The following post is based on an audio recording from April 9, 2025.

The little things matter. Maybe even more than the big things.

Today, my email inbox got flooded with probably about 20 different messages from co-workers thanking me and appreciating a little thing that I did. I even had one guy call me just out of the blue. This was a gentleman I had never talked to before. He said something like, “Hey man, I really appreciated what you did. I’ve never seen anyone do that that way, and if you ever want me to run your name up the chain and give you a job or something like that, I would be happy to do it.” I said, “No, no, thank you. That’s okay, I’m perfectly happy with what I’m doing now.”

But the thing I did that generated all this commotion and appreciation was just taking meeting notes in a meeting and sharing them out. We had a big all-hands meeting with our whole organization today and leadership shared a lot of really important organizational updates and strategy thoughts about where things are going. And like I always do in meetings, I just took notes. I tend to take pretty detailed notes, and usually I just keep them to myself, or maybe I’ll share them with a small subset of people on my team or someone who was out of the office, for example.

But today, I was like, I don’t know, there was so much good stuff in that meeting. Why don’t I just send it out to the whole organization? I think the invite list was 200 or 300 people, and I thought, “Ah, what the heck? I’ll just send it.” I didn’t expect to get much of a reply, but the kind of outpouring of love and support was shocking to me. A lot of people really appreciated that and seemed hungry for more things like that.

Career Impact of Small Details

It just got me thinking about how, especially in your career, those little things can have so much leverage and might be even more important than the big things in some ways. I’ve delivered on major organizational priorities well ahead of time, and I think with better quality than we expected. This is what everyone focuses on in their job - those kinds of things. But never have I gotten the same level of recognition or love for doing something like that.

These major things that we think are priorities for the organization and our priorities, but I think what people really notice and appreciate and care about, and what really can set you apart, is just doing the little things really well, and just having attention to detail. I think the way that you do one thing or the way that you do a little thing kind of represents the way that you do everything, and people pick up on that.

Practical Examples of Impactful Small Actions

I just thought that was a really cool example today and wanted to share about that. I think there are all sorts of other little things that we can focus on doing better that would make a big difference.

One is taking meeting notes like that. The other thing that I’ll do with meeting notes that I think is really high leverage and high impact is just reviewing them after you take them. After you take your notes, give yourself five or ten minutes to go through them and then kind of extract. What I’ll do is put a key takeaways or actions section at the top and just extract from the notes and pull out what is the really important stuff. Because a lot of times, as I’m writing the notes I might not know what is going to be the most important thing that gets shared, so I’ll go after the fact and pull out what I really need to know.

I think honestly, a lot of little things just boil down to that. Just to reviewing things. Like another little thing is put some attention and detail into emails. Don’t just type something up real quick and fire it off - give it another one minute review. Just looking over an email almost every time. When I reread my email, I’ll find something to fix and usually more than just a typo, just like, “Oh yeah, this sentence or two maybe wasn’t that clear. Maybe I can combine them.” Or “This thing that I put down at the bottom I really should put up top because that’s the most important thing or what I really want someone to see.” So, I think just being concise and paying attention in emails or Teams or Slack messages goes a really long way.

Personal Connections Matter

Another little thing, too, even just outside of work, that I think is really important and so small is just to call people by their first name. Like, the first sentence you’re saying with someone in a conversation, just use their name. Be like, “Oh, hey, Jake, what? Yeah, sure, whatever.” You know, I think that goes a long way. I’ve noticed too, like when other people do that to me, it feels special. It’s weird, it’s such a small and minor thing, but it feels really meaningful when someone just recognizes your name and speaks to you with your first name and listens closely.

Conclusion

So those are some of the little things that I try to focus on, especially how I’m communicating or documenting things, and I think it goes a really, really long way, and does end up contributing to those bigger things or bigger organizational priorities as well.

But yeah, I think just putting that attention into those little things - people will notice that, and it will mean a lot to them. And I think if you can elevate your game, that will make others around you want to do the same too.