What an incredibly on-the-nose anecdote, I love it!

The term of art for this strategy is "size to the horizon". Imagine you're looking across an open plain. The trees and rocks closer to you are bigger and you can make out more detail. The ones further away are still abstract.

You have to know exactly what to do with the things right in front of you, but you have to keep only a general awareness of that which is distant.