It can be said that we want to do a lot of big things, but too few people are willing to do small things perfectly. It is not uncommon for daydreaming to talk big and be ambitious. In the end, it is often a few people who laugh last. They can grasp the tiny things around them and enjoy the beauty of success.
In the "wars of the roses" in English history, that is, 1485, King Richard and Earl Henry fought a fierce war for the throne. In order to win the war, Richard is ready to go into battle and help the military forces. On the morning of the decisive battle, he ordered the groom to find a blacksmith to nail his horse's paw, because he was going to ride the horse to the battlefield.
The groom led the horse to the blacksmith and said to him, "Nail this horse quickly, and the king will ride it to the battlefield."
"Wait a minute, the iron sheet and nails are all used up. We have to find some materials to nail!" The blacksmith said, and turned to look for materials. Before all the materials were ready, the groom became impatient. He shouted, "Hurry up! I can't wait! "
The blacksmith cut an iron bar into four sections, flattened it, shaped it, fixed it on a horseshoe, and then began to nail. After nailing three palms, the blacksmith found that there were still not enough nails. He wanted to find some nails to nail horseshoes, but the groom urged him again and again. The blacksmith had no choice but to watch the fourth horse with few nails in its palm taken away.
When the two armies were at war, Richard rode in front of the army and commanded.
Suddenly, he saw the soldiers retreating in the distance. Richard is worried that these retreating people will affect the morale of the whole team and is ready to drive the horse to command.
However, before he went far, the horse suddenly fell and Richard fell off his back. The war horse fell completely because the horseshoe fell off. Then he was surrounded by soldiers on the other side-he was surrounded. In this war, Richard lost and let the other side win easily.
Captured Richard, looking at the horseshoe falling from the horseshoe, cried hysterically: "Victory should have belonged to me, but just a horseshoe ruined everything for me."
After the battle, a folk song spread:
One nail is missing and one horseshoe is missing.
I lost a horseshoe and a horse.
Lost a war horse and lost a battle.
Losing a battle ruined a dynasty.
Just because a nail was missing and a horseshoe was not nailed properly, the horse fell and lost a war. When paying attention to the overall situation, you must never ignore the details. Many times, those seemingly inconspicuous details may affect success or failure.
As the old saying goes, sand accumulates into a tower, and armpits become cockroaches; If you don't accumulate steps, you can't become a river. Often because we ignore small places, there are more and more small things behind.
Whether a nail on the horseshoe will be lost is a very small change in the initial conditions, but its long-term effect is the foundation of the existence and death of an empire.
This connection between things was later called "butterfly effect". It was put forward by American meteorologist edward lorenz. In a paper submitted to the New York Academy of Sciences in 1963, he said: "A butterfly in the tropical rain forest of the Amazon River basin in South America can trigger a tornado in Texas within two weeks."
And a seemingly unrelated thing can ultimately determine your fate through a chain reaction. This is called the butterfly effect.
The reason is that the movement of butterfly flapping its wings causes changes in the surrounding air system, resulting in weak airflow, which in turn causes corresponding changes in the surrounding air or other systems, causing a chain reaction and eventually leading to great changes in other systems.
As the saying goes, "one millionth difference is a thousand miles away." A small factor can change the overall situation. Details determine success or failure, and they are universally applicable. This is especially true in war.
What impressed me the most was the Battle of Midway Island. The spy intelligence war between the United States and Japan fully illustrates the importance and lethality of details.
At that time, Roosevelt appointed Nimitz as the commander of the US Pacific Fleet, mainly to let him clean up the defeat of Pearl Harbor until victory. Nimitz and his intelligence team racked their brains to crack the coded telegrams between senior Japanese officers, but they didn't know the main direction of the telegram "code AF". Later, members of the intelligence group recalled the Pearl Harbor naval battle, and the word "AF" appeared in the secret text, which was initially identified as midway island.
In order to further confirm whether "AF" refers to Midway Island, the head of intelligence instructed the Midway Island base to send a clear bait telegram, saying that the fresh water supply equipment in Midway Island was faulty and the drinking water was in a hurry. The main attack commander of the Japanese navy was really fooled and directly instructed the supply fleet to provide fresh water to the "AF" landing troops! "It's a rock-breaking!"
In this regard, the US military determined the main attack direction of the Japanese army and set up an ambush circle ... In the end, the US military only lost an aircraft carrier, a destroyer and a 147 aircraft; On the other hand, Japan lost four large aircraft carriers, a heavy cruiser, more than 330 planes, hundreds of experienced pilots and 3,700 sailors. Since then, the Japanese navy has been devastated and lost its strategic initiative.
There is an old saying: "don't do it because of small evils, don't do it because of small goodness."
It means don't do it just because it is a minor bad thing, and don't care about it just because it is a minor good thing.
Any small matter, any detail, may make dramatic changes in the result.
Bell invented the telephone, but before Bell, many people developed the telephone, and Les was one of them. Les has developed a sound transmission device through a lot of experiments, using indirect direct current as the communication medium. It can transmit music, but people can't talk to each other through it.
Bell's development of telephone is based on Rice's research. The only difference between Bell and Les in operation is that Bell screwed a screw in Les device for half a turn, which is 5 silk meters. This can solve the problems of short transmission time and changeable voice. At this point, the rice device that can't talk to each other has become a practical phone.
The difference between success and failure is only 5 meters, which means that the difference between success and failure is only half a millimeter. Bell's progress stunned Les, and later he said with emotion, "I was discouraged five meters away from success, and I will remember this lesson all my life."
Looking at the problem from a dialectical perspective, we can not only learn to put an end to the negative impact of the butterfly effect, but also regard it as an important way of thinking to win in the competition.
In a military exercise in the 1950s, the plane shook violently as soon as it left the ground, and then crashed into the runway. With a loud noise, people were greeted by billowing smoke and fragmented aircraft wreckage. The cause of the plane crash turned out to be a button on the pilot's clothes. At the moment when the plane took off, a button on the pilot's clothes fell into the instrument, and the instrument could not work normally, which affected the work of other parts and eventually led to the destruction of the plane. What a small button, but caused a huge accident.
"Great things in the world must be done in detail" and "A levee of a thousand miles will collapse in an ant nest". It can be seen that paying attention to details and ignoring details is the key to success. Details determine success or failure!
Because any system, a person, may fail or collapse because of a small disturbance. If you can find the imbalance, you may seize the chance of success.
As David packard said:
"Little things achieve great things, and details achieve perfection."
As Mr. Wang Zhongqiu said in the book "Details Decide Success or Failure":
"There are so few people who can do great things, and most people can only do some specific things, trivial things and monotonous things in most cases.
Maybe it's too dull, maybe it's trivial, but it's work, life and an indispensable foundation for achieving great things. "
Nothing in this world can be done overnight.
All major events, from the beginning, seriously start from simple things and pay attention to details, which is the only way to success.
Details can make or break a person.
Therefore, whatever you do, you should take it seriously.
Please remember: details determine life.