Lack of attention strikes again
Once again I’m reminded of the importance of paying attention to details, both financial and otherwise. While in some ways I’m very into details, they’re not the kinds of details that other people typically pay attention to or that might be important financially.
For example, recently I didn’t notice that someone hadn’t prepaid for an order like usual until they reminded me (which could have meant a loss of hundreds of dollars). Or I might not remember the exact price of something, and if I’m not somewhere that I could easily look it up I may misquote it. (And it never fails that the misquotes are always in the customer’s favor.) I want to improve in this area, but I’m not sure how to focus on the right kinds of details. Anyone have any suggestions? Prioritizing maybe?
January 15th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
The way I do this is by keeping a small notebook and a pen in my pocket whenever I can. Whenever I need to jot down anything (from a price to a blog idea to a word I don’t know), I just whip out the notebook and jot it down. Later, I go through the latest entries in the notebook and do what I need to with each little piece of information. It really works, though it takes a bit of getting used to; now, I’ll even do this mid-conversation (people are often complimented by this when I say, “Hold on, that’s really interesting, let me write that down so I can think about it later” and I produce a notebook).