The Gift of Dyslexia

The Gift of Dyslexia: Why some of the brightest people can’t read and how they can learn by Ronald D. Davis

“Why is this book important?  Because the methods described in it work.  Because the techniques can be used to ameliorate a wide variety of symptoms besides reading difficulties – from anxiety to writing difficulties to inability to concentrate.  Because it recognizes the unusual gifts and the extraordinary potential of dyslexics.  Because it turns the mysteries of orientation and disorientation into practical, life-changing techniques.  Because the ability to think in pictures is needed for success in the twenty-first century.”

“Visual-Spatial learners … It truly is a different learning style just requiring a paradigm shift in learning, learning a visual way.”

“… all the essential gifts of dyslexia, including greater development of intuition, the ability to perceive multi-dimensionally, vivid imagination, greater curiousity, insightfulness, the ability to experience thought as reality, heightened awareness of the environment, the ability to think in pictures, and, most important, the ability to alter and create perceptions.  These are vital gifts, becoming more and more sought after in the work world in the modern era.”

“While we are still obsessed in education with the importance of literacy, the future of today’s students is dependent on their ability to see the big picture, to predict trends, to read customers, to think outside the box, to see patterns, to inspire collaboration among peers, to empathize, to synthesize information from a variety of sources, and to perceive possibilities from different perspectives.  These are the natural talents of dyslexics.”

Some famous dyslexics:

• Hans Christian Anderson
• Harry Belafonte
• Alexander Graham Bell
• George Burns
• Winston Churchill
• Albert Einstein
• Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Please see my post “Think Like a Genius – The Mind’s Eye; ” https://inspiredit.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/think-like-a-genius-the-minds-eye/

Think Like a Genius … The Mind’s Eye

I originally posted this on my former blog in August 2008 and have re-posted it here…

I have recently read “Overcoming Information Overload” by Tina Konstant & Morris Taylor, which is part of the Instant Manager series from the Chartered Management Institute.

I particularly enjoyed the section on “Think Like a Genius“…

“Geniuses like Newton or Archimedes didn’t simply sit under trees or in a bush until they became enlightened.  They used some very powerful and practical tools to create order out of their thoughts and to find answers to problems that few people ever thought existed, let alone considered solving.

Some factors common to the world’s greatest thinkers:

– Idea generation is in pictures and images rather than words. 

– Einstein and da Vinci drew diagrams instead of writing words and sentences.

– Their thinking is unrestrained; nothing is rejected until it has been fully investigated.

– Ideas are explored using association.

– They fuel their imaginations with knowledge.

– They never give up”

Tools for generating genius thinking

Mapping  … it is worth talking about information mapping.  ‘Mind Mapping’ was formalised and labelled by Tony Buzan in the 1970s.  Great thinkers have used similar techniques for centuries.  Leonard da Vinci, Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison, like other geniuses, represented their ideas through diagrams and ‘maps’.

You might know them as spider-graphs or thinking maps, but whatever you call them, they all have the same features:

– pictures instead of words

– links between relationships

– main concept in the middle, gradually becoming more detailed towards the end of branches

– single words or ideas per line

– colour”

The reference to da Vinci reminded me of some of the fantastic drawings and sketches that I saw many, many years ago in the National Gallery – until then, I hadn’t realised that he was an inventor (I was completely shocked that he had invented a flying machine that we’d recognise as a helicopter!), a sculptor, a mathematician, a botanist, an architect …

… I had thought he was an artist, famous for the Mona Lisa. 

The extent to which he had drawn images to represent thoughts and details really surprised me.  The picture below is a study of perpetual motion.

The V&A Museum has some excellent articles about his work on their website, including:-

The Mind’s Eye – The Measure of All Things

“For Leonardo, sight was the noblest and most certain sense. It provided access to “experience”, which shows us how nature works according to mathematical rules. Any knowledge that could not be certified by the eye was unreliable.

He investigated the relationship of the eye to the brain. He proposed a system in which visual information was transmitted to the intellect via the receptor of impressions and the “common sense”, an area where all sensory inputs were coordinated.”

 

I now realise that visual imagery is the best place for thinking things through … but it took me quite a while to make the connection.  For that, I will always be grateful to Jamie Nast, author of Idea Mapping

It was Jamie who helped me realise that colour and images help the brain to think better, quicker, clearer and to remember better. 

Visual Thinking & Project Management is a topic close to my heart (the combination of VISION and DETAIL) but I really hadn’t realised that Leonardo da Vinci had investigated the relationship between visual information and intellect. 

If it was good enough for da Vinci … I’ll continue to explore the tools at my disposal …