Pay Attention to the Details by Harrison Barnes

One of the most important things you can do in your career, business, and life is pay attention to details. With very few exceptions, the most successful people I have met always have an extraordinary ability to pay attention to even the smallest details. In fact, the more you examine successful people, the more it becomes clear that they are often obsessed and incredibly knowledgeable about details.

​In my house, shows like The Hills and so forth are on all the time. (A quick aside: I was at a party a few years ago where I had to sign a bunch of releases because the back of my head was apparently on camera when they were taping the show.) A lot of the good-looking young people on these shows are very, very successful. Watching them, though, it is hard to understand why they are so successful, because none of them seem all that intelligent. In fact, the shows are often comical because the kids seem so concerned about surface-level sorts of things. If you tried to speak with any of these kids about anything mildly intellectual, it seems as if their eyes would glaze over and they probably would not be too interested in whatever you were talking about. When I first started meeting successful Hollywood types years ago, I was baffled. Most of them did not seem all that intelligent, and they seemed mostly preoccupied with superficial things that seemed relatively unimportant to me. Frankly, I did not understand how these people could be doing so well.

Read More