Seeing mainly the bigger picture?

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We are supposed to be focused on details, to the point of missing the bigger picture.
While I enjoy zooming in on tiny details, most of the time I only see the bigger picture.
We are supposed to "see the individual trees, but not the whole forest". I sometimes feel like I only see the whole forest, without seeing individual trees.

Anybody else is like that?

I think I see the bigger picture better than most people.

A good example of this is how everyone seems to think exams and GCSEs are super-important, if you don't get them, your life is over.

Well, no, that's just not true. Even if I were to come out of school with no qualifications at all, there are still loads of things I could do, qualifications are only important if you want to be employed. But Bill Gates isn't employed by anyone, is he? And Richard Branson got bad grades in school.

Yet, most people are so closed minded that they think life is only about getting grades, getting a job, getting married, having kids, getting a mortgage, then spending the rest of your life being stressed out looking after all that crap. But if you look at the bigger picture, it's plain to see there is a lot more to life and to the world than that.

Yes, I find details and trivia terribly annoying, I prefer to work with generalities.

Trivia are - dare I say it? - trivia. I have at hand a lot of detail, but only insofar as they are bricks in a pattern, and the pattern, the Gestalt, the overview is the thing. If I drop a brick or two, I can recover them so long I habve the pattern.

I would tend to agree that most people are much less adequate at seeing the big picture. Most of them are flatland thinkers, no depth, no perspective.

Great to see you again Ken.

This issue always interests me.

When we met last summer I was left
feeling that we were like 'brothers
in the spectrum' in that I saw you as
like me being a very right brained
dominant aspie.

Einstein too had the gift of seeing life
dualisticly and non-dualistically. He
was a detail man and yet deeply
religious and mystical.

I would say that my rightbrained-ness
put off my dx for over 44 years, as
I was so 'un-geeky'

Go well out there Ken.

Chris

I'm very much the "detail oriented" stereotype. It's actually sometimes a problem, because I'm often incapable of seeing the bigger picture with anything, be it a situation or a drawing I'm working on haha. I've found that when I draw or paint, the details are all spot on but the overall composition and proportions tend to be off...

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I tend to switch on and off. Some times I'll be working on a project and I'll skip over some things for the sake of completion, but other times I'll be so focused on trying to get one thing perfect it drives me nuts.

I only see the bigger picture, I'm very bad with details.

I hate the narrow minded thinking 100% deductive thinkers have.

While I'm better at seeing the big picture, it's usually the details I pick up on that no one else notices that pretty much always seems to change everything; and believe me...I'm gonna notice that detail.

I do both, but quite often see big pictures and connections instead of the details.

Perhaps that comes with ADD or because of the fact that my brain is fairly balanced left/right.

Mostly I'm immersed in the details and I have a lot of difficulty in switching my attention to the Big Picture, but once I'm in BP land I'm fairly comfortable with it. Really a Big Picture is little different to a Small Picture......just a matter of focussing on another level, just like moving onto the next picture in an art gallery, though the brain needs a bit of time to realign itself. I don't think there's anything intrinsically hard or Aspie-unfriendly about it.

I suppose most of us use the Big Picture whenever we use a computer - unless it's your special interest, you probably just use the graphical interface without trying to figure out what's happening to the 0s and 1s in the RAM......though I do recall that when I first started learning about computers, I had trouble overcoming my curiosity about exactly how they worked - and when I failed to suss it all out on that level, I had a very bad feeling that my understanding of computers was deeply flawed. But I got over it. I still don't know how my computer works, but I know how to work it, and that's all I need to know. Life's too short to trace out every stupid detail.

I do have a penchant for the details and am generally more comfortable in that "head space," so I have some tendency to drift back to detail, but it's not insurmountable, and it only takes somebody to remind me that there's a bigger picture I'm missing, for me to appreciate that I need to look up. It's harder to get it right when I'm stressed out or tired, and then I can end up lavishing care and attention on the tiniest, most insignificant details. I think I also do that if I "let myself go," so I suspect it's a natural tendency of mine to be a "detail thinker," and that I only stay out of the trap by routinely applying corrective pressure to my thinking style. A while back I was looking back at my life and I was rather dismayed at how much time I'd wasted on details when a quick glance at the Big Picture would have shown me much easier ways of getting what I wanted. So I guess I took the point and am now rather more careful about locking myself away for years trying to re-invent the wheel.

I believe I am engrossed in the details, more so than the bigger picture. (Could someone clarify what it means when someone says 'detail oriented', and 'seeing the big picture' that way I can double check the way my brain works. Thanks. )

Thinking about the big picture is most automatic for me. However, I also notice details, and my way of getting at which "big picture" someone means can involve asking questions like "when you use word X, do you mean Y or Z?" which seems incredibly nitpicky and detail-oriented to those who don't feel the need to think very precisely.

So basically, I can think either big picture or small picture, but it's hard for me to figure out how to use them both together. Which I use depends more on my skill level in an area than which is actually optimal for the situation. In areas of strength, I use big picture thinking supplemented by details. In practical areas where I'm weakest, I didn't learn the big picture when I was younger, so I tend to over-rely on details. In social areas, I get the big picture, but figuring out how to apply it in real-time (which is based on detailed cues) isn't automatic yet.

Often I feel great loneliness around detail orientated and analytical people. I crave the meal not the menu.

I can be obsessed by details, but often these details would be what I would perceive as essential links that make the whole or essence. I seek wholeness, integration and unity, over perfection.

My soul and autism are made up of two complementary opposites. My mind is analytical, my soul is philosophical. One seeks to cut up and divide, the other seeks connection.

The dance between these two aspects of my being, is becoming more harmonious and less cumbersome.