Skills I learned from “Highlights”

I remember as a kid that I used to like those “Highlights” magazines that were in doctor’s offices. They always had activities where there were two pictures with a few things different between them and you had to figure out what was different.  For example, there may be a picture of a kid and in one version he has a hat and in another he doesn’t have a hat.

These exercises taught me valuable skills which I use today when reviewing documents and I sometimes feel like I am playing that game. Here are the things I look for..

• Alignment of boxes
• Font consistency
• Having the right year (come on people it is Feb of 2013, stop using 2012..I even saw one person recently who still had 2011)
• Wrapping of bullets

This can be good practice for the business world

I think we should have mandatory tests at work to look for these details so we can weed out the people who don’t have good attention to detail…or who can’t solve 5 year old riddles.  The problem, I suspect, is that the workforce would shrink drastically if we did this.