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Comment by ryanjshaw | Hacker News Reader

This seems to be an article written for neurotypical people and I envy them somewhat in this respect.

I live my life in the detail and while it has benefits for my career, it has been a source of exhaustion and frustration when communicating with people who don't live in the details i.e. the majority.

It seems much easier to live at the high level and choose to drill down into the details than to live in the details and remind yourself to step back, but I could be wrong.

For example: I edited this brief comment 8 times.

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As a non-neurotypical person myself, I sympathize with your feelings on the article, and felt them myself when reading it. But I also found it to be quite empowering. The truth is, whatever your field of work or interest is, the detail _is_ beautiful, and not everyone gets to experience it.

Don't get me wrong, there's a spectrum (no pun intended) and feeling constantly lost in a sea of details can be really disabling, especially in a social order that demands quick judgements, conformity, and adaptibility to constant change. (No "but" at the end of this paragraph, it just sucks.)

I feel like we live in a world w/ to many "high level people". At least in the world of software development. We need more people in the weeds. 20 Different high level ideas from high level stakeholders benefits no one. It's also way easier and maybe even more fun to be a "high level" abstract thinking. The devil and quite frankly the work is in the nuts and bolts but others want to to dismiss that as "sausage making".

That's surprising to me. I can't imagine what it would even mean to live your life at the lower abstraction levels, since those are things like molecules, cells, and muscle fibres.

I'm tempted to interpret your reply as saying you operate on a more detailed level than the average person, rather than the most detailed, but I don't want to put words in your mouth.

Sometimes being constantly absorbed in the details makes you miss the forest for the trees. High-level people have to think in broad stokes cause the details can be overwhelming. It's important to interface with the opposite type of person from time to time to get the whole picture.

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