There’s a quote I want to start with that is from one of my favorite movies.
Words will always retain their power. Words are the means to meaning, and for those who listen, the enunciation of truth..
V for Vendetta
Words are important, the words used are even more important, and the words that are not used are most important. I’ve always believed this, learned out of a necessity to be good at what I do, the details matter. A lot of people don’t like the details, because they can be cumbersome, but I want to tell you emphatically that details are the most important thing to pay attention to in life. I’m not saying you have to obsess about them, which is also something I don’t believe, but when it comes to crucial matters, the details are a necessity.
I’m not an expert on everything, but I am an expert on music, specifically music theory and some instruments. When I first started playing guitar when I was 12 years old I had no idea there was so much you could know about something you love doing. I decided early on that I didn’t want to play one genre of music. When I made that decision it was because I wanted to learn more difficult music, you can only go so far playing solely punk rock barre chords, which are called power chords. Having been in band and seeing why the details mattered, I adopted this philosophy becoming a musician. There are certain ways that I practice now because I want to make sure that I’m not only playing the part correctly, but I’m also playing it cleanly. Why? Because if you go to record said part and you haven’t done this it sounds like garbage and no one likes garbage music.
This post would be amiss if I didn’t mention social media as a way to illustrate how details in communication get lost in the translation. I recognize that there are purposes for it that are good, but I think as we’ll see, communication is hard pressed to find on any social media platform and here’s why. There’s studies that talk about some of the dangers of social media, but I want to take the angle of communication. It’s easy to forget that the person you’re talking to is a real person, because you’re communicating through a screen. When you’re communicating through a screen and only reading text, you’re missing a 70-93% nonverbal communication that we mostly communicate with. Think about that for a second and then think about how many issues are discussed online where communication is essentially handicapped and shielded from any real consequence. I don’t understand how we’ll be able to solve any issues to be frank since it seems communication is moving more and more to moving over a wire. Also, one thing that’s missed when communicating online is, you guessed it, the details! To expect to discuss a nuanced subject in 280 characters in one twitter post. On top of this responses are censored at the behest of the technical oligarchy. When first studying communication, the details matter. When I started to run training calls for the entire country when I was a Customer Service Analyst(CSA) and Business Analyst(BA) that the details matter and they matter a lot. The details definitely mattered when rolling out a new process that has a huge effect on the company’s P/L(Profit/Loss). So when I would go to write my presentations in PowerPoint I made sure that all the details are covered. This is actually reminiscent of the Agile approach to project managing. The idea is to reduce the amount of errors that will occur to about zero so that when the software rolls out it’s ready for implementation. I’ve endeavored to apply this approach to my day to day life after seeing how successful it is, specifically personal development. There’s a quote that embodies the idea of knowing yourself. If there is one thing I’d like you to take and run with from this post, it’s that. Knowing yourself is key. But, I digress. When communicating with the CSAs across the country, I made sure that when I covered material, a lot of the questions were already answered. There’s a myriad of reasons I did this, one being I didn’t want to be on the phone for more then the time was allotted. When I did this, I really feel that it set up those I trained up for success when they would in turn go and follow this process. How did I do this? Paying attention to the details. When my director or supervisor would tell me a new process that would be rolling out, I made sure to ask detailed questions so that I would be able to cover the process to the full. I believe in setting people up for success and that requires paying attention to the details.
So why this post? I wanted to write this post as a way to introduce the new name and the purpose behind this blog. It’s important to have a purpose for why you’re doing what you’re doing. I want this to be a place where I can discuss the details of life, specifically things that I’m passionate about. I want to tho lean into the things that I’m a subject matter expert(SME), however, which will be seen in the post on this blog that follow. When you write it should bleed and there should be a heartbeat behind the words, or text in this case, being read.
I want to end by thanking all who have followed and have supported me, I feel very blessed with the people I have in my corner and I’m human and make 100’s of mistakes a day and know they will stand with me through thick and thin. Thanks for reading and I look forward to writing more posts in the days to come!
Peter
The Details 