Zooming In and Out

Take a look at the photo accompanying this article. There is an incredible amount of detail and nuance to the image. Is it an aerial photo zooming out from the earth and showing roadways cutting through lush rural woodlands of some exotic location?

If you look closer, you’ll see that it’s not a photo zoomed out — it’s actually a photo zooming in. It’s an ultra-close detail photo of a leaf. The “roads” are really capillaries relaying nutrients to the leaf’s cell clusters which look like tiny little forests of their own.

Zooming in and zooming out of your projects offer different levels of detail

Zooming out allows you to see the whole picture of not just your project, but the environments in the surrounding areas which could impact or influence your project through mere proximity or actual contact (and to prepare for those interactions). It’s a great way to gain perspective.

Zooming in lets gives you microscopic insight into the components that come together to create the whole. As you zoom further and further down into the atomic level, you can plan for the production of the individual molecules that will combine in their final form to create this new idea you are bringing into the world.

Each Zooming view has its own value and benefits

The value and benefits vary based on where you are in the process, but the beauty of using Zooming is that you can dial in and out any time you wish — just like using a zoom ring on an old school camera or pinching in and out in the camera app of your phone.

Zoom in when you need to drill down to a detail level, and zoom back out when you need to refresh your global view of the project and how it connects to everything else.