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Boost Creativity by Thinking in Pictures

Image by Levelord on Pixabay
Image by Levelord on Pixabay

 

Please try these little thinking exercises:

a) Recite a line from a poem – any line, any poem.

b) Sing along in your head to a tune you heard recently.

c)  Calculate 60% of (4 + 7 +9).

d) Remember a scene from a film and give it a different ending.

If you completed the exercise then you used your brain in four different ways.  You employed:

a) Word and language skills

b) Music and rhythm

c) Mathematical or numerical reasoning

d) Visual thinking

Which mode of thinking suits you best?  And which do you use most of the time?  In business, word and language skills dominate.  We talk about things at meetings. We read and write emails and reports.  Occasionally we use numerical or basic mathematical thinking as we complete spreadsheets or calculate percentages.  We use visual thinking rarely and musical thinking hardly ever.  Most of our thinking and communication at work is in words.  We should use pictures more often because they are powerful communication tools and many people think visually.

You dream in pictures. You remember people by the image of their face.  If I ask you to imagine a new service, a new product or a new customer experience  you will most likely picture it in your mind before turning your idea into words.  Pinterest, Instagram and Youtube are all popular because they are visual media.  When the police set up a major incident room after a murder they set up a notice board covered with pictures with arrows and timelines.  They build a story board of what happened.  When Crick and Watson discovered the structure of DNA they did not do it with mathematics or chemical symbols – they had to imagine the shape of the double helix.

Let’s introduce more pictures into our meetings and in particular into our brainstorm meetings.  People react differently to pictures and images can often spark new and different ideas.

For an ideas meeting I suggest that you use dozens of pictures.  They can either go around the wall or on a PowerPoint slide show.  Some people use pictures of things related to the topic in hand but I prefer completely random pictures.  Get a list of random words from a dictionary or from the internet.  Then go to a free picture site such as pixabay.com.  Enter the random word into the search box and then use say the fifth photo or picture which is displayed.  Do this for 20 words and you have 20 random pictures.  You can use these pictures as a random stimulus where the group calls out ideas based on a picture.  People build on each others’ ideas.  Alternatively, you can show the pictures sequentially and everyone has to write down ideas silently and on their own.  Take a little time on each picture.  Then they pair and share.  In small groups of two or three people pool their ideas and develop one or two to feed back to the whole group.  I have tried this approach with groups and people generally like the fresh stimulus that pictures bring.  And they often generate really novel ideas.

Another idea is to use a cartoonist to draw pictures of the main issues, decisions and actions in a meeting.  Then circulate the cartoon to all the attendees.  Likely they will remember the key points better.

The methods that work for group brainstorms also work for individual creativity.  Try random pictures to provoke your thinking.  If you are working on a project, say writing a book or redecorating a house, then keep a scrapbook with cuttings from magazines.  Or use Pinterest to pin internet images.  Include anything that appeals to you, amuses you or shocks you.  When you need some new ideas browse the scrapbook.

Improve your communication by using more pictures.  Use images but also you can paint a picture with words.  Instead of giving a dry factual description of your idea tell a story, ‘Imagine a customer using this new product…..’  People relate to pictures and stories.  Use pictures to stimulate ideas, visualise ideas and communicate ideas.

7 thoughts on “Boost Creativity by Thinking in Pictures

  1. Paul

    I began communicating as a young child using visuals: drawingss

    doodles
    drawings
    traced cartoons
    copied cartoons
    original cartoons

    sadly your replay system doesn’t allow the use of visuals

  2. Great post Paul and so true I am an analyst by background, but have developed a picture and music thinking and communicating methodology It is amazing the benefits that accrue to myself using this communication and learning style I will be @Thortvoicing a summary of your Key points – very valuable content for future presentations regards Colin

  3. Great post, Paul. The mathematician, Benoit Mandelbrot, the pioneer of fractal geometry, said that his mathematical insights were invariably driven by his ability to see complex problems visually.

  4. Thank you for providing such an informative and well-structured blog post. The information you shared was comprehensive, and I liked how you addressed common misconceptions about the topic. To learn more, click here.

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