We're ALL Visual Learners

If you're reading this sentence, you're a visual learner. To get to my blog, use your mouse, swipe your screen or click on the link I tweeted out, you have used the visual processing aspect of your brain. Just like you do to walk from your bed to the bathroom in the morning and pick up your toothbrush instead of a hair brush when you need to brush your teeth.

Almost two weeks ago I went to a talk by Dan Roam at the Rotman school here in Toronto and have been on a completely new mental direction ever since. Dan's book, 'Blah Blah Blah: What to do when words don't work', has been so affirming. It has set my creative imagination on fire and has prevented me from sleeping at a decent hour as my idea generator has been working overtime.

As Dan has stated in a number of fantastic podcast interviews (Boxes and Arrows, Mastermind Podcast, etc.), we have purposefully trained our brains to ignore the visual part of it that makes life so wonderful and meaningful. The linear and the verbal rule the world today. As he has said, we aren't electing Prime Ministers and Presidents based on their drawing skills, but rather their ability to talk. Contrast this present reality with another: the incredible growth of applications like Instagram and other platforms -Twitter and LinkedIn- updating their UI's to be more visually oriented.

Let me quote Dan here for a minute and target this passage to all those linear-focused business folk out there:

"The biggest buzzword in business these days is innovation. The business press, business leaders, and business schools can't say it enough: 'Innovation is the key to success.'...

When we're searching for innovation, aren't we simply seeking a different way of looking at the world? ...Why is it that at the moment in history when we most need to see the world differently, we don't force our mind to look at problems differently? If our goal is to look differently, where have all our pictures gone?"

Good question.
So, let's try an experiment. Take a gander at some of my recent Instragram photos:

Now, what did you just learn about me?