Thinking in Pictures

I work with people who love their sketchbooks but they're not artists or designers. Some of the sketches end up on our whiteboards, which gets translated into 'orders' and end up becoming voluminous piles of paper (oklah.. to be fair - I'll call it 'policy').

It's interesting how some of us can think better in pictures. I catch myself reverting to that state when words just wasn't enough. Words became symbols, symbols are linked via dotted or solid lines, similar symbols are grouped together with 'megasymbols' and the important regions of my drawings have asterisks next to them. Should the asterisks become unmanageable - I start bolding the outlines of megasymbols to denote severity or importance. Some items are so severe, it punches holes in the paper!

I probably started doing this in school. I made all my notes into pictures, with nice little colourful boxes for text linked together with cute little arrows. The only reason why I got through uni was probably because pictures made my notes seem less daunting.

So far in my 5.8 years of working, I have accumulated about 6 notebooks' worth of project scribbles (drawings, notes and once in a while, emotional outbursts!), with perhaps reams and reams of loose paper (Note to self: I really have to clear those boxes in my old cubicle!).

Of course, one could argue that my increased dependency on pictures is the effect of my ever-degrading penmanship.

I should come up with a standard for my little drawings. It was much easier drawing network diagrams and process flows. "Najah-speak for Paper" however is starting to need some colour - or the touch of a nice pen...