what is attention to detail?

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Basically just that. If you find that you are attentive to details, can you describe the experience of being so. Does it pervade every aspect of your life? What about things that don't interest you at all, are you still detail oriented for those ideas and activities? Does it mean you ignore a larger picture of something, or ignore something else you should be paying attention to? Does it differ at all from, say, having a small field of focus?

I'm not really aware that I'm focusing on details. I simply see what I see. It's the neurotypicals around me that tell me I'm not seeing things the way they see them. I usually feel it's them who are missing the Big Picture.

For instance, I worked for years in local radio. Because I had a natural gift for mimicry and an offbeat sense of humor, I excelled at creating unique commercials. Sales people, whose ability to do their jobs depended on impressing their clients, loved me, because what I gave them was easy to sell and it did it's job, bringing traffic into their client's businesses.

However, I frequently clashed with Sales Managers who were so focused on their artificial sales goals for that month or that quarter, that they were willing to put any lame piece of crap on the air for a cheap buck - quality be damned. They could not get through their thick skulls the notion that if you maintain a higher standard, you will garner more respect within the marketplace, enjoy a better reputation, be able to command a higher price and ensure your longevity. If you sell a cheap, thrown-together product that doesn't perform it's function adequately, you'll get a rep for shoddy work, customers won't want to continue spending money with you and your business will die.

I got fired a lot. Fortunately, because those managers did not see the Big Picture, those radio stations changed ownership and/or formats frequently and often, I'd end up back at the same station within a few years, working for another greedy, short-sighted idiot. Was I focused on details? In the studio, yes, when it came to writing, producing and mixing, very much so. But I was not incapable of seeing a Bigger Picture - it just wasn't the Bigger Picture the NTs wanted me to see and they hated it when I pointed out their blind spot.




If it doesn't interest me at all, I have NO focus on it. It's like trying to force two like poles of a magnet together. My brain simply rejects it.

If I'm forced to deal with something that doesn't interest me, on occasion, I can get caught up in it temporarily and develop a sort of assembly-line focus on it just to get it over with, but even then it's only going to last a short while, then I have to get out of there or it starts to make me feel trapped and claustrophobic.

Unless I have a personal obsessive interest in the subject, in which case I'll become so immersed in it, you couldn't drag me away kicking and screaming until I'm finished with it.

Interesting that you say so, the only person who ever told me that I focus on the details instead of the big picture was my current boss, Director of Sales - because he wants me to focus on HIS REVENUE instead of the good of the company.

Yep yep. I'm one of these focusing on details people. It can come in handy but also be a hindrance. I find people that focus on just one thing mentioned (in an article) and don't process all the article is saying are easily offended and starting the most arguments. It can happen when talking to people too. Your mind gets stuck on one thing said and it completely misses the whole point of what is said.
Bigger picture people seem to be more impulsive and jump to their own conclusions. I even sometimes view them as a bit daft. They also can be argumentative but in a different way.

Attention to detail is good when sensory overloaded or socially anxious because I can just pick up an object and stare at all the detail. I seem to have a a more HD way of processing visual information than other people. I even have to wear glasses because I see things too sharply and high definition TV and movies can cause me physical pain.

In photography it makes my work stand out more. I zoom right in and can capture some emotional moments. I get strange looks for how close I get to the band but the finished product was worth that moment of awkwardness.

I can pick out details people seem to miss which helps with problem solving and finding lost items. I've managed to find lost items for people in the last two days.

In my special interests I seem to be narrowly focused on one part of it. I'm into The Kinks now and I seem to be more focused on Ray Davies which is funny to me because Cockney Rebel seems to be mainly focused on Mick Avory, who is a liable guy but I'm more interested in Ray.

So I do enjoy having an attention to detail. It even helps me organised myself better (breaking tasks into parts) and gives me enough patience to work on one part of a drawing at a time. Looking at the whole task is overwhelming. I have since learned how to see the bigger picture though and can sometimes miss details, but when I focus more on details I miss out on the big picture. I must learn to merge both processing styles together.

I'm the same way. Something needs to stir my emotions to get interested in it, which is why I often get into arguments. On Ritalin I could focus on some really mundane things. Never sports though. I've even tried to combine science and sports to get more interested in it but it's been a futile effort.

I think what it is for me is that I get really absorbed in whatever I'm interested in, and after I've looked at the lay of the land, so to speak, i get really, really absorbed in the parts of the whole--that's how I've gotten the reputation of being detail-oriented. But in the back of my mind, I constantly have the purpose of whatever I'm looking at. And if it's something I'm not interested in? I'll forget about it completely.

From my experience, NTs tend to be either detail-oriented or big picture thinkers, but I'm a bit of both depending on what I'm doing.

I think there different types of detail oriented, my mom is one but it's more with faces and what people wear. I do see a lot online because they tend to point our spelling errors or typos and focus on that instead of what the post is about and I doubt they're all aspies. Some people are detail oriented because of the kind of job they have like janitorial, computer programmer, editor so they have to be detail oriented.

One time I had an experience where I missed the big picture. I was looking in one of the I Spy books and I was looking for certain objects and I was looking at each object in the picture I didn't even notice the blocks made a person because I was so focused on the objects. The rest of the time I can see the big picture in pictures but this time I missed the big person in the picture that were made out of blocks resembling a person.

Then of course I have seen these tests on here telling you to look for the big letter and I see a bunch of big letters but I wouldn't realize the big letters is what made the big letter so no wonder I couldn't find the big letter until someone in the thread would point it out. It's supposedly one of those tests to determine if you see the big picture first or the detail. I have been fooled by it twice already with all those letters I wouldn't even notice they resembled the big letter. A big picture person would see the big letter first with the small letters making the letter while detail oriented people would see the letters first and then see the big letter.

I liked how Temple Grandin described her thinking style. In one of her books, she writes:

• “When I design equipment, I take bits and pieces of other equipment I have seen in the past and combine them to create a new system. All my thinking is bottom-up instead of top-down. I find lots of little details and put them together to form concepts and theories.”
• “The method of bottom-up thinking really works well for me in problem solving where a basic principle has to be determined from masses of conflicting data. One disadvantage of my kind of thinking is that huge amounts of data are required to find the answers.”

This is pretty much how I have done my work as well (systems design, writing papers, etc.). I am extremely detailed oriented, working from the bottoms-up. Only once I have put the details together can I form the big picture. What I have found, by doing so, I understand both the big picture and details better than anyone else. However, the process is 100% details first.