’s the chaos of a shared Figma file. Either way, at some point we’re all staring at the presenter’s marker, their mouse cursor, or their finger in mid-air—like a laser sight guiding our collective attention.
And once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Pointing is everywhere... and it happens all the time!
Instinct
Ask someone for directions—“Where’s the restroom?”—and odds are, their arm is already halfway out before their mouth says, “Down the hall, to the left.” The hand does the punctuation. The bend of the wrist delivers the left turn.
At the store: “Not that one… this one.” You jab a finger, extend your arm, draw a line through the air. Or, if space is tight, you pull out the stealth move: the chin point. A subtle head tilt, a little lip nudge—like your face has turned into a compass.
If it’s on the ground, and you don’t want to crouch, you do the foot point. A little air kick. A soft toe jab toward the target. (My partner and I do this constantly. We look absurd. It works!)
We point with everything—umbrellas, pens, car keys, half-eaten sandwiches. Fingers, chins, toes. Eyes, eyebrows, even whole heads if that’s all we’ve got left. Humans are basically walking laser pointers.
And the funny part? It’s not random flailing. It’s language. It’s shorthand. A tiny gesture that says more than a paragraph ever could: this one, not that one. Here, not there.
Pointing isn’t habit—it’s a flare gun. A spotlight. A way of slicing through the fog so everyone else can see exactly what you see.
Protocol
Some industries have taken pointing to the next level.
In Japan’s rail system, there’s a practice called “pointing and calling”. Conductors don’t just glance at signals or gauges. They make it explicit. They extend an arm, jab a finger at the dial, and shout it out:
“Signal green!” “Doors closed!” “Speed check, 60!”
And they do it even when nobody’s there. Alone in the cab. On an empty platform at 2 a.m. Finger sharp, voice clear, ritual intact.
It looks over the top. A conductor yelling at a light, finger jabbing at nothing. But the truth is, it’s not for show. It’s for safety. In an industry where one slip can ripple into disaster, they don’t leave clarity to chance.
Pointing and calling turns assumptions into certainties. It turns a passing “I think” into an unmistakable “I see.” And in a place where distraction can be dangerous, that clarity is everything.
I’m sure there’s a whole field of neuroscience papers that could explain this—how pointing plus calling flips the right switches in your brain. I haven’t studied it enough to say. What gets me is that an industry as massive as transportation looked at this little human quirk and said: yep, that’s important, let’s make it a rule!
They took something as ordinary as pointing and turned it into standard practice.
Rituals
When I’m driving, I’ll sometimes catch myself pointing a finger left or right a block before I actually need to turn. Not for anyone else—it’s just me in the car. But it’s like I’m rehearsing, a little preview motion for my future steering wheel. A gesture from present-me to remind future-me: don’t miss this.
Same thing when I lock a door. As I pull away from the house or the car, my finger will flick back at the knob or handle—subtle, almost unconscious. It’s not enough to twist the lock; I need to seal it with a point. Gestures as memory stamps.
Hotels are where I go full-on dramatic with it. Before checkout, I run my one-person sweep: starting in the far corner, working my way across the room. I point at every table, every drawer, every ledge, muttering “clear” like I’m on some tactical squad. Laptop? Clear. Charger? Clear. Shoes in the closet? Clear. And finally the door.
No one’s watching. It’s just me, pacing the room, finger stabbing the air like a low-budget air traffic controller. But it works. It’s my own personal version of pointing and calling. A ritual that drags the mental fog of “did I forget something?” into the physical world where I can see it, point at it, clear it.
Meaning
Pointing shows up everywhere—eyebrow flicks, finger jabs, foot taps, cursor wiggles. It’s one of the simplest things humans do, and somehow one of the most powerful. A tiny flick of attention that turns confusion into clarity.
So much of our world—our work, our lives—is really just about getting other people to see what we see. And most of the time, we overcomplicate it. Pointing is the simplest version of that. A flick of attention that says, without words: this, right here.
Humanity’s oldest UX pattern.
And as someone who’s lead people, projects, and teams... I gotta say: most of this leadership, teamwork, prioritization, and planning stuff—it’s just high-stakes pointing.
And maybe that’s why it sticks with me—why it feels worth noticing. Pointing is proof that sometimes the smallest gestures carry the most meaning.
And I suppose... that’s the point.
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P.S. Here’s me at a 2023 offsite, pointing my coworkers toward the next destination. Nobody asked me to—I just felt compelled to provide clarity… while apparently cosplaying as a Las Vegas tour guide.
