✅ Today's Checklist: 

• Can you inspire attention to detail as a manager?
• New year, less stress
• TA reader Lauren's advice: You're always on your next job interview

🤔 Riddle me this: I weigh nothing, yet even the strongest can't hold me for long. You can feel me but never see me. What am I? (Find the answer on the bottom).

🎯 A step-by-step guide to mind mapping your next presentation.

🎬 What to watch after The Merry Gentlemen.

💼 Ugh, are 'ghost jobs' a thing now?

🧠 Expert advice for boosting critical thinking skills.

One TA reader hopes to nurture their team's attention to detail: My biggest challenge with my team is getting them to be detail-oriented and to apply new rules and procedures.

In some cases, encouraging people to be detail oriented is as simple as giving them…tools. Connect them with resources they might need to understand why fine details matter and sharpen their perceptivity.

Action-oriented ideas:

• Give everyone a copy of an inspirational and educational book focused on attention to detail, such as The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande and Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly. (Who knows? You might even read and discuss it as a group.)
• As a team, take a class, training, or webinar focused on strengthening attention to detail.
• Consider starting a weekly group mindfulness meditation session or subsidizing meditation apps and classes. Why? Meditation is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It can help them strengthen the muscles of attentional regulation they need to be more detail oriented.
• Share helpful YouTube videos about attention to detail weekly or monthly. (Offer prizes for the first person to demonstrate they watched and paid attention by answering every question correctly on a quick 5-question quiz you can make up based on the video's content.)

An article from The Muse, What It Means to Pay Attention to Detail, and How to Excel at It, makes the brilliant point that for people to pay attention to detail, they must know how—and be able to—pay attention.

Action-oriented ideas:

• Talk to your team about the workplace distractions they experience on a day-to-day basis.
• Ask each team member to share the 3 things they find the most problematically distracting. (You might be able to accommodate some of their individual work preferences. For example, taking one person off a recurring meeting that happens the same day of the week they have a big a recurring deadline.)

A career coach quoted in the same article talks about how a strong understanding of the purpose of an assignment can organically boost attention to detail…simply because it's easier to care about work when you understand why you're doing it.

"It's about understanding the deliverable, and if you can feel a connection to it, you'll become more personally invested and pay more attention to detail," reads her quote.

Action-oriented ideas:

• Communicate—and constantly reinforce—the reasons the new rules and procedures you're hoping to enforce exist.

Alternatively, you might ask your team what they perceive to be the purpose behind the new procedures. This could help you uncover a deeper disconnect barring their optimal attention to detail. Even a few contextual details can sometimes spell the difference between what they perceive to be a waste of their time versus a good use of their time.

Building an inclusive workplace takes more than good intentions—it requires action. Research shows that unconscious bias and microaggressions can derail even the most well-meaning teams. So, how do you foster a culture of belonging where everyone feels valued?

Traliant's Creating Inclusive Workplaces course makes it simple. In just 30 minutes, employees gain practical tools to identify biases, navigate microaggressions, and challenge assumptions.

With real-life interviews and actionable insights, this interactive training goes beyond surface-level awareness to inspire real change.

Here's what the course covers:

• Recognizing the benefits of inclusion (spoiler: better teamwork and innovation)
• Addressing unconscious bias and its impact
• Learning how to give and receive feedback that strengthens relationships
• Overcoming the small-but-mighty barriers to inclusivity

The best part? It's designed to engage employees with relatable scenarios and quick wins they can apply immediately.

Preview the course here and take the first step toward building a stronger, more inclusive team.

Health psychologist Kelly McGonigal wants you to be friends with stress.

You might be thinking: What? Stress sucks; I don't want us to be friends.

Just hear her out.

For years, she told her clients stress was bad for them. Then she read a study that changed everything. What it found, more or less, was that:

• Stressed people who also believed stress was harmful to their health had an increased risk of dying.
• Stressed people who didn't believe stress was harmful to their health had no increased risk of dying and actually had the lowest death risk of anyone in the study, including the control subjects.

The study's authors estimated that just believing stress is harmful could be linked to over 20,000 premature deaths per year, which as McGonigal points out, would make it the 15th largest cause of death in the U.S.

That's right. Being stressed about being stressed may be more harmful to you than just being stressed.

The silver lining is that you can change your mind about stress, and when you do that, you can actually change your body's response to stress.
McGonigal's recommendations for achieving this are delightfully simple:

• Seek social support. Tell others about what's stressing you out.
• Support others who are stressed. Connect. Offer help.

She explains that this works because oxytocin, which most people know as the love hormone, is also a stress hormone. The body releases it when you're stressed to get you to seek love and support.

"[. . . ] when oxytocin is released in the stress response," McGonigal says, "it is motivating you to seek support. Your biological stress response is nudging you to tell someone how you feel, instead of bottling it up."

Watch the complete Ted Talk: How to make stress your friend.

Fathom is here to help you work smarter, not harder. Record, transcribe, and get AI-powered summaries of your meetings—all in under 30 seconds after the meeting ends. No more scrambling to remember key points or sifting through endless notes.

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Get started with Fathom—it's free forever.

"The best career advice that I can give anyone is simple: You are always on your next job interview! Regardless of what your position, never forget this. Show up every day with intention. This is how I have moved in my company from a representative to a high-level leadership position. Be dependable and go above and beyond in any job you have."

— Lauren Becker (Manager)

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🎉 Bring some fun to your virtual gatherings with Confetti for engaging team-building activities.

✨ Feel-Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal is your new guide to getting things done—without the burnout.

🥾 These Ugg dupes are giving cozy vibes without the hefty price tag.

📋 GoCo simplifies HR with tools for onboarding, benefits, and payroll, all in one place.

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