Sunni Brown’s new book, “The Doodle Revolution: Unlock the Power to Think Differently,” argues that visual displays like doodles lead to quicker decision-making and help clarify problems.

Dean Meyers‘s insight:

Visual thinking starts at home… a twist on a well known phrase, but apt. Many people who don’t classify themselves as visual thinkers will sheepishly admit to doodling while on a call, or having drawn endless circles, spirals and other free-form lines while in the classrooom.

 

However, there are new thoughts about these random and supposedly purposeless drawings: doodling, looked upon with derision (note the story in the article about Ronald Reagan’s doodling as being a sign of his lack of interest/attention) really can be a great tool for improving memory, stimulating new ideas, and helping clarify thinking in general.

 

This article  lightly covers applied visual thinking, from basic and very personal doodling to graphic recording, sketchnotes and graphic facilitation.

 

Mentioned in the story are Sunni Brown,[note: Sunni is a personal friend and doodling/graphic facilitation colleague] a major proponent of doodling for the purposes just described above, Dan Roam, author of Back of the Napkin, and David Sibbett, probably the chief architect of the practice of Graphic or Visual Facilitation, and founder of the The Grove, one of the earliest if not the first company dedicated to graphic recording and graphic facilitation.

 

The article suggests that there are probably thousands of graphic facilitators in the world. The International Forum of Visual Practitioners (IFVP) currently has just under 300 registered members, but the Graphic Facilitation group page on Facebook has over 1500 members registered.

 

Doodling isn’t a waste of time, and can be the starting place for building thinking skills that apply across every field of knowledge.

See on www.nytimes.com