Personal Development
Visual Thinking: Imagination is the Only Limitation
, Community Leader
Sep 19, 2024
6 minutes
I've noticed that when I consume shallow content—like entertaining YouTube videos or Facebook Shorts—or when I focus solely on work tasks, my vision narrows, and my imagination withers. The images in my mind become fewer and lose their vivid outlines.
On the other hand, when I read books, meditate, write, or engage in active consumption of content, I feel more whole. I can reflect for hours, connecting one idea to another, posing questions, and offering answers, then generating more questions, and so on. It’s akin to the ability to foresee moves in a chess game many steps ahead.
The Power of Visual Thinking
Recently, I discovered that there's a term for this: "Visual Thinking." It’s a skill essential for any creator. If you’re an entrepreneur, having a clear vision of the business you’re trying to build is crucial. Understanding how the system will work, the processes within it—this is just as vital for SaaS products, experience design, customer journey maps, empathy maps, and business model canvases. These artifacts transfer your visual thinking onto paper, freeing your mind for new images. This principle applies equally to writers, designers, developers, and many others.
Habits That Help (And Hurt) Your Imagination
Now that we’ve established the importance of visual thinking, let’s identify some beneficial daily habits to cultivate it, as well as harmful habits to eliminate.
1. Disconnect Before Bed
Two hours before sleep, turn off your smartphone and laptop to reduce cognitive load. Try reading a book to inspire your brain with new images and ideas before drifting off.
2. Cold Showers
Jumping into a cold shower first thing in the morning is a game-changer. Yes, I hated it at first too, but nothing energizes me for the next three hours like it does. Plus, “embrace discomfort” is a great mantra for stepping out of your comfort zone. After a week or two, you’ll genuinely start to enjoy it.
3. Digital Detox in the Morning
For the first couple of hours after waking, forget about the digital world. Immerse yourself in silence to allow images to surface in your mind. Notifications, emails, news, and video-watching during breakfast kill this state of mind. You might find yourself rushing to work or zoning out and consuming content mindlessly. You know how unemployed people spend their time? Surveys show they watch video content almost all day.
4. Meditation
This might be the best thing you can do to develop visual thinking. Just sit in silence and observe the images flowing through your mind. No analysis, no criticism—just be present. It enhances concentration, sensory perception, and your connection to reality.
5. Free Writing
From time to time, transfer your thoughts onto paper to clear mental space for new ideas. Otherwise, you’ll just find yourself stuck in a loop of the same thoughts, a kind of mental chewing gum that drains your energy. Regularly clearing out that storage is essential.
6. Mindfulness Practice
Fears and worries accumulate in our subconscious. We try to ignore them, but they linger, negatively impacting our character and making us weak and insecure. It’s worth mentioning that this also affects the boldness of our dreams. Allow yourself to dream big; internally, you need to feel you have the right to do so.
7. Physical Activity
Sticking to a structured daily routine can be tough. Stress builds up and seeks an outlet. If we don’t do anything about it, it manifests as passive aggression, outbursts, or bursts of rage. Regular exercise is crucial for maintaining consistency in self-development.
8. Social Life
This point ties back to the previous one. We need emotional fuel to avoid burnout and apathy. Like batteries, we recharge through social interactions, gaining emotions, ideas, and knowledge, especially when we converse with people who have different experiences from ours (like digital entrepreneurs and musicians).
9. Meaningful Consumption of Information
Initially, I thought of books, but this applies to anything. Actively process information, making it a part of your experience. Even YouTube can be a fantastic tool if you master its algorithms. Identify your interests and create separate accounts for each. Our brains tend to be lazy; if you watch a two-hour lecture that feels exhausting, and shallow content pops up in your recommendations, you might switch to that video and never return. It’s crucial that recommendations align with your interests, and separate accounts help with that. The best way to strengthen willpower is to avoid situations where it’s needed.
10. Associative Thinking Exercises
If we want to improve our thinking skills, we need to practice creating associations quickly. There are several techniques, but keep it simple for daily practice. Here are two exercises:
a) Word Association: Say a word, then name something associated with it, and keep going. For example, "apple" – "juice" – "sweet" – "ice cream" – "cold."
b) Story Building: I say 1-3 sentences in story format and create the next sentence based on the last word, but it must be completely unrelated. This helps us generate a variety of visual images in our minds instead of fixating on one idea.
11. Sketching and Visual Noting
I haven’t tried this yet, but I want to make it part of my daily habits. For instance, when I read a social media post, I create a visual explanation for it.
Implementing Change
At first, I thought this text would be only about visual thinking and how it sets visionaries apart from others. But I ended up realizing that if you don’t make developing this skill part of your daily routine, the knowledge will soon be forgotten, and all of this will become useless. If something seems important, it’s worth turning it into a habit, and for that, you often need to let go of something else. I hope my list of do's and don’ts helps you find new ways to develop yourself and your abilities.
