I am fond of the English word “Meticulous,” which means showing great attention to detail. Not that I am meticulous in everything I do, but my experience and observation have led me to conclude that the smaller details often make a big difference in life. This may seem intuitive, but most of us overlook the smaller, often insignificant-looking details in our busy days.
There is a fascinating story of Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian physician.1 He was working at the Vienna General Hospital in Austria in 1846. At that time, childbirth was extremely dangerous, with high mortality rates because of puerperal fever (childbed fever). Semmelweis wanted to figure out why so many women in maternity wards were dying from this fever. He started collecting data for childbirth in wards full of doctors and wards full of midwives.
Semmelweis observed that the mortality rate in the maternity ward staffed by doctors and medical students was significantly higher than in the ward staffed by midwives. Although nobody knew the exact reason.
Semmelweis tried to rationalize through all possible (and visible) differences between the two wards but found no success until he noticed a minor difference (at that time). He noted that doctors and medical students often went directly from performing autopsies to delivering babies without washing their hands. He hypothesized that some “cadaverous particles” from the autopsies were being transferred to the mothers during childbirth, causing infections.
So he ordered his medical staff to start cleaning their hands and instruments not just with soap, but with a chlorine solution, especially after performing autopsies. Chlorine, as we know it today, is one of the best disinfectants. Semmelweis knew nothing about germs. He chose chlorine because he thought it would be the best way to get rid of any smell left behind. When he imposed this strictly, childbirth fever fell dramatically.
People ridiculed him for suggesting such a minuscule change. Nobody believed this had a significant impact. However, as we know today, handwashing is one of the most important tools for keeping germs away. That is what human nature is. People believe any significant event requires a visibly big change and in the quest for that, we ignore the tiny-looking details at that point.
If you ask whether smaller details make a big impact on life, most people would probably answer yes. Yet they would not care or not be aware of being meticulous in their own lives. It is a sort of paradox. I would try to break down this paradox using three interconnected concepts.
Humans are Creatures of Habit
Aristotle, around 340 BC, said-
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit,”
If excellence is a habit, mediocrity must also be a habit. A person pursuing excellence spends his/her day, week, month, and year differently than a person pursuing mediocrity.
Nobody is a loser or winner from birth. Most of the time, what we do day in and day out consistently after birth (especially in teenage and adulthood) decides the person we become.
But why are (good) habits so crucial and effective?
Let’s say you want to write a book. It sounds like a monumental task (if you aren’t already writing regularly). If you start writing a page in the beginning, it takes tremendous willpower to sit and write. This happens because when you start a new behavior, your prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for decision-making and problem-solving, becomes highly active. A new behavior would require conscious thought and effort.
But If you manage to sit and write for three or four weeks consistently, your brain will create new neural pathways, a process known as neuroplasticity (think of your brain as plastic that can be molded).2 Over time, writing will become an automated behavior for which you won’t need much willpower (and hopefully you can now complete your book sooner). This shift frees up cognitive resources for other tasks.
This, of course, applies to any new behavior you like to include. If you notice how you picked up bad habits like smoking, drinking alcohol, badmouthing, etc. you find that those behaviors also followed the same pattern as good habits. Unfortunately, the human brain cannot distinguish between good and bad habits.
Habits are resilient and stable in the long term. They are less sensitive to disruptions and can persist even when the initial rewards are no longer present. Therefore, habits can be hard to break as the brain has formed strong, automatic neural pathways that support the behavior.
In a more technical language, there are three distinct and subtle events occur during a habit formation (whether good or bad) known as the cue-routine-reward pathway. A cue is a trigger that initiates a new behavior. A routine is a response to the trigger, and a reward is something that reinforces the behavior (when you smoke even though you like to quit, it is because of dopamine that gets released in the brain as a reward during smoking). I suggest reading this and this book to dig deeper.
It isn’t surprising that people with more good habits (than bad) become significantly better over time than people with more bad habits. The reason why people with well-educated and financially stable family backgrounds have an advantage is because their families would most likely pass on or help develop good habits in their children from an early age.
We Underestimate the Compound Effect
People often credit Albert Einstein with a statement:
“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it. He who doesn’t, pays it”
When we think about compound interest, we tend to think about finance, investment, interest over time, etc. Most people recognize the power of compounding in the financial world as it causes principal to grow exponentially over time.
Advice, like starting investing early and time being key for compounding, is common in the investment world. But what we underestimate is the effect of compounding in personal lives. Apart from making money in the long term, the compound effect can also make life greater in the long term.
Darren Hardy, in his book ‘The Compound Effect‘, stated-
Small choices + consistency + time = significant results
Eating healthy or exercising daily does not seem to make much difference in a day or month, but it makes a big impact after a year. Reading a few pages of books does not make you any smarter in a month or even a year, but doing it for years or decades significantly changes your worldview. Meditation does not bring calmness to your personality in months, but doing it consistently over the years makes you more aware of your temper. Every small behavior/habit seems insignificant initially, but with time, it shapes your character and worldview.
In the 1960s, Stanford researchers conducted a famous study known as the Marshmallow Experiment. During this experiment, researchers brought hundreds of 4- to 5-year-old children into a private room, placing a marshmallow in front of each child. The researchers offered the children a deal: if they resisted eating the marshmallow while the researchers were away, they would receive a second marshmallow. However, if they ate the marshmallow immediately, they would not get a second one.
Only a few children managed to resist their temptation. What was fascinating was when they tracked all those children who resisted their temptation in this experiment and found out to be more successful in most areas of life than children who could not resist the marshmallow temptation.3
Today, many pieces of evidence have shown the power of delayed gratification.4 Delayed gratification allows you to adjust your temptations in the present to achieve greater success in the future. But delayed gratification is hard. It’s hard because often the reason to resist temptations seems unclear. ‘Why should you read or take that class when your friends are partying? Why should you eat healthy foods when more rich and flavorful foods (but not so healthy) are available in abundance?’
As I mentioned, every small behavioral change may seem almost worthless initially, but becomes immensely valuable over the long term because of the compounding effect. Unfortunately, this is often hard to realize. In the financial world, compounding is clear because the goal is to make more money, and everyone understands the concept. However, in our personal lives, not everyone perceives compounding the same way, and the motives for these changes are often unclear or invisible at the start.
Most People are Not Aware of Cognitive Biases
One more prominent reason for overlooking smaller details in life is cognitive biases. In simpler words, cognitive biases are shortcuts to our thinking process. Cognitive biases are the reason we often ignore minor (but crucial) details and focus only on the visible result.
In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, renowned psychologist Daniel Kahneman described two distinct modes of thinking by the human brain- system 1 and system 2. System 1 is fast, automatic, and intuitive. It helps us to make quick decisions based on patterns and experiences. Like when you do chores or any repetitive tasks. Whereas, system 2 is more analytical, conscious, and slow. This allows us to think deliberately in more complex problem-solving. Like when you study or solve a puzzle.
The problem occurs when we mix up systems 1 and 2 modes in the wrong places. Especially, when we use system 1, when we should use system 2 mode of thinking. This happens as most of us today suffer from information overload. From smartphones to social media to short reels, everything has made this overload worse.
Human brains have a limited capacity for processing information. Cognitive biases act as a filtering mechanism to manage this overload, and this can cause smaller but important details to be overlooked.
In my experience, almost 99% of people around you (that includes you and me) suffer from some cognitive bias. Consider this: our society expects people to hold some cognitive biases (because of societal structure), but overcoming cognitive biases demands effort and clear thinking. All corporations are well aware of this and exploit these biases to make more money.
There is a reason many people are crazy about new iPhones, even though there is almost no upgrade from its previous version. Almost every big company exploits the fallacies in human thinking, so instead of thinking via system 2 while purchasing, we use system 1.
It is not only limited to our purchasing decisions, when we make important life decisions like what to study, where to study, which job to take, which place to live, which person to marry, etc, cognitive biases cloud our thinking and we ignore the smaller (but important in the long term) details.
Thus, to overcome, or at least minimize these biases, we must read and talk about them. The more we discuss and reflect on them while making decisions, the better our judgment will be. Here is a list of common cognitive biases.
You have probably met people who start with similar backgrounds and abilities, but later in life, their success varies greatly. I have seen friends who were just as talented and hard-working as I was in college or university, yet not all of them achieved what I expected. I often wondered what could be the reasons. Some people believe luck has a huge role in life. But in a separate article, I argued you can increase your luck.
I believe it is essential to be talented and hard-working to become successful in any endeavor of life. However, what gives you a truly competitive edge is how meticulous you are. If you consistently do small positive actions over the long term, you become charismatic in a way no one can copy.
