Attention to Detail – Inspired by ‘Umar Ibn Al Khattāb رضي الله عنه

Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato Bismillah al Rahman al Rahim al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil alameen wa Salatu was Salam ala nabina Muhammad wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa sallam. So for today's episode we're going to be talking about attention to detail and why this trait is considered in today's time in today's age, akin to a superpower. I'd like to base this entire discussion upon a very famous Hadith a famous narration of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. It is an authentic one. It is recorded in the book of Imam Muslim Rahim Allah. And we have a famous Companion of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam he is considered from the creme de la creme, the best of the

best of the companions of the Prophet sallahu wa sallam, Omar Abdullah Hata De La Hoya and Omar al farrokh are the Allah one, he is the narrator of the Hadith and he goes on to a very beautifully described this this powerful incident that took place in the midst of the Prophet sallallahu alaihe when he was selling them, so in the Hadith, obviously, due to the brevity of time and given that this episode is short, I mean, there's there's so many lessons to deduce from this Hadith, but I'm going to be touching on a few important points related to the title of this video. So remember the last one he states I know I'm not I'm not the only one who, Paul Benjamin Agnew are in the

Rasulullah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam at that young he told Elena Roger don't shady do by other Thea. shady do Sawa de Sha euro Allah here Ethel suffer while IRF woman had had the jealous ala Nabi sallallahu alayhi wa and he was

so I'm what are the longer you says Meena? Maharaja Lucia industrialize Allah Allah Islam that the young one fine day, so I'm going to be translating it in an easy way. So the narration goes along the lines of these words just to give you an idea or an understanding of the, of how or what happened basically. So one fine day we were seated with the Messenger of Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam is Talia la now rajadamnern Shadi Dubai Odyssey app, when suddenly a man emerges a man wearing sparkling white clouds sparkling white clouds. Okay. Now once you want to focus keep going back to the title of this episode, right? And you'll understand why we're basing this discussion on

this powerful Hadith shado by Adi Thea shado sawadee Shire and he had jet black hair. Now euro Allah He has to suffer and no signs of journey could be seen on him. While I agree for him in the head and none of us knew this individual had their jealousy. Elan Nabi sallallahu, alayhi wa sallam. So this man now he comes, the gathering had already formed we were all seated with the Messenger of Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. What did this man do this man who is wearing sparkling white clothes, he has jet black hair, no signs of fatigue or journey could be seen on him and none of us knew him. had that jealousy ala Nabi sallallahu alayhi wa sallam he goes and sits by the prophet sallallahu

alayhi wa sallam, we are going to now unpack this in more detail in just a bit in sha Allah but I want to gloss over this initial bit. And then he goes on to say for us now the Rupa tehila route, but a Baba cafe, I love the way he sets in an intriguing manner. He sits in such a way where his knees are touching the knees of the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasallam and he places his hands now on his ties.

He's sitting so closely, so intimately with the Messenger of Allah sallallahu alayhi wasallam. And now

the dialogue begins, this conversation ensues between him and the Messenger of Allah sallallahu alayhi wa sallam where he says, Yeah, Mohammed, Mohammed sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, Bernie handle Islam, tell me about Islam and then the Prophet response. And then he asks him about a man the Prophet responds, then he asks him about sun, and the Prophet response. And then he asks the Prophet salallahu, alayhi wasallam, about Doomsday, the prophet responds. And then he asks the prophets Allah Allah Islam about the signs related to your multi Amma, the day of judgment and the Prophet responds, and then the man gets up and he leaves. Now the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam This

is towards the end of the Hadith we find out the Prophet he asks Omar the Allah one year Omar, the narrator of the Hadith, a 30 man is ill do you know who the questioner was, to, which are the Allahu anhu he responds to Allah who are us will who Allah, Allah and His Messenger know best. Now the Prophet sallallahu sallam, he

clarify

He sheds light. Amazing. He responds who would you bring? a taco Alamo container.

He was gibreel who came to teach you your day?

To teach you yeah Omar, your dean to teach the Sahaba they did and by extension to eat to teach each and every one of us the aroma of Muhammad sallallahu alayhi wa sallam our Deen why because until today 1400

odd years have passed and we are discussing the Hadith and we are extracting beautiful lessons from this hadith May Allah open doors of beneficial knowledge for all of us, I mean, so now, now that we have come, you know, to the end of the Hadith we find out that Oh, okay. This is no ordinary individual. This is gibreel who came to the Messenger of Allah in the guise of a human being.

Now I want you all to put yourselves My dear brothers and sisters in the shoes of Homer Malhotra De La Hoya. These individuals My dear brothers and sisters, these were the companions of the Prophet sallallahu Sallam these were the real students of knowledge. Look at the attention to detail look at how much of detail

here are the Allah one has captured in the Hadith to the extent where he observes so carefully what this man was wearing, how his hair was the fact that no signs of journey could be seen on him

today and I think before we get into attention to detail, we need to talk about human attention span

You know, there are articles you can Google it, there was a study conducted by Microsoft.

Now this study and the findings of this study have been debated as in in terms of the authenticity and in terms of how the trial was actually conducted and whatnot. But in terms of the stats that were released by

certain

news outlets, if you will,

in summary, these articles state that the the average human being now and this was I think, in the year 2002 1015 or 16, perhaps now we had 2021

so the average human being now has an attention span of eight

you might be thinking minutes, eight seconds

and then the article goes on to state that this is a sharp decrease from the average attention span of 12 seconds in the year 2000. And all of this says times thanks to technology, a number of other things as well. Now like I said, the numbers are debated right.

the authenticity of the article is debated as well but nonetheless, let's leave all these very specific numbers aside would you not agree? And would you not relate to the fact that today you see that our attention spans are decreasing there's no doubt about it. If you look at how we consume media and how these social media platforms are being engineered now look at something like you know if you take Instagram initially it used to have options or rather you start off with this platform YouTube you have long videos but then people you know that they were if you were to look at analytics you would see that people are you know they would go into a video and just keep switching

you know from video to video and then from YouTube you you take something like Instagram the the time

in terms of the duration of videos, you have like a video that lasts for about a minute and from there it evolved into stories where it's just 30 seconds. And now you have let's say you know, platforms like Tick Tock and perhaps other platforms that focus on just, I don't know, maybe 10 seconds, 15 seconds, and we keep swiping, swiping, swiping, you know consuming so much of media, you know just glossing over there is not much attention paid to the details, this this overload of information, and our brains are struggling to deal with this much of information that's out there. You see today.

Interestingly, being knowledgeable

is not necessarily considered

you know, something almost like a superpower or rather something that is high in demand.

Why because there's so much of access to information right in in a matter of a few taps, you can access information, which is not the case in the past. And that's why there was so much of demand for knowledgeable individuals in the past.

Now today because of this, this boombod

have information and access to so much of information. Now you need attention to detail to be able to sift through all of the information to ensure that you know you, you arrive at the right type of information, the right pieces of, of

information.

And when talking about attention to detail, now, you understand why it's so important.

Let's take the leader of an organization,

let's take the leader of a company, the leader of a business, the leader of a team.

Just imagine if you had to present a presentation, you and your team had to present a report or a presentation.

And if there was not going to be attention to detail, what's going to happen, you're basically going to have mistakes in the report mistakes in the presentation, perhaps spelling mistakes, maybe you get the slides all mixed up.

So when you fail to pay attention to the details of an important task

that you're supposed to deliver, now it's going to contain mistakes. And it's going to look like you have not reviewed your work before it goes out into the world. And what kind of a message do you think you're sending out,

you're sending out a message that you are disorganized, your team is disorganized and you rush with regards to your work,

you send out a message that you actually hope that people will look past the issues, look past the mistakes, and will spend time trying to understand the core contents of your presentation or your report, you also send out a message that you think that people won't notice. And you're also Sending out a message that you and your team are not capable of producing high quality work.

So as you can see, attention to detail really, really matters.

If you look at the benefits when it comes to high attention to detail

for a person who has this trait, and and for those of you who are thinking, Oh, you know what, that's something that I really struggle with. And I've got issues with that, well, it's not all gloom and doom, I'm going to be sharing a few techniques and just a bit in Sharla, to improve to ramp up the levels of your attention to detail in the light dialer.

In terms of the benefits benefit, number one is that you're going to consistently produce high quality work,

you're going to consistently produce high quality work wherever you apply attention to detail, so long as you don't go overboard with it. Now there are there are negatives to it as well, when you let it consume you. And when you turn it against you in a negative way. That's when you become you know, obsessed, that develops into an OCD, if you will.

perfectionism where you're, you know, constantly striving for this the standard, that you yourself know, you're not going to be able to achieve that standard of perfection. So healthy balances need to be maintained. But nonetheless, when you when you,

you know, Hone this skill, this trait. And when you apply it in the right way, you're now going to be able to produce consistent high quality work. And on top of that, you're going to be efficient, why your work, does not have to In other words, you don't have to return to your work to fix mistakes. Because if you're going to gloss over and not pay attention to the details, you're going to put it out and then you'll have to come back to it. Let's say you publish a report and now there are mistakes that need to be rectified. It's going to come back. Let's say you're designing a car, if you put out the car,

if you start producing it, put it out to the market. And now once let's say I don't know, maybe 100,000 people have purchased cars and they're driving it around and doing whatnot. And you now realize, Oh, it's pointed out someone finds out and says that you know what, there is this massive flaw that you overlooked.

Now, what do you have to do? You have to recall all those units to rectify the issue. It's cumbersome, it's costly.

That's why a lot of these companies, car companies, tech companies, they actually spend a lot of time Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, at certain junctures, certain mistakes do happen, but nonetheless, they spend a lot of time

ensuring that they pay as much attention as possible to detail to ensure that these mistakes don't happen. They learn from their mistakes and they pay a lot of attention to detail.

Another benefit is that you are now deemed trustworthy. Why? Because now when a when a task is given to you

this, this task

would rally need a second set of eyes going through it.

So you start to build a reputation for yourself that you know what, this individual high attention to detail you give him or her something to do. Or you don't need to follow up on it that individuals work his or her work, another set of eyes need not go over the work, why? Because high attention to detail, you start building this very valuable reputation for yourself. And it's a very rare skill set these days, my dear brothers and sisters, a very rare skill set, you as an employer, you as a leader, you would value it in a team member of yours, you would value it in an employee of yours.

So it's very important that we highlight the importance of this. And interestingly, when you look into the lives of the companions of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wasallam. You see it Subhan Allah, you see it in the life of a book and acidic of the Allah one. You see it in the life of our Omar Abdullah ha Pablo de la Juan, you see it in the life of Abu huraira de la one.

You see it in the way they have narrated these narrations. Because if you look at this Hadith, for example, one of the one who could have omitted all those details and just jump straight into the conversation, but the fact that he observed all of this

proves to us that you know what he would have? I mean, he was an individual who captured so much of detail, there's no way he would have messed up with the conversation. He's captured so much of detail. You and I attempts were in a gathering and let's say someone comes and goes, we'd rarely recall what they will, how they said and how they spoke. But look at the memory of Amara de la one. Look at how observant Amara Viola and who was today, you know, we read about Sherlock Holmes. And we, you know, perhaps we read up on those qualities and those traits and like I said, we think oh, wow, it's something amazing, you know, how, how does one have such a keen eye for detail?

But will it suffice to just read up on it and think of it as being you know, a good thing, we should try to bring it into our lives because there are so many benefits to it.

So I'm now now going to go into a few tips, like I said in terms of improving one's you know, attention to detail. Number one, many brothers and sisters, you and I we need to get organized. It's very, it's very important, because think about it this way. If there is chaos, how, obviously the fine details are going to slip through the cracks. So most of us,

you take your workplace, it's in chaos. You take your vehicle, it's in chaos, you take your home, it's in chaos. You take your cupboards, they're in chaos, you take your drawers, they're in chaos, you take your wallets and purses, they're in chaos, you take your lives, Subhan Allah lives and chaos. And this is why it's so difficult for us to retain focus. This is why our attention is all over the place. This is why we don't have direction in our lives. We don't know where we are headed. We wake up every day and just you know get about with the day like zombies. So it's very important to be organized. This is tip number one. So as much as possible, organize your workspace. by

organizing your workspace it can actually help you focus on your work, organize your digital spaces. As we speak I want you to go to your desktop and just see how many folders are cluttering your desktop how many files how many screenshots? How many random downloads, if you will.

So we need to get our digital spaces sorted out as well at times it can be challenging, you know, times you have an inbox with a lot of messages and but can be a work in progress. But you need to get all your digital spaces organized. You need to get your physical workspace is organized your living. Let's say your home organized your your your your bedroom, organized your growers organized your wallet organized sometimes we go on to cram you know receipts and so much

pieces and bits and pieces of paper into our wallets into our purses into our handbags where at times looking for something, you end up going down one big black hole.

So there are ways to get yourself

organized and Subhan Allah like I said earlier on so much of information at our fingertips there are so many videos to help you to teach you how to get your things organized, how to ensure that your wallet is organized, how to ensure your workspace is organized, there's so much of information out there so you can apply those principles in terms of getting your life organized, getting your shedule organized now this is another thing you know where you have today. In the past people had to maintain diaries people had to maintain calendars today you have all of it you know in all the devices that you have, you know, you have a calendar on your iPad, you have a calendar on your, your

computer, you have a calendar on your mobile device, you It's so easy to shedule and and you know, organize the time that you have in a very nice way. So it's key to ensure that important dates, deadlines, all of this is organized, and you need to review all of this. So all of our I mentioned come under getting organized. So once this happens, you're able to cut through the chaos and focus on things that actually need to be focused on. Number two, maintain a routine. So this is in a way connected to you know, getting a calendar in order and getting your schedule in order. You need to maintain a routine a daily routine, a weekly routine, a monthly routine, where you ensure that you

know you devote time to specific tasks today, you know, I think it's iOS 15, you now have something called focus where you are able to eliminate distractions now by maintaining a routine. And that's the next step, you begin to eliminate distractions, distractions in the form of unnecessary notifications, distractions in the form of things like for example, things spilling onto one another, let's say you have let's say you're working from home, and you have slotted 8am or 9am to 11am that you're going to get certain tasks done. Now during that window, that period of time, you really can't be entertaining, text messages or WhatsApp messages, for example that are not urgent

that could just distract you and take you down a rabbit hole where you know, important tasks get ignored. So maintaining a routine is key and then eliminating distractions. Along with that.

Another tip that can be mentioned before I conclude is to create lists today you have take your iPhone, you have reminders, you have notes, you have all these applications that help you to get things organized in your life to ensure that you have your goals, your short term goals, your long term goals all in a place where you can look at, you know,

checking box after box and achieving those goals. So it's key to maintain these lists to put down your tasks in order. And along with that, like I said, You have so many apps to help you do this. There are even apps out there in the form of of games if you're looking at you know, some recreational time if you will, I think I recall a game it was called

but was it it was elevate if I'm not mistaken, that actually helps you to sharpen your your, your your brain to help you with your memory to help you with recalling things. You know, when we were kids we used to play I spy with my little eye right? So even that I was reading the other day is an interesting game that helps children build their attention to detail. So it's a thing that perhaps you could play with your kids it helps you and it helps them as well to focus you know where you say okay, I spy with my little eye something that begins with this color or something that begins with this letter. And they start you know, looking around. And you know interestingly when you play this

game with the children, sometimes you begin to look around your bedroom in such a way that in the past you may have never ever looked around, you know, like spot the difference. For example, you know, you start looking at a picture in a way that you've never ever looked at it before you look around your room you spot things you see things that you may have glossed over earlier on. So these are things to help you increase the levels of your attention to detail. So I hope this video was of benefit to touch on the importance of you know, this skill and, you know, harnessing this scale and you know, sharpening the skill. So I pray that Allah subhanho data helps us all to do that. And I

sincerely pray that he helps us to become more productive and that was the intention behind you know, putting this video to help myself and then all of you all tuning in to become more productive in our day to day lives. I look forward to talking to you on another video soon inshallah. dalla does that. Kamala Harris was Salam aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato.