Being detail-oriented is often a highly desired quality to have when it comes to job applications, research, and pretty much everything. But there’s often this notion of getting lost in details in which it may be better to zoom out and look at the big picture, like say, right now. Being stuck at home and having so much time to reflect on your being can lead to a lot of stress because of ruminations over where things are going, what would the best action be at this point, what the possibilities are a chance encounter could lead to, and so on - there’s an endlessness of details that can be followed on these lines and one could keep going on ad infinitum.

But there is really something special about details - it’s so easy to explain anything superficially and draw conclusions that may be completely wrong (unless proven otherwise) - but wrong only up to a certain level of detail. The depth to which one could go into details can actually be visualized in the form of fractals - albeit not in the sense that there always are repeating patterns, but that there isn’t really a stopping point at which details cannot be more detailed.

It’s fascinating to explore things from this perspective - consider the simple Pareto principle, which talks about an 80/20 division of resources in nearly every field out there (of course, it’s not a law but a series of general observations, but it’s considerably noticeable). It’s easy to stop at this level and marvel at these distributions and find innumerable examples from everyday life where they can be seen in action. But going into details about the 80 and 20 further yields another 80/20 distribution within the original 80 and 20 divisions, and another 80/20 distribution within that, only until noise takes over and it’s not possible any further to get reliable signals.

Likewise, even in physical distance measurements - one could go from 1 km to 1 m to 1 cm…until they reach the limit. But this limit is as per our current physical framework - maybe squinting further into its details would upend existing models of the universe, who knows?

These are just some examples of details. It’s easy to get lost in them, but paying attention to details could yield very interesting stories in almost every aspect of being.