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This is called the Tetris effect. If you play tetris enough, you'll start seeing tetris connections everywhere. Your brain starts to interpret everything as "possibly tetris", a sort of apophenic filter on your worldview. I think this is pretty common! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_ef

I've noticed for a long time, whenever I see something unusual, I think "would this make a good teaching example?" More recently, whenever I see an unusual word, I think "would this make a good AI Art Machine prompt?" (Incidentally, here's what it makes for "math pareidolia")

Similarly, I have a math filter. Whenever I see a new problem, I immediately think "is this somehow connected to a topic in math?" And then I check. The more math you know, the more likely you are to find some connection. So you use more math, and so look for more connections.

Here's the problem: I don't know how to develop math pareidolia. I don't know how I developed it myself. Possible from using it so often? But that's a catch-22: how did I use it so often if I wasn't already looking for connections?

I do have math and physics degrees, but neither of those really teach you to see connections between the world and math, they both use math in this super isolated, academic way. Yes, even physics. Physics is super weird about its math.

It might be something if you could develop as a process, maybe by consciously looking for math connections in everything. You won't find many at first, but over time it'll get easier I dunno though, that sounds like it'd be really demoralizing

That's why I only have terrible advice. Math pareidolia is absolutely foundational to extracting math from business domains, and I have no idea how to teach, train, or communicate it. It's like a whole 'nother worldview, man.