Is Attention To Detail Your Competitive Edge?
We are moving so fast we aren’t noticing the cracks forming under their feet.
Projects are launching half-baked. Content is flooding inboxes. On the surface, this all looks like momentum. Underneath, however, the cost of missed details starts compounding, having very real impacts via errors, rework, and reputational hits. What looks like “speed” today becomes tomorrow’s mess.
The problem isn’t that we’re not doing enough. It’s that we’re doing too much, too fast, with too little care.
The Psychology of “More, Faster”
Our brains aren’t wired for this volume.
Cognitive load theory shows humans can only juggle a limited amount of new information before performance collapses (Sweller, 1988).
Stanford research on multitasking found heavy multitaskers are actually worse at switching tasks and filtering distractions than people who focus (Stanford, 2009).
University of California research on attention span shows the average person now pays attention to a single screen for only about 47 seconds, compared to ~2.5 minutes in earlier eras (University of California, 2024).
Pile on AI and automation, and the problem only accelerates. We start trusting machine outputs without scrutiny, diving further into a bias called automation bias (Parasuraman & Riley, 1997). That’s how small errors slip through and snowball into expensive failures and it dates all the way back before the turn of the century … what’s old is, sadly, new, again.
The New Scarcity: Quality
The irony of the AI era is this: as output explodes, quality collapses.
Which means the rarest thing in the market is no longer speed. It’s precision. It’s trust.
Consumers and businesses are already reflecting this shift:
Edelman’s Trust Barometer reports people reward brands they believe are consistent and reliable over those that just move fast (Edelman Trust Barometer 2024).
McKinsey’s 2024 survey found that while 75% of companies adopted AI since 2020, only 23% reported actual quality improvements, most cite inconsistency and rework (McKinsey, 2024)
And while younger generations (Gen Z, Millennials) value flexibility and digital-first experiences, they are fierce judges of quality. A brand that feels careless or sloppy loses them instantly (Deloitte Global Gen Z & Millennial Survey 2024).
In other words: the market is drowning in “good enough.” What people will pay for, what they will return for, is what’s done exceptionally well.
Doing Less, Better
This isn’t a call to abandon progress. It’s a call to cut ruthlessly. Do fewer things, but with deeper attention.
Because in a world where AI can generate 10,000 words in a blink, the human edge won’t be speed—it will be the judgment to know what matters, and the craft to deliver it without compromise.
The companies, teams, and individuals who thrive won’t be the ones producing more. They’ll be the ones whose work people actually trust, remember, and return to.
So here’s the challenge: What could you strip away this week, so the work you do actually lasts?
My First Step
For me, it’s meetings. Specifically, meetings without a clear agenda and defined outcomes. They’re speed disguised as progress. By stripping them away, I’m freeing time and focus to do fewer things, but with the depth and quality that actually move the needle.
