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If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room. — Anita Roddick
Sometimes we might ask ourselves, “What good would that do? I’m a nobody.” However, it’s amazing what one small thing can do.
For example, yelling “loser!” to someone with low self-esteem. It’s one word that cuts very deep. Smiling at someone who’s had the worst day ever can lift them up high as the sky.
You never know how much impact something tiny can have.
Every experience, whether big or small, helps us grow. But the experiences that help people grow the most have a profound impact on our lives. These experiences are like a chapter in a book or a phase change like transforming from a caterpillar to a butterfly. Looking at myself and my friends, I would say three life experiences help us grow the most.
A job is a role you take on. In comparison, a career is a long-term commitment based on your experiences and education. You develop skills that define your life goals and lifestyle.
A career takes commitment, such as courses for a certification or a degree; or long-term, on-the-job training. You learn skills that will shape and impact your life for years and even decades. A defines you: you tell people, “I’m a (occupation).”
You hang out with people with backgrounds, training, and education similar to yours. If you’re a teacher, you’ll meet others in education. If you’re a business owner, you’ll meet others who run businesses, or people selling products or services in the same industry.
A career impacts your income and your lifestyle. As a lawyer, you may work long hours and own an expensive house. As an accounts manager for a small company, you may make a modest income, enough to get an apartment and take the vacations you like.
For some who want to get into management with years of work experience and promotion, you’ll learn leadership skills and how to communicate and inspire others.
Another experience that helps people grow is marriage. You’re working through everyday situations with your life partner. This person sees you every day and knows personal aspects of your life–what you eat, how you sleep, your income, your spending habits, your grooming habits, your routines. Unlike your family, who has observed many of the same things, you didn’t make the rules. Your parents did and you had to obey the rules to live with them.
With marriage, you and your spouse jointly decide where to live–which city, which home, how to spend your money, and where to go for vacation. You share and divide responsibilities. If one person in the relationship is not content, there is an imbalance, and you need to communicate to work things out for the relationship to be healthy again.
This person impacts your mental and emotional health. You need to learn to communicate your needs and work out your struggles. You also need to work together. When you choose your spouse, you also choose their friends and family. You need to learn to compromise. Your communication skills are crucial.
Another experience that helps people grow is parenthood. You’re the role model, setting an example for your child. Your priorities shift and you become your child’s protector because the child comes first. For example, you take sick days from work when your child is sick but you continue to work when you yourself are sick, instead of taking a day off.
You save and spend money on vacations with your child. You spend money on the child’s interests, such as hobbies, sports, and toys. It’s a shift in identity and priority.
You better appreciate what your parents went through when they became parents. You have a new awareness of what’s good and what’s bad–you’re suddenly aware that shows and movies you used to enjoy have bad language and inappropriate violence.
As a role model, you watch your language and your words. If you’re tired, you want to ensure that you don’t say something to your child that could cause long-term damage. Your child takes cues from you on how to speak and how to behave.
Working on your career, getting married, and having children are three experiences in life that help a person to grow. Not everyone gets married or has children, and they will still experience growth. But I think these three types of experiences definitely have a significant impact on a person’s life.
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Remember how satisfying it was to solve a mystery just by replaying the details in your mind? Where are your missing keys? Did your sweetheart lie to you? Where did you see that statistic that you could use in your report? Paying attention to details has many benefits.
Being detail-oriented is a valuable workplace skill: Detectives analyze clues to solve a case. Medical professionals keep a close eye on details so patients get the correct dose of medication. Accountants check their numbers: a payment of $100,000 and a payment of $1,000,000 is just the difference of one zero, with very different results.
From these examples, it’s clear that paying attention to detail is a vital skill to emphasize in resumes and skills assessments. Detail-oriented people have more workplace autonomy because employers can trust them to keep a business’s reputation.
Attention to detail, or being detail-oriented, is valuable in the workplace. There are several ways to sharpen or improve your attention to detail skills.
If you are detail oriented, you are thorough, observant, and notice small details. For example, your coworker schedules a meeting for Monday, March 6th. You check the calendar and notice that March 6 is a Sunday, so you ask your coworker to update the meeting information.
Precision is an important skill for any job, but small errors can have minor to major consequences depending on the job.
Book editors fix mistakes such as incorrect page references. Not catching this error can result in a minor inconvenience for the reader. An incorrectly typed line of computer code can result in the program not working for the user. A mistake on an invoice could mean an incorrect payment. Marking the left leg and not the right leg for surgery can have disastrous consequences.
An employer trusts that a worker with close attention to detail will be accurate and careful, and not likely to make mistakes. That worker won’t need to be constantly monitored, and their work checked and rechecked.
Detailed-oriented people work effectively and accurately on each task. Their meticulousness will save the company embarrassment from careless errors that may harm its reputation or finances.
People list “attention to detail” as a skill on their resume or describe themselves as detail oriented during interviews. However, unlike other skills such as reading, writing, listening, and speaking, attention to detail is rarely tested as part of the interview process.
Attention to detail, as mentioned already, affects a worker’s independence. A thorough and accurate worker is more likely to be given additional responsibility and more likely to be promoted. Employers trust that a detail oriented employee is careful to do each task correctly the first time.
Paying attention to detail also has social impacts at work. This skill improves customer and coworker relationships. A coworker who remembers the name of your kids, asks about the restaurant you decided to check out on Saturday, or wonders if your sprained ankle has improved is someone you’re more likely to remember and like.
Similarly, the ability to remember small details improves customer relations and increases the likelihood of getting the customer’s business. Customers like to be remembered. It’s a great feeling, for example, to walk into a business and say you’ll get “the usual” and the staff knows exactly what you’re looking for.
Those who are highly detail oriented are more likely to be in supervisory positions or have jobs with independence. These workers have shown that they are conscientious when doing their work. They can be trusted to check other people’s work and manage projects to complete them correctly and on time.
Attention to detail can help you get a high-paying career, particularly for jobs in which accuracy and human lives are at stake. Here are some jobs in which attention to detail is extremely crucial:
The income range for some of these detail oriented jobs ranges from $70,000 to $187,000 (averaged income for each career). If you thrive on the details, there are jobs in which your sharp focus is highly valued.
Like any skill, you can improve attention to detail over time, starting with short exercises and repeated habits.
Fun exercises you can try at home to improve your attention to detail skills include:
While at work, create habits that encourage you to become detail oriented:
Attention to detail is a valuable skill. People who are detail-oriented are trusted with more responsibilities on the job because they complete tasks accurately and thoroughly. A careless mistake can cost a company their reputation and a person their job. Careers in which attention to detail can mean life or death are lucrative. You can become more detail-oriented by creating habits at work that focus your attention on details.
How detail-oriented are you? The next time you enter a room, take a look around for a few minutes, then close your eyes and try to remember as many details about the room as you can!
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The other day, I had Korean food. Asian food doesn’t usually have cheese, but in North America, they have cheese in their food options. For example, Japanese sushi has a cream cheese roll, which has cream cheese in it. This ingredient is not typical for Asian cuisine. Many Asians are lactose intolerant, so cheese products aren’t popular.
I tried a Korean special platter that had rice, green onion, egg, bulgogi, corn, and melted cheese in separate sections on a metal pan that was heated by elements on the table. The platter was enough to share for three people. The cheese is unusual for Asian cuisine. The melted texture reminded me of pizza.
The AAA beef “box sushi” (for lack of a better word) reminded me of Japanese cuisine. However, the Korean version had a slightly different flavor than the Japanese one. It was my first time trying out both dishes, but I liked them.
To me, these dishes were a great example of how cuisines from around the world and cuisines from different cultures blend together to create something tasty.
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I open the door and there is a woman in my closet. She raises a finger to her lips to signal me, “Hush,” as my mouth opens in a silent scream.
“Your mom doesn’t know I’m here, Cassie,” she says as she steps out of the closet. “You won’t get in trouble.” Her eyes pan briefly to my desk. “It’s the night before the big test. Oh, you hated that class so much. You’ll be punished for getting a stupid B+ in that class. What a tragedy. The only class where you don’t get an A.”
“Who are you?” I ask in a voice one notch above a whisper.
“I am Cassie Chen,” says the woman.
I stare at her in confusion. “But I’m Cassie.”
“It won’t always be this bad,” she says. “You’ll finish high school, move out, get a job, and have a fabulous career. You won’t be a doctor or lawyer, though. Ha! Do what you love, not what your mom wants you to be.”
“My mom will stop calling me a failure? She’ll be proud of me?”
“Oh no,” the woman says nonchalantly. “She’s not going to change. But you will. You’ll get out of here. This life-“ she waves her arm to encompass the bedroom that is my prison – “won’t last forever.” She grabs my hand and sits us down on the bed.
“You’re married?” I ask. Her rings sparkled when she waved her hand. She looks like she’s thirty. Beautiful makeup, earrings, and necklace. Stuff I’m not allowed to wear. I see her for the first time. She does look like me. But older.
“I’m forty,” she says. “We have a nice house and a good career. Mom doesn’t approve. Of course, but she can’t do much now. That’s not what I came here to tell you. I came here to say that I believe in you. You’re smart and talented and–”
I burst into tears. No one has ever said that before.
“I know, I know,” the woman says, and hugs me. “I need to go now. Mom is coming.”
“Am I going to see you again?”
“Of course. One day you’ll look in the mirror and you’ll see me. You’ll make it through this.” She returns to the closet. “Gotta go back to my own time. Remember I love you.” She blows me a kiss and shuts the door.
I hear footsteps coming down the hallway, but I rush to the closet and open it. My future self is gone but I can’t stop smiling.
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