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home • AUG 17, 2018

Top Down and Bottom Up

What I want is to get done what the people desire to have done, and the question for me is how to find that out exactly.
Abraham Lincoln

Top down is a big picture approach. You know from the beginning what you want or where you’re going. You pick up specific skills and knowledge only as necessary since you are focused and you know where you’re going. You say yes to things that help you where you’re going and say no to things that will not help. This is a goal-oriented approach.

Bottom up is to take stock of the present and adopt an exploratory approach. You don’t know the ultimate destination, but you’re in search of it. You have to figure out what you really want. You have to make course corrections as you go. You acquire more general-purpose skills and knowledge along the way. This is a process-oriented approach.

You may need to use one or both of these approaches in a given situation.