Thinking in Pictures (eBook)

Short answer: because some people see better that way. They think visually. Maybe you’re one of them.

But also for a stranger reason: because the words about thinking seem to need help.

To see what I mean, sample a few of the many hot pop-science books to hit the shelves lately which all promise a smarter, more seeing, more rational you. No need to read this list, just imagine the blaze of light:

There are more – lots – plus blogs, articles, podcasts, videos and a million tweets.

How this wave of DIY cleverness grew so big, I’m not sure. It seems partly to have begun with psychological research in the 1970s on decision-making that gave new impetus and a sciencey vibe to the ancient and satisfying art of telling other people they were wrong. Then a little over a decade ago, this became a genre with a name – smart-thinking – and now there’s no end to it. See deeper, reason better, make sense of numbers, avoid bias and noise, improve decisions, spot fakery… It’s all there on the shelves or online, and it can all be yours.1

Reading a heap of these books, I thought: ‘Hmm, they’re good, mostly.’ Then, piling them on top of the others I’d racked up over the years: ‘So much smartness, so many answers.’

But something about that pile of books has also begun to bug me. So many answers, true, but still a nagging question: do they actually, like… you know… work? That’s to say, have all these books succeeded in moving the dial of people’s reasoning and understanding about the world? Or are they like the promises in glossy magazines: a new, slimmer you, every month?2

Not sure how we’d measure trends in the general savvy relative to the volume of advice, but on the one hand here’s all this rationality and truth-seeking, sometimes pitched as the one manual you need to rewire your brain, while on the other hand the world still seems angry and puzzled, maybe even at a new peak of stupid according to one smart-thinker who says we’ve grown more outraged and less reflective.3 Meanwhile, policy and business blunders seem as prolific as ever, every side says it knows but none can agree, and even science is said to be going through a replication crisis of gross un-smartness among some of the smartest, most well-trained thinkers of all.4 Why, with so much smart-thinking, isn’t there more smart-thinking? Why, if the books are that good, are there so many?

Not least, have they helped me? Sure, I’ve picked up ideas and techniques, but why after years of self-improvement am I still not a decision-making, bias-spotting, rational paragon, dammit? Getting ideas off the page somehow doesn’t seem so easy.

So I began casting around for reasons. Maybe the books/ blogs, etc., don’t work because the ideas are crap; they’re a fad, a pile-in, out to make a buck from readers craving the elixir of clever. Or maybe they do work, or work OK-ish, but they’re three-quarters hype, or preaching only to that famous small band of the converted. Or are they written by a bunch of relatively rich blokes (mainly) trying to claim reason as their own, passing it off as universal, objective and apolitical when maybe it’s no such thing? Or is it precisely because the forces of stupidity are on the rise that we’re seeing a smart fight-back? Maybe the books are vitally distinctive, every one, but this is a long, slow crawl into the light because we’re so set in our dumb ways. Maybe it really is like DIY: easy to say, ‘I’ll just fix that leak’ – in practice not so ‘just’.

Though truth be told, I was only trying to find fault with the books because I wanted to write another (gotta justify adding to the pile). Smart-thinkers call this ‘motivated reasoning’, meaning that the way I was assessing the evidence was corrupted by self-interest. Motivated reasoning is bad, they say; you fail to see things as they really are because you’re too invested in finding an answer you like. Since no one writing about thinking wants to be accused of bad thoughts, I paused, agonized… then realized I could call it ‘constructive criticism’ instead, which sounded cool, and carried on, asking, ‘What else?’ – what are the books missing? Because either they needed a ‘What else?’ or I did.

Cut to the chase: after long reflection about where the genre was going wrong, I finally concluded…

It wasn’t – probably. Not really. It had its faults (one in particular we’ll come to), and there’s hype and junk out there for sure, but many of the books were good after all, no denying. Maybe this is just a tough gig in an unforgiving world.

Ah well, no harm asking.5

Then around this time, one idle afternoon, I came across one of the pictures that eventually found its way into this book – and did a double-take. The picture (of a bicycle chicane on a footpath; you’ll see it on page 168) could almost have been designed to illuminate some aspect of smart-thinking out in the wild, or it could if you chose to see it that way and you’d just been reading what I had. ‘Huh, it fits!’ I thought, in my best Cinderella. ‘Picture… thousand words… whaddyaknow!’

And in that moment – pure chance – a vague idea: that maybe the books could say it better if they showed it too, with pictures; a small hope for a struggling cause.6

Thinking… but in pictures. Because pictures can make ideas vivid, less abstract, a kind of thinking incarnate. Or they can work as metaphors that offer a new way of seeing an old idea. Then there’s Einstein’s line: ‘If I can’t picture it, I can’t understand it’ (you, me, Bert… same page). So maybe pictures could bring more clarity.

We could call it ‘pic-thinking’ – like ‘quick-thinking’ – as you can often take in a picture at a glance. And not only quick, but lasting; images stick in the mind, they’re place-holders for more extensive thoughts, and the mind needs something to stick because as neurologists tell us it’s made of yoghurt.

That’s the big sell, so let’s immediately cut it down to size. We all struggle, there are no easy answers to how to think, and we’re not about to bring a new dawn of rational and respectful deliberation with a shot of a bike chicane. But given the struggle, all methods to the pump I say. If there are marginal gains to be had, let’s have them. That’s the story, anyway, and that’s how I decided to keep an eye out for pictures that I’d stick above the desk if I wanted a portrait gallery of smart-thinking.

‘Sounds like this might even fly,’ I thought for nearly ten seconds… Except then came the practicalities. Such as: who’s it for then, this picture book?

Partly for those not too steeped in smart-thinking; an intro – or maybe a refresher or stock-take – for anyone wondering what to make of the pile of books. But even the cognoscenti might be curious about the pics, and maybe about the author’s two cents, as there are opinions here, too – more on that in a minute. And anyway the problems at the simple end of knowing stuff have a curious way of being the same at the hard end, too. Or maybe the book would appeal to those, like me, curious about how to communicate ideas. While if you think it’s a gimmick, that’ll be because you’re biased and irrational and need a new picture book to set you straight. So that’s about everyone, then.

OK, next practicality: pictures of what, exactly?

Not graphs or charts. And not mind-maps or icons or any of the usual diagrammatic visualizations of ideas that you find in business school (with a couple of partial exceptions). That’s another book. And no cheesy literality – like illustrating an ‘open mind’ with a cartoon image of a tin-opened head.7

Otherwise, all sorts – old, new, drawings, photos, memes; maybe not spectacular,...