💡 Level of Detail Flexibility

Being able to zoom in on details, or zoom out to the bigger picture, is a key skill for looking at projects.

For zooming out, the same activity can be:

- a project
- a sub-tree within a larger project
- a single node within a much larger project

For zooming in, an activity can be:

- a project
- multiple projects (some or all nodes in original get their own entire project)
- multiple groups of projects (you split it into multiple projects, then split those projects into multiple projects)

In my lists, I've given 0, 1, and 2 levels of zooming out or in. One can go further too. You could zoom out to a parent project 10+ times, or zoom in to a sub-project 10+ times.

This is best understood with trees. Zooming out means traversing the tree towards the root (towards parents/ancestors), and zooming in means traversing away from the root (towards children/descendants/leaves). A project consists of one node (project name) plus its children (steps). Each step may itself be a project with its own child steps, and so on. But you can collapse (hide the children of) nodes when that level of detail isn't needed. And you can look at a sub-tree and hide the rest of the original tree to increase level of detail.

Example:

Project: Make cereal. It has some steps (get bowl, get milk, pour, eat, etc)

Zoom in: Reveal the steps that make up the "Get milk" step from making cereal 
Zoom in more: Reveal the steps that make up the "open the fridge" step from getting milk
Zoom in even more: "grasp fridge door" is now a project consisting of multiple muscle activations in coordination with eyesight

Zoom out: A bigger project containing "make cereal" is "make breakfast for me" (it's not the only option – making cereal is a sub-project of many different larger projects. it's a reusable component that adds value in multiple circumstances).
Zoom out more: "Make breakfast for me" is a sub-project of the larger "make breakfast for whole family" project which involves making more food.
Zoom out way more: Now the project is "have a good day" and making breakfast is a single node in that project.
Zoom out even more: Now the project is "live well for a year" and now making breakfast on one day is hidden. it's at too low a level of detail to be relevant. though we could still expand things and go find it if we wanted.

Do you understand? Can you explain some other examples? And does anyone know how to show projects with tree diagrams and how to make trees illustrating how zooming in or out on projects works? Please share if you can do it. If no one can do it, I'll show it in a few days.