Just the other day, a friend of mine said to me “Alvin, you don’t sound curious enough for a technical guy”. That made wonder, maybe what he said is right…partially right. I am not curious enough for everything. I don’t like details on some stuff that I have no interest on, or to put it bluntly, stuff which I have no use of.

There are times when I feel that we tend to focus (or want to focus) on the details of all the things in the world. It’s not bad, but it’s not too good either especially if you are someone who cannot concentrate on something 100% for a longer period of time. Remember focusing on detail A for few hours, before turning to detail B. That can be pretty unhealthy since you might end up getting nothing done. Furthermore, by focusing on so much details, it might actually take your time and attention away from the details which really matter.

My advice is, leave the details to the experts – the reviewers, writers, mechanics, electricians, etc. You don’t have to focus on everything – we’re in the Information age, remember? Focus on the details which you are interested in – the details which seem interesting and MEANINGFUL to you. Improve your expertise on it and find out whatever information you can lay your hands on. And cut down on the time spent on things which don’t really matter to you (it’s good to know how to fix the pipe, but do you it’s necessary to drill down to the materials used, or how the pipe works, etc?).

Remember, it’s not wrong to know everything but due to the fact that each of us only have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year (let me know if you have more than that), there is only so much details that we can focus on. You can always go back to those not-so-meaningful details once you have plenty of free time to spare.

p/s…. businesses are doing the same too. That’s why we have all types of business outsourcing models nowadays – finance, human resource, cleaning, etc. People prefer to focus on the details of the things which matter to them because it’s just too expensive to focus on every single detail.