How to get more from your brain by doing less.
There are some grossly under-utilised mental capabilities that we can tap into with ease and improve performance immediately.
Our brains crave visual patterns, colour, association and The Big Picture.
That's how we actually make sense of the outside world. For some reason in the workplace we diminish our access to these connective aspects of brain function.
We drift sub-consciously into working in the business to such an extent that we stop working on the business.
Our thoughts have been squeezed into dense text, numbers, lists and only occasional use of colour. Enjoyment of mental processing in work is regarded as frivolous. Work implies some sort of punishment rather than a relaxed exploration of possibilities.
What a terrible waste because the brain is virtually infinite in its capacity to handle rich media input.
We have an infinite capacity to remember pictures for example. That is worth repeating - AN INFINITE CAPACITY TO RECALL IMAGES. That strikes me as a great deal. The way to unlock it is simple €" start incorporating images into all forms of communication.
Think about seeing a person you have not met for 20 years. Even after the passage of time we can still recognise the original features and take account of the changes from ageing. What an incredible skill. We can spot a unique face in a crowd of 10,000 strangers in an instant. We evolved this skill of millions of years. It is innate. Imagery comes very easily to us. Images aid memory and trigger the generation of new ideas.
Images are proven to trigger free association more evocatively than words yet we still bias the workplace towards words. Infinite clearly applies to our associative skills. The total number of possible connections between the neurons in our brains if written down would be a 1 followed by 10.5 million kilometres of noughts. Expressing our ideas as pictures gives instant access to an unlimited resource whilst written lists actively close down the ability to connect ideas together.
Facial and image recognition clearly conferred evolutionary advantage. We could recognise other troupe members and recall the best places to go hunting or find water. Gestalt of Wholeness thinking also evolved to make sense of multiple inputs. We see patterns and themes which help us make sense of our wider landscape. This innate skill is instantly at our disposal.
Mind Manager 9 from MindJet helps convert data in business into graphics for improved recall, Gestalt vision and creative association. Lists can be quickly reframed as images. Graphics, charts, colour and even video can be €mashed up€ into maps. This massively enhances our capacity to relax into mental work rather than struggling with tasks. We evolved to think in pictures so why not unleash these talents we are so studiously hiding away.

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