It happens that moving from a detailed working view of crafting beautiful, meticulous code carries an obsessive and addictive quality which makes moving focus to see the big picture quite difficult to do smoothly. It would seem therefore that the ability to have ‘varifocal attention’ would be beneficial to all developers. Being able to zoom out from close up to wide angle, from detail to strategy would be great. Good ones do this naturally. The rest of us could probably use some help.

There are no-doubt other terms in many fields which describe this ability and countless methods and techniques for increasing this ability . I’m adding this to my to-lean list. I welcome discussion on this point and any links to resources would be great.

Meanwhile the new term we came up with ‘Varifocal Attention’ seemed to be a good one in this context. So here is how I’m describing it:

Varifocal Attention: The ability to change focus of attention when working. To move from highly-detailed to overall strategy with ease.