Worm’s Eye View vs. The Bird’s Eye View
Perhaps the evolution of critical thinking skills naturally starts with being passionately curious in a self-chosen domain. Often young coaches are eager to learn from what one would call the worms eye view.
Worms Eye View: In this world, the young coach has a granular view looking up from down below.
From my personal experience, this starts the evolution of what I call first principles knowledge. Specific understanding of fundamental principles such as biomechanics, adaptation, and programming. All critical elements for the practitioner to procure. However, at some point in the quest for developing critical faculties, boundaries need to be pushed beyond first principles. As coaches progress their content knowledge, new views emerge.
The Birds Eye View: In this world, the coach has an aerial view looking down from high above.
The questions now become: how can we remove the silos of knowledge we have accumulated? What other domains can we pull/learn from? Philosophy, statistics, economics, psychology? How do we become Swiss army knives of knowledge, serial specialists that view the performance landscape as vast and rich?
The reality is that both views are needed at different stages of the coaching process. As a young coach, I was eager to specialize. I viewed the performance landscape with horse blinders. I dug many deep holes, and at times lost site of the interwoven connections. Most, if not all, of my education was content specific. Fast forward to the present and my view has changed. Perhaps it was reading the likes of Karl Popper, Gerd Gigerenzer, or listening to the likes of Coach Dan Pfaff or Russ Roberts. Most of my continuing education these days has nothing, but everything to do with performance. I would like to think I view the performance landscape today with dragonfly vision.
Full Circle
I recently went back to school (from a 17-year hiatus) as a 40-year-old PhD student. My view changed once again. The worm had reemerged. Targeted readings, specialization, and study. It was a phenomenal experience as it taught me so many valuable insights and evolved my skeptical lens. Perhaps the best summation came from a joke I heard regarding the PhD process: “You learn more and more, about less and less, until you know absolutely everything, about nothing.” A joke that you could only get with birds’ eye vision.
Both views are important. The worms eye view provides the “brick” while the birds eye view provides the “mortar.” This is the structure and foundation of critical thinking.
