Is the inability to see “big picture” things a common adhd trait or just a “people are different” trait?
Example, ive never enjoyed jobs that involve long term planning because most of the managers etc have no clue how the actual work or the details of a project are done. They say they’ll “do x thing by y time” without knowing anything about it or the actual amount of work and expertise it would take.
Now im the one doing the detailed actual work. And I enjoy it because its real vs a bunch of people making a plan about something they dont even know how to do.
Same thing with “5 year plans”.I literally cannot do it because 1. All my plans involve “have money to do thing” and 2. You could easily get cancer and die in 5 years (or other big changes).
Now I do invest for long term (because its easy) but otherwise I find it very hard to look at big picture things without every single detail.


I’m not sure if what you describe is really an inability to get the big picture or the lack of available information to really base decisions on.
For me it’s hard to make that kind of decisions because other people can’t plan well and their estimates are notoriously wrong and forget to take into account a lot of things.
But what I’m really good at it seeing the bigger picture in the sense of knowing the interdependences between things. If I see a requirement I don’t just follow it point by point. I think about what how it fits into the whole and where things can go wrong and ask if people have considered that. (90% of time the answer is no)
So I consider seeing the big picture and the details my strength, but like you I struggle to plan ahead long-term or estimate things because I don’t feel confident with the amount of information available to make such guesses.