Big-Picture Thinking

When you're working on something creative, it's easy to get stuck in the details. You rewrite the same sentence. Move an image a few pixels. Try another color. Come up with another version that isn't really any different from the one before it.

There's nothing wrong with paying attention to details. That's part of making things well. But there are times when the problem isn't the sentence, the image, or the color.

You're just too close to see what's going on.

That's where big-picture thinking can help.

Look for connections

Leonardo da Vinci is a good example of someone who didn't seem particularly interested in keeping things in separate categories.

He studied painting, anatomy, engineering, architecture, nature, and whatever else caught his attention. He filled notebooks with drawings, questions, observations, and ideas. One subject often led him to another.

There's something useful in that way of working.

If you're a designer, you don't have to look only at other design. If you're a writer, you don't have to read only other writers. A photographer can learn something from architecture. A musician can find an idea in mathematics. A product designer can look at the way a beehive works.

Sometimes the idea you're looking for is sitting in a completely different field.

The trick is being curious enough to notice it.

Step back and look for the pattern

Charles Darwin spent years collecting observations about plants, animals, geography, and variation. The observations themselves weren't necessarily dramatic. The interesting part was what happened when he started putting them together.

A larger pattern began to emerge.

That can happen in creative work, too.

You might notice that the same problem keeps coming up in different projects. Or that people respond to certain ideas in similar ways. Maybe three unrelated things you've been reading about suddenly start to feel connected.

When that happens, it's worth stopping for a minute.

Ask yourself:

• What keeps showing up?
• What do these things have in common?
• Is there something connecting them?
• Am I seeing a pattern that I didn't notice before?

You don't always need more information. Sometimes you need to look at the information you already have differently.

Question the question

Albert Einstein is another interesting example.

A lot of his work came from questioning assumptions that other people had taken for granted. Instead of simply trying to solve a problem within the existing rules, he was willing to question the rules themselves.

That's a useful habit when you're stuck.

The first question is usually:

How do I fix this?

But try asking:

Why am I trying to fix it this way?

Or:

Am I even solving the right problem?

Say you're trying to improve a product and your first instinct is to add another feature. Maybe the answer isn't another feature. Maybe the product has too much going on already.

Or you're trying to make a process faster. Instead of figuring out how to do every step faster, maybe one of the steps doesn't need to happen at all.

Changing the question can change the problem.

Look at the whole system

Buckminster Fuller spent much of his career thinking about how things fit together. His work crossed architecture, design, technology, resources, and questions about how people live.

You don't have to think like an architect or engineer to use the same approach. Although award-winning architect Donald Rattner might change your mind.

Just look beyond the thing you're working on.

A book isn't just words on a page. There's a reader on the other side of those words.

A product isn't just a collection of features. Someone has to use it, live with it, recommend it, complain about it, or eventually stop using it.

A workplace isn't just an office and a set of rules. It's also the people, habits, incentives, and relationships that develop around them.

The more of the picture you can see, the more possibilities you have to work with.

Think about the experience

Walt Disney wasn't interested only in making individual movies or attractions. He was interested in the experience surrounding them.

The same kind of thinking showed up in Steve Jobs's approach to technology and design. A product wasn't just about what it could technically do. The way it looked, felt, and fit into someone's life mattered too.

That's worth remembering when you're making something.

Don't stop at the thing itself.

Think about the person encountering it.

What do they see first?

What do they expect?

What do they feel?

What happens next?

A good idea can become a much better one when you start thinking about everything that surrounds it.

Pay attention to context

Jane Goodall's work with chimpanzees is another good reminder that small observations can lead to much larger questions.

She spent years watching individual animals and recording their behavior. Over time, those observations helped build a much broader understanding of chimpanzee social behavior and our relationship with the natural world.

The lesson for creative work is fairly simple: pay attention to context.

An idea doesn't exist in a vacuum. It has a time, a place, an audience, and a reason for being there.

Something that feels ordinary today might look completely different a few years from now. Something that doesn't work for one audience might work beautifully for another.

So when something catches your attention, don't just ask what it is.

Ask what it's connected to.

That question can take you somewhere.

Don't forget the details

There's a downside to always thinking about the big picture.

You can spend so much time thinking about possibilities that you never actually make anything.

Big ideas still have to become real. And making things real usually means dealing with details.

A writer needs to understand the whole story and still rewrite a sentence.

An architect needs to see the entire building and still figure out how a door should work.

A photographer needs to think about the composition and still notice the distracting object in the corner of the frame.

Creative work moves between those two views.

Sometimes you need to pull back. Sometimes you need to get very close.

Knowing which one you need at the moment is part of the process.

Try stepping back

The next time you get stuck, don't automatically spend another hour working on the same problem.

Walk away. Make some coffee. Go for a walk. Come back tomorrow if you can.

Then ask yourself:

• What am I really trying to do?
• What's the bigger problem underneath this one?
• What assumptions am I making?
• What else is this connected to?
• Has someone in a completely different field dealt with something similar?
• What would I do differently if I were starting over?
• If I looked at this five years from now, what might seem obvious that I can't see today?

You probably won't need all of those questions.

One of them might be enough.

And once you've stepped back, go back to the work. Pick one thing and do it.

Because the point of seeing the bigger picture isn't to stay up there forever.

It's to come back with a better idea of where you're going.

You Never Step into the Same River Twice

Heraclitus is commonly associated with the idea that you never step into the same river twice.

It's a simple image. The river looks like the same river, but the water is constantly moving. And when you come back to it, you've changed, too.

Creative work works much the same way.

An idea that didn't make sense six months ago might make perfect sense now. Something you thought was finished might suddenly seem unfinished. A problem that felt impossible might look different after you've learned something new.

The circumstances around the work are always changing. So are you.

That's a good reason to step back once in a while.

You might not need to look at the problem any harder.

You might just need some distance.

Sometimes, when you get far enough away, you can finally see what was there all along.