Throughout our lives, whether as employees or students, we’ve been trained to focus heavily on the minutia—dates, names, and other tidbits of knowledge. Instead of understanding the “why”, we worry about all of the “what”. The “what” included the name of the theater that Lincoln was shot at and the exact decimals of Pi. And most importantly, these details were reinforced and incentivized through testing formats like true/false and multiple choice and questions we received while on the job.
At work, most of our time is spent in the details. Especially as a young professionals in the public or service sectors, our work is largely focused on achieving objectives set for us by others, whether other public administrators or elected officials. This is not a bad thing, per se, as most of the impact in an organization gets done through the implementation of these small details set under the stage of another’s vision. Yet, it can be challenging to see the big picture when we are only looking at a very small piece of it.
Yet, many of our classmates and colleagues are lost. They do not know what course or work details to focus on and consistently get thrown down the wrong rabbit hole focusing on everything. By being too fixated on the details, we can become distracted from what is the ultimate objective that we should be focusing on.
We need to stop and identify what is most important utilizing a 30,000 foot approach to our lives.
The 30,000 foot approach allows you to see the big picture. Pause, identify the essential tasks from the trivial ones, and see how your work will best achieve the desired results. This reflection is ultimately a tactic to become more dominant in our thinking and actions.
In our jobs, this can be done by starting each day and being aware of what is most important thing to accomplish that day, that week, and over the next few months. You must understand what vital to focus on based on your role and how can you achieve it.
In school, this means not reading every sentence of every assigned book or studying for every concept contained in the PowerPoint decks. Rather, one must pause to understand what the objective is of the lesson and determine how to allocate time to learn what is most important.
I’m not advocating for you to have pie-in-the-sky thoughts and become non-detail oriented. What I am arguing is you step away from the details to see what the big picture is to best allocate your effort towards. It will decrease the time you spend on the non-essential, minimize your stress levels, and increase the desired results on what is most important.
