There's a word that shows up constantly in Nigerian workplace conversations but almost never in career advice articles: anyhowness. Doing things anyhow. Showing up anyhow. Submitting work anyhow, promising a deadline anyhow, explaining a mistake anyhow. It's not one specific failure, it's a general attitude of carelessness, and it quietly decides who gets trusted with bigger things and who gets permanently stuck doing small ones.

Anyhowness rarely looks dramatic. It's the report sent with the wrong month's figures because nobody checked. It's showing up eleven minutes late to a client call with no apology, as if lateness is just how things are. It's the "I'll send it by Friday" that becomes Tuesday with no warning in between. None of these, on their own, feels like a big deal in the moment, which is exactly why they're so easy to keep doing, and exactly why they're so expensive over time.

Think about two corps members doing identical PPA placements at different branches of the same organisation. Tobi submits his weekly reports whenever he remembers, sometimes Thursday, sometimes the following Monday, and once sent the wrong week's figures without noticing. Aisha submits hers every Friday by 3pm without exception, and on the one occasion she was going to be late, she flagged it a full day ahead with a clear reason. By the end of their service year, Aisha's supervisor has already offered to write her a strong recommendation letter and mentioned a possible role opening. Tobi's supervisor, when asked, says he was "fine, I suppose," which is a quiet, damning kind of praise.

Here's what actually happens when anyhowness becomes a pattern: trust erodes faster than skill can rebuild it. A manager who has been burned twice by careless work stops giving you anything that matters, regardless of how talented you actually are. You end up competent but boxed in, wondering why colleagues with less obvious ability keep getting the bigger assignments, when the honest answer is that they've simply proven they can be handed something and trusted to treat it with care.

The opposite of anyhowness isn't perfection, it's intentionality, doing things on purpose, with attention, even when nobody's checking. An intentional employee reads the brief twice before starting, not because they're slow, but because they'd rather ask one clarifying question upfront than redo the whole thing later. They say "I'll have this by Thursday" and either deliver it by Thursday or flag the delay a full day before the deadline, not after it's already passed.

Intentionality shows up in small, visible details that quietly build a reputation. Proofreading an email before sending it. Double-checking a number before presenting it. Showing up five minutes early instead of exactly on time, let alone late. None of these require talent. They require deciding, consistently, that how you do something matters as much as whether you did it at all.

The hardest part of fixing anyhowness is that it's rarely a single big habit, it's dozens of small ones stacked together, which makes it genuinely difficult to notice in yourself. The fastest way to catch it is blunt, honest feedback from someone who will actually tell you the truth, a mentor, a trusted colleague, even a brutally honest friend, rather than people who'll just say "you're doing fine" to avoid an uncomfortable conversation.

One mistake worth naming directly: assuming intentionality only matters for 'important' tasks. The habit of care has to be practised on small, boring assignments too, the routine report, the minor email, the quick favour for a colleague, because that's exactly where most people let anyhowness creep back in. If intentionality only shows up when you know something matters, it isn't actually a habit yet, it's just performance for an audience, and performances eventually slip the moment nobody important seems to be watching.

A short self-audit worth doing honestly:

Do you reread your own work before sending it, every single time, not just when you remember?

Do you flag a delay before the deadline passes, or after?

Have you ever said "it's not a big deal" about something a client or manager clearly thought was?

Do you show up five minutes early as a habit, or exactly on time as a best case?

Would the last three people you worked with describe you as careful, or as "mostly fine, but you have to check their work"?

A few honest questions people ask about this:

Isn't this just perfectionism with a new name? No. Perfectionism is being paralysed by the fear of any mistake. Intentionality is doing the basic, careful things consistently, and still moving fast, it's a completely different energy.

Can anyhowness really cost you a job, or is this exaggerated? It rarely costs you the job in one dramatic moment. It costs you the next opportunity, quietly, repeatedly, until you're wondering why you've been overlooked for something you were clearly capable of doing well.

I grew up with "anyhowness" as just normal, how do I actually unlearn it? Start absurdly small. Pick one single habit, like always rereading your own emails before sending, and do it without exception for a month before adding a second one. Trying to fix everything at once is how most people give up in a week.

Here's a question worth sitting with: think about the last piece of work you submitted anyhow, rushed, unchecked, sent without a second look. What would it have cost you, in time, to have done it with intention instead? And what did the shortcut actually cost you that you haven't fully counted yet?

Replacing anyhowness with intentionality is one of the most underrated, learnable shifts a young professional can make, and it starts well before your first job, in how you handle every assignment, deadline, and small commitment right now. The TAS Employability Assessment is free, takes a few minutes, and gives you an honest look at how workplace-ready you actually are today.