What Kind of Thinker are You?
Can knowing what kind of thinker you are make you more productive, happier and smarter?
Last week a friend sent me a New Yorker article about how different peoples’ brains process information, and it was revelatory for me. The article said that different people tend to be either ‘verbal’ or ‘visual’ thinkers. Verbal thinkers do most of their thinking through inner dialogue whereas visual thinkers think in pictures and spatial relationships and can have a hard time translating concepts into language. People aren’t exclusively one or the other — but most tend toward one or the other. After reading the article I began a deep spiral of introspection, consciously tracking how I think for over a week and I have realized that I am unequivocally both. For verbal thought my mind’s inner dialogue chatters away, but for analytical & mathematical thought it’s all visual & spatial and the only way to get clarity is to shut down my inner voice. I’ve always struggled with what I call ‘shifting gears’ which is the time I need between analytical thinking and communicative thinking, but never thought much about it. I always assumed everyone experiences the same — now I’m not so sure.
Before I delve deeper into my self-evaluation, here’s a little bit about me for context. I’ve made a career out of math-oriented startups where the core calculations are complex — but success requires me to explain the ideas simply to non-technical users. Jumping between the worlds of communicating complex ideas in simple terms, and then back into designing the algorithms has been my life as an entrepreneur. I don’t know if the average ‘math-head’ is smarter than say the average plumber, I suppose not — but statistics helps in conjuring the illusion of superior intelligence since less than 1% of the global population has taken an advanced math class, most who did memorized the formulae instead of learning the concepts, fewer still ended up doing anything with it in life, and out of those who did few need to communicate it to non-technical people. That makes me part of a group that is not necessarily ‘smart’ but exceedingly rare. In any case, I benefit from what I’ll call the ‘math-head halo effect’ & I’m often introduced with high compliments about my intelligence which always makes me cringe. I don’t cringe out of humility, but rather because I spend many more days feeling defeated by words or equations that make me feel more mentally impaired than ‘smart. Its my stubbornness that leads me to working incessantly until I yield something of interest, so 5% of the time I have a revelation that makes me look pretty smart but most people don’t know I spent 95% of my time trudging through confusion and distraction to get there.
Verbal vs Visual Thinking Manifested
Observing myself thinking for a week is harder than I thought it would be, though it became easier over time. Now that I’m more attuned to how my own thoughts are being processed it’s hard to comprehend alternatives. For instance, how does someone without an inner dialogue know how to say something out loud without running it by their inner dialogue first? How can someone do math, analysis, database work without shutting up their inner voice and arranging the plots on the whiteboard in their head? Is it common or uncommon for people to switch thinking types like I do — and for people who do, do they also experience what I call ‘shifting gears’? For me, changing my mindset between verbal and visual can be exhausting — often to the point that when coming out of deep quantitative problem-solving it can be hard to muster the energy for even simple communication. It can also be hard to get back into deep quantitative thinking after (or during) a big presentation. But nothing feels worse than being stuck between gears.
When I think about it in the new context, I’ve had moments of revelation in visual thinking that were both exciting and painful because the concepts are crystal clear in my head but translating them to language can be so difficult. I’ve spent frustrating hours & days with people explaining a concept or typing detailed notes — followed by me professing “Can’t you SEE it? It’s so clear to me.” or “I wish I could show you how clear it is in my head.” I often wish I could photograph the picture in my head. The people who work with me often receive cryptic drawings with stick figures on napkins, or an iPhone photo of tree diagrams on scratch paper. In my old office from my first startup in Midtown Manhattan we had 20 ft ceilings covered top to bottom with etchings that were essentially the inside of my mind. New employees weren’t given an orientation manual — they were given a walking tour of the walls, standing on a step stool or desk to get a better look at a database schema or formula. I often wish I could skip words altogether translating the pictures and concepts is the hardest part.
Stuck Between the Voices & the Images Inside my Head
As an analytics entrepreneur you’re constantly flooded with communication and quantitative problems and no one gives you the time to breath, let alone shift modes of thinking. When I think back on the most difficult periods for me to traverse, it was the times when I spent too much time ‘in between’ — unable to really focus on either verbal or visual thinking, just surface dwelling without any deep dive in either direction. Those were the stretches of time that a feeling of incompetence and mental inadequacy was most intense. I recall being deeply depressed after selling my first company and working a lower-stress job for the acquiring company. My depression didn’t seem to make sense, I’d achieved the classic entrepreneur’s dream and was racing toward a 2nd exit. But I was no longer doing analyses or writing algorithms, and corporate communications was rewriting my presentations and scripting my webinars. The sensation of dedicated visual and verbal deep thinking was replaced by some middling stagnation that led to the least productive and most unhappy years of my career during a time that should have been a highpoint. I’ve come to realize that as exhausting as it can be for me to shift back and forth from deep visual thinking to verbal thinking, I need both for personal fulfillment and when I dedicate more focused time for each I’m more productive, happier and feel smarter for a while.
