When doing tours of job shops, I carefully observe how employees spend time obsessing over every detail of the parts they’re inspecting before they’re sent to shipping.
Manufacturers use various digital and analog tools, including their eyes, to measure and confirm tolerances and ensure zero defects. In short, they pay attention to the smallest detail.
While in college making sails for sailboats, the new production manager asked me to come to his office. “I wanted to commend you for doing a good job,” he said.
“I’ve been watching you for several days; you always take the time to do something the right way, such as returning tools to a work area, and cleaning up once you finish something. You pay attention to detail.”
I’m not sure where my attention-to-detail comes from, but it has served me well. It has its negative side, however, such as when I see the lack of it on websites.
For example, I found this configuration of three boxes on a SaaS website. If you don’t have a background in design or coding, your eyes would simply skim over the these boxes and not notice the misalignment.
One reason the boxes don’t line up may be due to the designer using a website builder plugin. Because they’re so bloated with features and code, builder plugins take a lot of time and expertise to ensure everything is coded properly.
Or, it could be the designer was lazy and didn’t care, or he/she didn’t have the experience to ensure alignment, proper padding, etc.
Our designer, Rachel Cunliffe, redid the boxes to demonstrate proper alignment. Notice how the titles and text are aligned and centered; “padding” is the space between the text and sides of each box.
She also rounded the corners of the buttons and removed the arrows to eliminate clutter.
Can you see the difference? Here’s the full image to make it easier.
What I immediately noticed is how “calm” the “After” boxes looked. Another person said, “The bottom row is more visually appealing and less aggressive.” (Interesting word choice!)
Now you understand why, like you and your parts, we obsess over details like this — and why our Custom Build Websites don’t have the frenetic look and feel you see everywhere online today.
It’s also why we use the built-in WordPress Gutenberg editor versus a builder plugin. Our developer, Stephen Merriman, takes the time to properly format each block used in a client’s custom website theme.
The end result: If you decide you want a new page with a row of boxes, you add the block, (which Stephen created) and the boxes appear on the page perfectly formatted. All you add is text.
Filed Under: Our Thinking
Rocky Update
“We create ourselves by how we invest the energy of our attention,” someone wrote. It comes to mind whenever I walk Rocky.
He’s two and half years old now. Walking with him is such a joy. We’re totally in-sync with one another. I love when he looks at me, touches his nose to my hand, and then grins — as if to say, “Isn’t this awesome? We’re walking. It’s a beautiful day. I’m happy, you’re happy. I feel great! Yay!”
It wasn’t always this way. Re-reading my journal, I was full of anxiety and exhausted. At one point, I was ready to give up — he was simply too much dog for me.
The walking without pulling took FOREVER to master. I would run errands, and because we’re a small town, people would see us on the road — and I’d see them at stores. “I see he’s still pulling you,” commented one woman. Me: 🤯
But, I stuck with it. My trainer sent me this quote from George Leonard, author of Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment:
“. . . many people give up because change happens so slowly, it can’t be measured daily, weekly, or even monthly. But at some point, for those who stick with it, ‘suddenly,’ they can do things they couldn’t do before.”
I’m happy to say, Rocky and I have achieved mastery. A woman I know who also loves GSDs saw us the other day and said, “Aren’t you glad you stuck with it? You now have a beautiful, well-trained dog.”
