"Not Seeing the Forest for the Trees"

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I think this is a phenomenon that many of us deal with.
Becoming wrapped up in the details of a situation, so as to entirely miss the larger "point".
I would like to start a discussion about how each of us may encounter this process. And it'd be great if we could share our past experiences of "trees" instead of "forest", being that much of the social world around us is so dependent on "forests", or multifaceted integrative concepts, as opposed to "trees", the isolated ideas and sensory input that can define a lot of the autistic mind.

Let me offer a couple of personal examples.

The first one is nearly literal, in that it is about my garden.
I obsessively collect and cultivate plants. I have a small suburban property to work with, upon which I have managed to plant more than two-dozen trees, many shrubs, and all sorts of odd little plants of many kinds. I see a beautiful geometric and taxonomic harmony in the arrangement of each and every one. Yet I am told by others that my garden is chaotic, haphazard, scattered, crazy. And I try to look at it from an outside perspective, and I realize that they have a point. What I have cannot properly be called a landscape. It is a collection of individual plants with no apparent organization. "Trees", not a "Forest".

Another is from years ago, when I worked at a big-box store, stocking shelves. One time I was straightening up items on shelves at closing time, and I heard over my walkie-talkie the voice of one of the managers. He said sternly, "Hey, what are we looking at?" Apparently he had been watching what I was doing on one of the CCTV screens, and disapproved. I realized suddenly that I had stopped organizing and straigtening about half-way down the aisle, and was intently studying the visual and olfactory characteristics of a bottle of some kind of bath soap. I literally snapped out of a fog of intense observation of one thing, into the broader context of what it was I was supposed to be doing, which involved many things. More "Trees". I didn't work there for very long.

So, please share your experiences of "not seeing the forest for the trees". Also, please discuss what you think may be the cause of this phenomenon, and furthermore, what may be done about it when it may become troublesome.

This is a big, big issue with me. I don't have time at the moment, to make a long post about my expereinces, but I will post what I think is the cause:
Taken from http://www.conceptmaps.it/KM-Autism-eng.htm

It always happens to me when doing math exercises. I always want to get every little detail, and thus i make them more difficult than they really are. So when i see someone else doing the same exercise, i am amazed at how simple it is.

It has a good side too. I remember that when i was a little boy i used to play basketball in a team, and many people would go to the games and watch us play. I never got nervous because i could only see 4 or 5 of the ten players playing at that moment. The audience just didn't exist to me. I focused on what i was doing and that was all.

This makes writing research papers extremely difficult for me. I have no problem with writing, but organzing the information into one paper is hard for me.

I notice this with my poetry. I'll get stuck on how two or three words sound together and then realize that the entire poem itself makes absolutely no sense.

I have that too. I have a hard time switching from fine detail to bigger picture definitely.

I have this problem in human relationships: I focus on the few times that people have let me down and hurt me, and instead of thinking that it was just a slip-up, or a minor fault, I obsess on it to the point that I never quite trust them again.

On the flip side, some people are horrible to me, yet if they do one nice thing, I trust them all over again...

I'm doing my best to see people as a sum of their pasts and itneractions... it's really difficult though.

There's one example from my experience that i only recently discovered. It's about software development. While we were learning our craft as programmers, everyone else was focusing in the "forest": objects, polymorphism, components, software architecture, documentation, the business side of things, new technologies (SOAP, DAC, XML, OCX, OLE...), standards and regulations. Meanwhile i only focused on the "trees", language statements: if, else, while, ?:, goto, void* and so on. I didn't see objects talking to each other in my head, i only saw mathematical instructions being executed and memory values changing. So i was good at optimizing code, but the times have changed, now nobody wants optimized code that only i can read, now they want team players... people who write more comments than code.

May i enquire as to the purpose of your research?

I get accused of being a packrat alot because I place a specific importance or nostalgia upon many separate things and keep them all, not realizing that added up together it is one big disheveled mess. I have a hard time keeping my room straight and organized with this mindset, becausE Im always adding things to that pile. Also when I am finally cleaning up and reorganizing, I will find something that I made as a child or otherwise has sentimental value and then I will concentrate on that or maybe even go do some online research about it if Im suddenly interested and completely forget about cleaning my room. All of these things in this thread are indications of intense focus on one particular and seemingly ignoring the rest. but we havent ignored the overall view, so much as pushed it aside in favor of the details. Because the details are frankly so much more involving.

Another example is art. I love to draw. but while many of my friends who, for example, would be asked to draw a car, thats what they would do. they would draw a simple car and be done with it. But not me. Id sit there for an hour thinking of what kind of car I want to draw. Id come up with a new bodstyle, and work in some design features. then I would add the little functional bits to make it work. they will have moved onto other things, while I am still back there designing some masterpiece of a car design