Attention to Importance Supersedes Details

Attention to details is great.

But everything has details, including impertinent and unimportant matters. So, although paying attention to details is nice, paying attention to the wrong details is wasted.

In some debates about intellect, there’s a theory that what we often call IQ (which has many different measures) is, in fact, a skill at rapidly ignoring unimportant details. The more one can develop a skill at ignoring and paying NO attention to impertinent and unimportant details, the more they tend to rank higher on IQ and score higher on standardized tests. In fact, standardized tests work hard to create “distractors,” well-crafted answers that are dead wrong but APPEAR to be right. Higher “intellect” people recognize distractors faster, or more accurately, they quickly turn the mind from focusing on distractors at all.

I see this in the battle for fitness and wellness. People have room to develop a skill where they ignore inconsequential details. There are many factors which will improve our health. And being a “details-oriented” person can actually mean that you are burning up precious energy on distractors instead of the very factors which will improve your life.

​Pay attention, but not to every detail. Because many of those haven’t anything to offer you for improvement in being stronger, more active, or healthier.