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There are numerous reasons you might find yourself consumed by minutiae or chasing small rewards. These reasons include negative emotions (e.g., small but emotionally difficult situations grab your attention), pressing short deadlines, fatigue, or overwhelm.
To focus on the big picture when you’re having those experiences, you need specific habits and procedures for doing that. Habits and procedures will allow you to more consistently enact behaviors, no matter what your internal state is. They can also help us align our short-term demands with our long-term priorities.
Here we’ll cover five procedures for making sure you’re seeing the forest, not just the trees.
1. Consider a longer time frame
Thinking in longer time frames will naturally make you think bigger and more holistically.
Imagine you’re a runner. Exercise scientist Dr. Stephen Seiler recommends asking yourself how many workouts you’ll do this year. The reason: to plan the intensity distribution of those workouts, such as doing 80% as very easy runs, and 20% as high-intensity interval sessions. Dr. Seiler notes that this type of thinking can help with intensity discipline, meaning not going too hard when a workout is supposed to be easy. This, in turn, helps prevent burning out, injuring yourself, or being too tired to perform optimally for the workouts that are intended to be hard.
Considering long time frames can help you be more strategic and stick with your plans, but there can be some limits. In particular, thinking in a timeframe that’s too long can cause people to mentally credit themselves with work they haven’t done yet. If you imagine yourself doing 10 years of workouts, you might find yourself crediting yourself with having done all that work.
Experiment to find the most productive time frames to think in for different life domains or questions.
2. Imagine specific scenarios
Imagining specific scenarios can help you think about the big picture because it prompts you to think of the whole continuum of possibilities, not just the best or worst.
For example, each year when my spouse and I evaluate health insurance options, we routinely run numbers for at least three scenarios. We consider a scenario in which our use of health care services is very low, a high-use scenario (like a car accident involving multiple family members), and one to two medium-use cases. Considering all of these possibilities helps us make a well-thought-out decision, rather than solely expecting the worst or hoping for the best.
3. Each month, identify the best action you took in the past month
A monthly review of the best single action you took in the past month can help you understand your successes better and prevent time passing in a blur of inaction.
For your review, identify the action you took in the last month that will have the greatest impact on your life overall.
Pick a regular time and place for this review, along with any materials you want to use, whether that’s a pen and notebook, or your phone.
If you conduct a monthly review, you’ll complete 12 of these by the end of the year. What collection of best-of-the-month behaviors would satisfy you?
4. Try backcasting
Backcasting is a type of forecasting in which you work backward from a specific point in the future. Imagine your finances are currently a mess but in a year, you will have turned that around to the point you’re in good shape. How would you get there? What actions would it involve each month of the upcoming year?
Backcasting can be particularly useful for people who struggle with a slow and steady approach to goals.
5. Utilize imagery and stories that help you think holistically
After winning a silver medal at this year’s Olympics, I saw an interview with athlete Josh Kerr in which he talked about how he had hoped for gold, but that his silver was important in his body of work. Thinking in terms of body of work helped put his event performance in context.
In your career, whose body of work do you admire? If you prefer words to images, you might collect career stories of people in your field (or outside it) that help you think about doing meaningful work in a big-picture way. If you prefer visual imagery, you could collect images that help you do the same.
Thinking of your career contributions and the development of your craft/skills in this holistic way may help you choose the projects that will create the career you will be most proud of.
In sum, thinking big-picture can help us make smarter decisions, achieve meaningful accomplishments, and smooth out the bumps in the road of life. Try one or two of the strategies outlined here to improve your capacity and habits for this type of thinking. Use your chosen strategies when you feel overwhelmed, fatigued, or bogged down. See if it helps you feel happier, less stressed, and more confident in your actions.
