The Power of Visual Thinking

What is Visual Thinking?

Visual thinking is our brain’s natural way to solve problems creatively. We picture the problem and its various outcomes in our mind’s eye. Ancient humans doodled solutions to their problems on cave walls. But in today’s world—especially in business situations—we’re in the habit of making lists, outlines, and spreadsheets, using only one dimension of our brains.

Visual thinking taps into multiple brain centers, getting us to the heart of the problem more quickly and helping us use creativity to solve problems, manage projects, streamline processes, communicate information, and gain buy-in from team members.

What are Mind Maps?

A mind map uses visual thinking to create an organized display of the plan, problem, or project—a diagram that mirrors the way our brains naturally processes information. Information and tasks radiate out from a central theme or goal, rather than falling below a header, as in a list. Related items link with connecting lines. New items can be captured randomly and then organized into the larger scheme, with new ideas flowing naturally as the map gains detail. Information can be illustrated with symbols, words, color, images, links, and attachments to add context, helping to reveal new directions, greater clarity, and big ideas.

A mind map works the way the human brain works, aided by a powerful graphical process. It frees the mind to think, visualize, and understand in ways that go beyond multi-paged linear documents. So when we need to brainstorm, plan, learn, organize, save time, improve recall, and manage the details of a complex life, a mind map is a great place to do it all.

I am still very much enthused by the use of mind maps which this week again has been of great help to me. You will recall over 2 years ago, I mentioned in my blog Tony Buzan’s contributions to Mind Mapping.