Posts

Comments

Comment by Brad Williamson (brad-williamson) on Explaining Visual Thinking · 2019-11-10T21:31:25.760Z · LW · GW

I'm a visual thinker, and I'd say it's both a blessing and a curse.

Blessing, because, based on my own personal experience, my brain projects a million images per moment, each with their own story, each colliding into the other to fuel a very abstract form of thinking: In other words: the chaos of criss-crossing communications can be be great for creative problem solving/innovating.

Curse, because, again, you have a million thoughts each moment; but, you're only human—you can only process so many at a time. This causes you to forget a lot of important stuff; stuff you really wanted to remember, but can't, as a result of distractions or new thoughts trampling over it.

To be an effective visual thinker, you must always have on hand something to take notes with. Also, you've gotta have your ears listening out for your intuition's voice. I find that when I'm paying close attention to it, it makes sense of what my mind is trying to paint for me. It tells me the words I can use to describe it. Then that notepad, or voice recorder comes out and I make a record of it before I imagine something else that'll suplex it into the ether.

Oh, and a fun fact: If you wanna know if the person you're talking to is a visual thinker, see if they're staring out into the distance or closing their eyes while they're talking. That's a sign that they're trying to communicate something important to them to you, and they don't want the friendly gesture of looking you in your eyes to distract their train of thought.