Change the world
line by line

The pencil and paper are powerful thinking, learning, and planning tools that take us closer to the desired goal. By using our innate ability to see both with our eyes and imagination and resorting to simple drawing, it gives us a whole new way to discover hidden ideas, develop them intuitively and share with others in such a way that they understand. Although both imagination and scribbling are our innate abilities, we do not make them work for our advantage as grown-ups (and sadly already also in school). We either do not dare to do so or are convinced that we cannot scribble, consider it too time-consuming, or think that drawing is for small children.

 

Thinking with a pencil has many different names. Good children have multiple names after all. You might find names, such as visualisation, visual thinking, visual or graphic simplification, visual or graphic recording, but their essence remains the same. It includes making any verbal text – be it either your thoughts inside your head or information and knowledge that you hear/read/speak of – visible. Visual facilitation is like a filter that allows to distinguish the important from the unimportant and to make complex things simpler.

Putting things down on paper allows us to see the associations and the whole picture more easily, we are more creative and more efficient thinkers. This, in turn, makes us better listeners, learners, speakers, performers, partners, and leaders.

 

We shall look at visual thinking through three stories:

 

Story 1

You tell your colleagues about a new idea with enthusiasm. Your eyes glow, your hands gesticulate, the words flow out of you. However, it seems that no one understands what you are talking about and the questions start piling in: “What is the result?”, “What does it have to with today?”, “How shall we do it?”, “What is my role?”, “I don’t really understand…?” etc. Eventually, you grab a paper and a pencil and draw a quick sketch of your idea. Some boxes, some arrows, a few keywords. And suddenly there is clarity because they can see your idea and what you are talking about. They start contributing their ideas and in the best scenario, this diagram leads to new, progressive questions.

SIMPLE AND CLARIFYING SCRIBBLING SHOULD NOT BE THE LAST STRAW THAT WE HOLD ON TO BUT ONE OF THE FIRST TOOLS FOR MORE EFFICIENT CO-OPERATION!

 

Story 2

Every day, you have very many obligations and loads of things to remember. Sometimes it feels that your head is about to explode and you don’t know where to start. And then a good friend reminds you that you should put things down on paper. You do it. Suddenly, a lightness arrives, you have some more breathing space, even physically. Your head clears up. This is how it is. You do know the saying that your head is not a rubbish bin. In our daily activities, it is the short-term memory that we use and where we put our ongoing issues. However, the short-term memory has a limited volume and thus it cannot receive things endlessly. Try and imagine now that your short-term memory is full of a to-do list. How could there possibly be any space to start planning actually doing those things?

PUTTING THINGS DOWN ON PAPER HELPS TO KEEP THE SHORT-TERM MEMORY CLEAN AND THIS, IN TURN, BRINGS MORE LIGHTNESS INTO OUR DAILY LIFE AS WELL AS MORE EFFICIENT ACTIONS!

 

Story 3

Once we set ourselves a goal, we usually also plan the steps that take us towards it. If lucky, we also think about the starting position, more rarely we think of the values, possibilities, and dangers. But thinking on its own is not enough. It is easy to dream, much harder to fulfill the dream. It is so easy to dream because we can imagine it. What if we put the entire journey on paper as well? We shall literally put our dream in front of our eyes to see the connections, feel the movement, and notice the progress. People have been long drawn to maps: geographical maps and town maps to go from point A to point B. Reaching your goal is also going from one point to another.

THERE IS A LOT OF TRUTH IN THE SAYING: “PUT YOUR DREAMS DOWN ON PAPER AND YOU SHALL BE HALFWAY THERE ALREADY”. CREATING AN IMAGE OF YOUR GOALS HELPS TO SEE THE WHOLE PICTURE AND ASSOCIATIONS AND IT ALSO MAKES YOU ACT!

 

For visual thinking, you do not need much else than a piece of paper and a pencil (or an ink pen, blackboard and chalk, flipchart and a felt pen, digital board, tablet, etc.), the need to create the big picture, and the content. And this big picture will be ready to be born. It all starts with the desire to do things differently, to think outside the box, to be brave! Once you have drawn the first line on the paper, the second and the third shall also appear. Yes, it does require some courage and initiative because most of us think that we cannot draw. Actually, drawing does not play such a big role in it as thought: simply frame the texts, create a structure, show the connections and the whole picture. Once you start using this technique actively, you shall discover that it makes you give a sense to the processes around you more deeply.