Still Struggling with Attention to Detail
Been in the business for 2.5 years now. Get generally good reviews, know my technicals pretty well. But man my attention to detail is atrocious. Basically if someone doesn’t look over my work, there will be something busted somewhere. Most of time it’s immaterial stuff since I can tell if numbers are off / don’t make sense. But the qualitative stuff is my fatal flaw.
I understand that’s why the review process in banking exists. But as an ASO1 I feel like I should be able to produce work end-to-end that is VP/D ready. But it’s not.
Anyone else still struggle with that? Is my future limited in this industry if I don’t figure this out? I’ve tried checklists, going slower, printing etc. But after getting ~4-5 hours of sleep a night, my brain just can’t focus on a slide for more than 5-10 min without zoning out. I can focus when I’m doing the work. Hate reviewing the work.
Bump have a similar issue
What helped me was what my MD would always recommend, which was printing things out on paper and physically going through it with a pen. Obviously if time permits or ask someone one that you trust to quickly scan over it.
Had the same experience in a different line of business. Printing out and physically reading will help you notice small mistakes
Shit sucks I’m the same way. I have never turned in anything that didn’t have comments. Still got promoted tho lmao. My issue I think is that I get so scatter brained. Trying to do a million different things at once rather than taking it one piece at a time.
OP Here
That’s my problem as well. The constant task switching is so annoying. I’ll be dialled into a model or deck and then comments come in on something else and I need to address that. Or have a meeting. Or ED stops by to talk about a different deal and then drops new tasks on me.
Basically can’t get any real work done until after 6-7pm. But that’s not going to change, it’s IB. We’ll have to figure it out
Yeah exactly. Not sure if you've heard of this concept called "deep work". It's all about minimizing distractions by blocking off hours at a time for certain tasks. I started looking into it and realized how impossible it would be implement that in IB. Issue in IB is that we are required to be checking our emails every 10 minutes minimum.
When you finish something, send it to the printer grab some water or coffee and take a walk around the floor to stretch your legs. Looking at hard copy with fresh eyes is always helpful.
Review can work both ways. Kick your stuff down to analyst for a quick read though.
Review work in a different area from where you usually work if possible
Had an issue with attention to detail as AN1, now no longer an issue. Below are key things I did:
1. Triple and quadruple check everything on the slide / output. Yes this will add time, but push back to seniors and say "look I'm double checking my work, let me shoot it to you in 15 minutes"
2. Before triple and quadruple checking, take a 5 minute break so your eyes can refresh (preferably not looking at your phone, laptop, etc. but go for a walk, etc.)
3. Also like above commentator said, print out as a hard copy and go through it with your pen
4. This helped me - imagine you are the MD or Director that is presenting the material to the client, and go through the slide. I noticed some of the mistakes are spotted when presenting the material to the client which is not ideal
How can have solid technicals without attention to details?
How can not?
The comment about imagining being MD/D presenting the deck is a good one. And that’s why senior guys like to print it out (and sometimes read it out) because errors pop out. If you like gaming, try to gamify it a bit. Reward yourself for catching every 10 “errors” of any materiality.
Counterintuitive but what helped me was prioritizing checks into sub-sets and not worrying about the small stuff. 1) Numbers 2) Do all the analysis / commentary make sense 3) footnotes. Everything else (consistent formatting, fucking Oxford commas, etc.) is all tedious BS that doesn’t move the needle. Sure the work is not “perfect” but the numbers are never wrong.
You probably have terrible eye strain man. A good pair of reading glasses helped my ability to stay focused on the computer and not just blear it all out after 15 minutes helped me immensely.
When I was an analyst I kept track of each error I made in a document that became my checklist prior to sending anything along. For the first 6 months that checklist grew, but served as an excellent way for me to avoid making the same mistake twice. It is cumbersome and takes extra time, but if you actually commit to tracking and reviewing all of your errors going forward, it will be come second nature to check for the things you are struggling with. I echo the other comments on printing documents off and reviewing a hard copy as well.
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