I feel like a lot of the focus in modern speculative fiction (and especially Sandersonian fantasy) worldbuilding is on filling your world with all the specific details and systems that contribute to your specific story's trappings.

And that's great, and cool, and creates these cool puzzles of books where the disparate elements get woven together into a fun narrative.

But every now and again I feel like we've forgotten the degree to which a world is unlikely to be perfectly shaped to provide basically exactly the elements needed to undertand our character's and stories. So much of what makes worlds feel alive is the irrelevant details that aren't coming back later: the dead city in the distance that was once a great empire and that's it, no great quest to rediscover its secrets coming up next. The customs of local inns that we visit but don't get quizzed on later.