76 INT. TV STATION – CORRIDOR – NIGHT Chance is intrigued by the the surroundings as MORTON HULL guides him through the corridor. HULL Of course, Mr. Gardiner, your position in the financial community carries a lot of weight, but what caught Gary’s attention was your down-to-earth philosophy. CHANCE I see. They walk a while through the corridor. HULL (making conversation) Do you realize that more people will be watching you tonight than all those who have seen theater plays in the last forty years? CHANCE Yes. It’s a very good show. Hull takes Chance into the makeup room. 77 EXT. AIRPORT – NIGHT AIR FORCE 1 taxies to the ground. 78 INT. AIR FORCE 1 – NIGHT The President sits on a couch in one of the compartments on the jet. With him are six of his STAFF, Kaufman included. PRESIDENT What do you mean, no background? That’s impossible, he’s a very well known man! KAUFMAN Yes, sir – we are aware of all that, but still, we haven’t been able to… PRESIDENT (interrupts) He’s an advisor and close personal friend of Rand’s! For Christ sakes, they have volumes of data on Benjamin! KAUFMAN Yes, Mr. President, I plan on contacting Mr. Rand as soon as… PRESIDENT (again interrupts) I do not want Benjamin Rand disturbed! You have other ways of gathering information than to trouble a dying man. Use whatever agencies are necessary to put together a detailed history of Chauncey Gardiner, if you run into problems, alert Honeycutt. (he stands) Have it in my office at seven in the morning. (he starts for door) I’ve got to take a leak. KAUFMAN Right, chief. As the President goes to the Men’s Room, two of the aides reach for telephones.

79 INT. TV STATION – CORRIDOR/MAKEUP ROOM – NIGHT A PAGE comes through the corridor carrying a glass of water. He turns into the makeup room to reveal Hull sitting next to Chance in front of the mirror. The makeup man, COLSON, works on Chance as he watches the guest preceding him on a TV monitor that is reflected in the mirror. PAGE (gives Chance water) I thought you might need this about now, Mr. Gardiner. It gets real hot under these lights. CHANCE Thank you. I am very thirsty. The Page leans against the door jamb, smiles if anyone looks at him. HULL (briefing Chance) Now, if Gary wants to interrupt you, or ask you a question, he’ll raise his left forefinger to his left eyebrow. CHANCE (to Colson) Nurse Teresa did Ben’s makeup. COLSON (laughs) Oh? Did she do a good job? CHANCE Yes, very good. On the TV, GARY BURNS finishes with his guest and the band goes into a hot instrumental number. COLSON (a last minute dab) Okay, Mr. Gardiner, looks like you’re up. Hull leads Chance out of the makeup room. Colson sits and watches the TV monitor. The Page, his back to Colson, carefully picks up Chance’s water glass so as not to smear the fingerprints, then leaves the room. On the TV monitor, the band plays, the audience applauds as Burns introduces Chance. 80 INT. RAND LIMOUSINE – NIGHT BURNS (on TV) I always find it surprising, Mr. Gardiner, to find men like yourself, who work so intimately with the President, yet manage to remain relatively unknown. CHANCE (on TV) Yes. That is surprising. BURNS (on TV) …Well, your anonymity will be a thing of the past from now on. CHANCE (on TV) (doesn’t understand) I hope so. BURNS (on TV) (a beat) Yes…of course. Well, I assume, since the President quoted you, that you agree with his view of the economy. CHANCE (on TV) Which view? Applause and laughter from the TV audience. 81 INT. ALLENBY’S ROOM – NIGHT Allenby watches, concerned as to which way it will go. BURNS (on TV) (a beat) Well, the President compared the economy of this country to a garden, and stated that after a period of decline a time of growth would naturally follow. CHANCE (on TV) Yes, I know the garden very well. I have worked in it all my life. It is a good garden and a healthy one; 82 INT. RAND’S ROOM – NIGHT Rand is in bed. Eve sits in a chair next to the bed, squeezes Rand’s hand in the excitement as they both watch Chance on television. Teresa and Constance watch in the Background. CHANCE (on TV – cont’d) its tress are healthy and so are its shrubs and flowers, as long as they are trimmed and watered in the right seasons. The garden needs a lot of care. I do agree with the President; everything will grow strong, and there is plenty of room in it for new trees and new flowers of all kinds. The TV audience applauds Chance and Constance quietly leaves the room. 83 INT. WHITE HOUSE – PRESIDENT’S BEDROOM – NIGHT The President and First Lady are in bed together watching the show. BURNS (on TV) So you’re saying, Mr. Gardiner, if the Stock Market collapses, and unemployment keeps increasing, that this is just another season, so to speak, in the garden? The First Lady cuddles up to the President. 84 INT. RAND LIMOUSINE – NIGHT Chance continues to watch himself. CHANCE (on TV) Yes. In a garden, things grow – but first some things must wither; some trees lose their leaves before they grow new leaves… 85 INT. THOMAS FRANKLIN’S BEDROOM – NIGHT Franklin, the attorney that evicted Chance, comes out of the bathroom brushing his teeth. His wife, JOHANNA, is in the bed absorbed in the show. Franklin sits on the end of the bed. CHANCE (on TV – cont’d) …And if you give your garden a lot of love, and if you work very hard and have a lot of patience, in the proper season you will see it grow to be very beautiful… More applause from the TV. Franklin leans closer to the set. FRANKLIN (puzzled) It’s that gardener! JOHANNA Yes, Chauncey Gardiner. FRANKLIN No! He’s a real gardener! JOHANNA (laughs) He does talk like one, but I think he’s brilliant. BURNS (on TV) Well, that’s very interesting, Mr. Gardiner, but, what about the bad seasons? 86 INT. CHANCE’S ROOM – NIGHT Constance is in Chance’s closet searching through his clothing. Finding nothing, she checks the labels on his suits, copies them in a notepad. BURNS (Cont’d) (on TV) Such as prolonged droughts that have wiped out crops, disastrous winters, hurricanes? Doesn’t a country need to have someone in charge that can see it through such crises? Don’t we need a leader capable of guiding us through the bad seasons as well as the good? CHANCE (on TV) Yes. We need a very good gardner. Constance continues her work in the closet. 87 INT. PRESIDENT’S BEDROROM – NIGHT The President and First Lady are very attentive. BURNS (on TV) I realize this might be a difficult question for you, Mr. Gardiner but there are a lot of us around the country that would like to hear your thoughts on the matter. CHANCE (on TV) I understand. BURNS (on TV) Do you feel that we have a ‘very good gardener’ in office at this time, Mr. Gardiner? PRESIDENT …That bastard… CHANCE (on TV) Oh, yes. It is possible for one side of the garden to be flooded, and the other side to be dry… Some plants do well in the sun, and others grow better in the cool of the shade. The First Lady moves closer to the President. 88 INT. HOTEL LOBBY – NIGHT A group of ELDERLY BLACK PEOPLE sit in the lobby, watching the show on an old black-and-white TV CHANCE (on TV – cont’d) ..It is the gardner’s responsibility to take water from the flooded area and run it to the area that is dry. It is also the gardner’s responsibility not to plant a sun-loving flower in the shade of a high wall… During the preceding speech, Louise, the maid from the Old Man’s house, chatters. LOUISE Gobbledegook! All the time he talked gobbledegook! An’ it’s for sure a White man’s world in America, hell, I raised that boy since he was the size of a pissant an’ I’ll say right now he never learned to read an’ write – no sir! Had no brains at all, was stuffed with rice puddin’ between the ears! Short-changed by the Lord and dumb as a jackass an’ look at him now! Yes, sir – all you gotta be is white in America an’ you get whatever you want! Just listen to that boy -gobbledegook! There is a chorus of “Amens” as she finishes. 89 INT. RAND LIMOUSINE – NIGHT Chance watches himself. CHANCE (on TV – cont’d) …It is the responsibility of the gardner to adjust to the bad seasons as well as enjoy the good ones. Chance changes channels to a Game Show. 90 INT. PRESIDENT’S BEDROOM – NIGHT The President and First Lady still watch Chance. CHANCE (on TV – cont’d) If the gardner does his job, everything will be fine. PRESIDENT Oh, Jesus… Audience applause is heard on TV. BURNS (on TV) Before we take a break…What sort of gardner would you be? CHANCE (on TV) (with confidence) I am a very serious gardner. BURNS (on TV) I’m sure you are, Mr. Gardiner. (looks at camera) We’ll be right back. As a commercial comes on, the President rolls over in bed. The First Lady reaches out, puts a comforting hand on his shoulder. 91 INT. RAND’S ROOM – NIGHT The commercial is on TV. RAND He’s a remarkable man, remarkable… (to Eve) You’re fond of him too, aren’t you, Eve? EVE (a beat) …Yes, I am, Ben. RAND That’s good… that’s good. Rand looks up as Constance comes back into the room. RAND Constance! Where have you been? You missed the whole show – Chauncey was wonderful.

This remarkable exchange on the talk show is captivating because most of us all have a profound understanding of “ideal conditions” and know that these ideal conditions will make all the difference. All Chance says throughout the movie, in effect, is that it is important that conditions always be good, and that care is taken to create good conditions for economic and other sorts of growth. Without corrupting influences and with little knowledge of the outside world, Chance speaks of nothing else but gardening. The brilliance of the movie is that it says something we already know, but easily forget.

In your life there is nothing more important than putting yourself in the ideal conditions for your growth. My mother once spoke of a friend, and she said something I will never forget: “He will never be as successful as he could be, because of his wife. She does not want him to do well, because if he does, she is afraid that he will leave her.” I did not know the people she was talking about that well, but I had observed the wife continually criticizing and putting down the man. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how correct my mother was. There was no way this man could ever be successful anywhere near his capacity when he was being put down and criticized at home. He was always being told he was wrong and that there was something wrong with him. Moreover, I remember also observing that every time this man would leave home for an extended period of time, he would immediately get happy and within a few more days, his wife would get sick or create some sort of commotion, and he would need to come running back home. This process repeated itself over and over again. The conditions were wrong for him.

My concern is your success. In order for you to be successful the most important thing you can do is to put yourself in the right conditions. You need to be in the right conditions at all times in order to be successful. Once you are in the right conditions, you will thrive. Everything is about being in the right conditions and your career and life will not thrive unless you are aware of this.

My daughter is two years old and already in our area of Los Angeles, the competition is intense for kids to get into certain schools. This is about getting kids into the right conditions, which parents take very seriously. I sold the house with the fish to a famous producer, Gail Hurd. She wanted a house in Pasadena because her daughter was going to a good private school in the area. She was seeking to put her daughter in the ideal conditions. When I was a freshman in high school I attended a public school that was not very good. I did poorly in the school. For my sophomore year of high school, I moved with my family to Bangkok, Thailand. I went to a very good school there, International School Bangkok, and got excellent grades and thrived. Everything is about the conditions we are in.

I loved the people in the first law firm where I worked, and I disliked the people at the second firm. Had I remained in the first law firm (which was very creative and fun), I would have had a good career and done well. Had I remained in the second law firm, I would have had a poor career and been unhappy. It is all about the conditions we are in.

One thing I have learned about raising saltwater fish and roses is that one small change can affect everything in a negative way. For example, if you change the type of food you are feeding the fish, if you move a plant that was shading a part of the aquarium–virtually anything can create a massive change in the health of the fish. If you water the roses more or less each day, this can affect the flowers.

Everything is about environment. Change one thing and you can affect everything. You need to study the environments where you were successful in the past to see what elements existed in these environments that were correct. If things went bad, what changed? One small thing can ruin your environment. You need to be in an ideal environment and if one small thing is wrong with your environment, you should address this.

In your career, and in your life, you will not succeed unless you are in the ideal environment. It just won’t happen. You will match like oil and water with certain people and you will match like oil and water with certain organizations. If you are not getting the results you want in your life, you need to find a better scene and/or put yourself in a more ideal scene. There is nothing more important than the quality of the environment you are in. It may require changing aspects of your current environment, not working with certain people, working with certain people, working in a certain manner–whatever it is in your environment that makes you succeed–you need to find it and use it.

Most people spend their lives as critics. They criticize their employer, their bosses, and find fault with their conditions. It may be the government’s fault. It may be the fault of the economy. It may be the fault of someone else. Regardless of their environment, the chances are good they will find fault with what is wrong. If the problems in your environment are preventing you from succeeding, the best thing you can do is take action to fix what is wrong with your environment, or put yourself in an environment where things are better.

All around me every single day I am encountering people who have immigrated to America recently. My wife’s father is from another country. In my yard, the people mowing my lawn are always from Mexico. The people who work on my aquariums are from Lebanon. People who work in my office are from India. All around me are people who have come to the United States in search of a better environment. They are here because they felt that there was something in their native countries that was holding them back. They are mostly right. Poverty, lack of infrastructure, not enough economic opportunity, lack of work–you name it–all of these things are the sorts of things that have held people back in other countries. People come to the United States because they want to find an ideal environment that will allow them to succeed. People send money home to Mexico or to India when they come to work in the United States because the working conditions here are so much better for them.

You need to do everything within your power in your own country, state, city, and neighborhood to create the ideal environment. There is nothing more important for your long-term success than this. The people who move to the United States in search of more opportunity are those who have taken action. Revolutions happen in countries around the world when groups of people try with all of their might to create the right environment. Our dislike of countries like Cuba, Iraq, North Korea, Afghanistan, and China is tied to the fact that we do not approve of their environment. Oppression of people, street battles, and chaos are abhorrent, and not our idea of an ideal environment.

For some people, being in an environment with a lot of order may be important. For others, being in an environment that allows a lot of creativity may be important. For others, an environment with people they like and know may be important. For still others, working in an environment that is very professional and formal may be important. Everyone has a list of things they believe will make them do well and be productive. It is up to you to do everything within your power to put yourself in a job and environment that will contribute to your long-term success and happiness at work.

You want to be in an environment that allows you to be at your best. Like a plant, or a fish, there are likely to be toxic elements in your environment. You need to do everything you can to avoid whatever is toxic, because it will hold you back from achieving all you can. Your life and success in your career is going to prosper or fail based on the environment you are in.

• Organizing a sock drawer
• Cleaning out the garage
• Organizing under the bathroom sink
• Purchasing new dishes
• Cleaning out the glove box

The inability to keep small details organized in your life is often a reflection of your ability to master the details of your work.  If you cannot master the details in your own life or surroundings, it often looks to your employer and those around you that you will never be able to master the work you are doing. Several years ago, I was speaking with a management expert and he told me that he can tell a lot about what sort of employee someone is going to be by how clean they keep their office.  We have all seen offices in various states of disrepair, and I wonder if there is some truth to this statement.  Incredibly, this management expert would hold back certain employees from promotions and other advancements based on how they kept their office.  He did not go into a lot of detail about this; however, I instinctively got a real sense about what he was talking about.  There is something to this. I have noticed throughout the years that the people who tend to be the most organized also tend to be the same people who turn work in on time.  Everything about our work is really in the details.  We give people a good understanding of how good we are likely to be at something based on how many details we have mastered.  The more we have mastered the details of our work, the more it appears as if we have mastered the work itself. When I call various executives on the phone, I am always able to tell a lot about them based on the content of their voicemail.  For example, do you know people whose voicemails are like this: “Hello.  Today is January 19 and I will be in the office all day.  If I did not pick up the phone I am likely on the phone with a client or …” or like this … “Hello.  This is John.  Please leave a message!” The person whose voicemail contains a date and so forth sends the message that they are really on the ball and ready for business.  You sense that they have a routine that they follow every single day, and you also sense they are on top of whatever they are doing.  This person sends off an air of professionalism and attention to detail that most others simply do not.  For what it is worth, I have seen that people who are that on the ball with their voicemail messages are most often the best employees and do well with almost every employer they work with. It is all in the details. I work in a library of sorts, and am surrounded by thousands of books I have purchased throughout the years.  New books arrive in my office on almost a daily basis.  I have notes on my desk and stacks of books in various corners around me that I am waiting to review.  I am hardly someone who looks all that organized, but there is actually a method to my madness.  I keep one notebook on my desk, and one only, and I take notes all week long.  At the end of each week I make lists and deadlines from these lists and reorganize the books in my office and put them back in one place.  If I did not do this, I am not sure anything would get done.  One of the most important things for me, personally, is being incredibly well organized.  I never let any task I am working on slip through the cracks. Several years ago, someone I was working with called my mind “like a vice grip” and seemed to admire me for this.  I did not start out this way, and used to be horrible with details, but learned very quickly once I became an attorney how important the details really are.  The story I am about to tell you makes me smile when I think about it, but it is in actuality not really that funny.  My first job out of law school was working for a federal judge and as part of this, we were responsible for denying hoards of petitions by various prisoners in the federal system to get out of jail early or have their convictions overturned.  One day, about three weeks into this first job of mine, the judge I was working for called me into his office and closed the door.  He seemed visibly upset and I could not figure out what was wrong.  I got a strange “vibe” from him that I will never forget that seemed to be a combination of extreme fear and anger. “Do you realize that you made a typo on this order and almost let a bank robber out of prison?” he said. I looked at the order.  I had gone through probably 20 petitions of prisoners that morning and denied all of them.  For some reason, however, I had done a “search and replace” in an order I had worked on and replaced the word DENIED with the word GRANTED.  The judge had even signed the order and, only after reviewing all of the orders he signed, did he realize the mistake I had made.  The judge knew how to look at details and was extremely good at it.  In fact, he was a superstar, and to this day I respect him more and more each day for his incredible ability to control details.  Despite having the most cases of any judge in his district when I worked with him, he had the shortest docket (cases pending).  He had time for work, rest and relaxation.  He did not have to take work home with him every night.  He knew how to control the details better than any one else I have ever known.  Controlling the details has huge rewards. I never made a mistake like that again.  Incredibly, I had almost ended up letting a bank robber out of jail by not learning to control the details. Keeping your office and surroundings neat and organized is a sign of detail mastery.  There is a certain level of discipline that is required to keep things neat, clean and organized.  If someone does not have this level of discipline on their desk, in their office, in their home and even in their car, then people around them wonder if they can also organize other aspects of their careers and lives.  A career requires discipline and a life requires discipline as well.  Getting your surroundings organized is a metaphor, in my opinion, for getting your mind organized. For several years, the desk in my office was on the second floor of a building and faced a window right above a traffic light.  The street that my office overlooked was not that busy but was perpendicular to a street that was extremely busy.  Thus, most of the time the stoplight in front of my office was red and there were generally people sitting in their cars waiting for the light to turn green.  I would estimate that 90% of the time I looked up, I could see people stopped at the stoplight.  I could look down at people directly in their cars.  (A disturbing fact I am going to just get out of the way is that a lot of people pick their noses when they are sitting at stop lights.  For years I looked down out of my window and saw various people picking their noses.  Without going into detail, I would estimate approximately 20% of the people I witnessed on a day-to-day basis did something inappropriate with the products of their excavation.) However, one of the more interesting patterns I started to notice after some time was how people’s cars looked on the inside.  Some people have very clean cars that look well organized inside and others have cars that look very unorganized and are dirty.  People keep their cars in an extraordinarily different level of cleanliness on the inside.  Some people have a collection of fast food bags and so forth that probably have stuff growing in them together with years of newspapers.  It is incredible to me the level of disrepair that different people keep their cars in. One day I looked outside and I noticed one of our contract temporary employees had been pulled over by the police right beneath my window, and they were searching her car.  This woman had been brought in from a temporary employment agency to help us answer phones during a very busy time.  This woman was incredibly clean cut, very beautiful, very well spoken and appeared quite polished in all respects.  However, as they pulled stuff out of her car I realized there must be something terribly wrong.

• There were dirty blankets and towels
• Multiple hairbrushes
• Several gym sized duffel bags that appeared to be full of old clothes
• Rotten fruit
• You could see several empty packs of cigarettes
• A half full bag of cat litter

I had no idea why the police were searching her car, or what she had done.  What concerned me was her car.  From a psychological perspective, it seemed to me that what was going on in her car could only be a reflection of what was going on inside of her mind.  The mess inside of her car was shocking for its magnitude and was such that it probably would have taken her at least a year to allow the car to get to that point.  I filed this away in my memory and told myself mentally that the woman did not seem all there. Over the next week, it become obvious there were several problems with this woman related to her ability to get things done.  She was making incredibly inappropriate remarks to others and, although I was not involved in supervising her, the issues with her soon became profound enough that whomever was in charge of supervising her ended up telling the temp agency to send someone else.  On her last day of work, she went around the office telling everyone that her supervisor was evil because he was a WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) which was definitely a first in my career.  In a word, the woman turned out to be quite crazy. I have noticed that the most psychologically unstable people typically have the dirtiest and most disorganized bedrooms.  The most disorganized offices.  The most disorganized surroundings.  When I was young, I was living in Spain with a bunch of young people one summer, and there was a girl in the room next to me.  One day, the person supervising the dorms walked past her room and saw that it was a complete wreck.  There were papers everywhere and the room was in very bad shape.  The most interesting thing to me about this was how he reacted.  Later that day he called her into his office and confronted her, saying that he thought she was using drugs due to the condition of her room.  As it turned out, he was right.  She gave him the drugs,and the next day they put her on a plane and sent her home.  She ended up getting expelled from the private school she was attending due to this. The person overseeing the dorms made this connection from nothing more that the condition of her room.  He had noticed it was clean for weeks and then suddenly went to hell. He said something I will never forget: “Our surroundings are a reflection of what is going on in our minds.”  For many people, doing drugs for your mind is like going into a home and turning over all the furniture.  When people’s minds are messed up, their surroundings go to hell as well. When I was growing up I lived with my mother, and she held a job which required her to leave for work every morning at around 7:00 or 7:30 am.  She would not come home each evening until around 6:30 or 7:00.  When she would get home, she would often spend an hour or two making dinner and then finally call me and my sister down to eat at around 9:00 pm.  By the time we all finished eating at around 9:30 or so, my mother would be far too tired to do the dishes and they would be stacked in the kitchen with all sorts of dirty pots and pans.  Because my mother tended to cook a lot, the collection of pots and pans would often be quite extensive and the kitchen would be a real mess. The next day I would invariably come home from school and see this giant mess.  The mess would be so huge that I would often decide to wash these silly dishes, rather than go out to play.  Given my mother’s hectic work schedule, the entire house would often be messy as well.  My room and my sister’s room would be messy. My mother’s room would be messy, and various rooms in the house would all be messy.  If I did not do the dishes, my mother might do them when she got home, or she might declare that we should all go out to eat.  This was pretty common.  She would take us all to a Greek diner called the Grecian Table up the street and, once there, we would sit there for an hour or more while she smoked cigarettes and drank coffee while eating and waiting for our dinner.  These dinners were so boring and long.  Typically I would go down the street while we waited for our meal to a little pizzeria, called Buscemies, and play video games. The plates would be back home piled up when we got there.  I always had a real dislike of all this mess, and it was something I found quite upsetting.  What I noticed was that when things were not messy around the house, everything seemed to be much calmer and happier.  A clean and organized house, in many respects, means a clean mind.  Your office and your surroundings should remain clean because this is often a reflection of your ability to master details.  What do we think about the person whose room may be clean but there is dirty clothing, papers and other stuff hidden beneath their bed?  What is our opinion of the person who had a clean house but whose closets are stuffed to the brim with junk? There is something to this, and we all sense it.  A messy closet can almost be like a messy area of our mind–it may be hidden from public view, but it is there. Many people are calmed by the serenity of zen gardens and its simplicity.  Steve Jobs, who has studied zen, has made an entire career out of doing small details well and keeping things uncluttered in his work at Apple. Around 25 years ago, I saw a fascinating presentation by a handwriting expert.  He was able to give in-depth psychological insights to people by only examining their handwriting and, in most cases, only their signature.  I did not know it at the time, but people’s entire psychological makeup can often be deduced from just observing nothing but their handwriting.  What was so interesting about this was that the handwriting expert provided in depth psychological profiles of people without ever meeting them.  After he had done this, a psychologist was brought out who had spent hours interviewing and testing these subjects and in every single case, the handwriting expert was right on.  The idea is that we can tell a lot about people based on what they put out there on the outside.  A handwriting sample that shows a lot of detail, for example, is a person who is typically very detail-oriented.  A sample that shows messiness–a person who is not and so forth. However, the most interesting part of all this was the the handwriting expert’s observation and belief that people could change by changing their writing style.  He believed that if people started paying more attention to their writing style, they could become more like the person they wanted to be based on mimicking the writing style of the person they wanted to be like.  I found this incredibly interesting at the time.  This is almost similar to the change I experienced psychologically when the house I grew up in was clean and organized. There is a way that I have noticed throughout the years to recognize people who will do well in their jobs.  It is in the details, and the details are evident in the way they maintain their work environment, cars and even homes.  The more attention there is to detail in these regards, the more likely the person is to be good at whatever it is they are doing.  If you have not mastered your mind, it is going to come through in the details. You need to understand that people are watching you and how you manage your surroundings as evidence of how you master details.  Your surroundings are a reflection of what is going on inside your mind.