Do you Organize Your Life by Words or Visual Thinking?
Do you Organize Your Life by Words or Visual Thinking
?
A lot of the time I think in words, or language. I hear something on the news, see someone, read something and I start an internal dialogue in which I observe, comment or pass judgement.
I am walking my dog in the morning and I am thinking about the day ahead. I talk to myself about the meeting that I need to go to, the tasks that I want to accomplish.
At other times I think more visually, especially when thinking about the past. I remember my holiday last year in Florida and see myself swimming with a dolphin, getting soaked on the Ride the rapids funfair ride, drinking that margarita by the river.
Sometimes my thinking contains both words and images, like an internal TV set.
When it comes to organizing my life I use both visual and text based methods. I have a daily action or to do list. Using a text based system like a simple to do list is fine for dealing with the everyday tasks that I want to do.
I also have projects which are basically a collection of related actions that are grouped together. For example I've created a project for a new website that I am designing for a client. There are a number of actions required to complete the project: buy domain name, do keyword research for site, design look of site, put content into site and so on. Some of these actions are today's to do list, and others are on a list of things that I need to do later. I can structure a simple text list to organise my project:
My Project
Task 1 do today
Task 2 do today
Task 3 do today
Task 4 do later
Task 5 do later
This is fine for simple tasks and projects.
But what happens if my project is more complicated and involves lots of tasks, involves a large team of people and requires lots of resources and takes many months to complete? Maybe I'm organising a major event or conference. A text based system can soon become overwhelming. Who is doing what, when and where? For this type of project I need some sort of visual thinking aid: a gantt chart, a mind map or at least some flow diagrams.
Visual thinking lets you to see the connections or relationships between elements. Visual thinking allows you to step back from things and see the whole. Near where I live is a castle that sits on the top of a hill from where I can see the whole of a small town. Standing on the high street I can only see only a few buildings in the street. I cannot see how the High street connects to all the other streets.
One of the best visual thinking aids is mind mapping where you start with one central idea with branches leading off it. So, for example, if the mind map is about your business, then the name of the business is the central idea with branches leading to the other areas of your business such as:
Marketing and sales
Customer service
Suppliers
Finance
Under these areas are further branches so, for example, marketing could include:
Print media
Web site
Radio and TV ads
Public relations
The mind map method lets you see all the areas of your business and how they relate to each other.
There are several computer programs that help visual thinking. Dozens of mind mapping programs are available some free, others expensive but with extensive features.
There are some very innovative approaches to visual thinking software:
The Brain - a sort of 3d animated mind map
Topiscape - a 3D knowledge making program that lets you "fly" around your data
Tinderbox - A complicated but comprehensive way of visualising and accessing knowledge
Some people prefer a database text based type of approach even for complicated projects, as a database allow you to filter and focus on just the area that need your attention at any given moment in time. Others use flow charts or mind maps for everything, or sometimes you need a fusion of the two: text based information but organized in a visual way.
Which way is best? This depends on what sort of thinker you are. The best way, certainly if using computer software, is to try out the various programs and see which you find best.
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