Nonverbal Thinking

[Thomas Palmer]

Hi, am excited to join this online community! I just recently learned about this site via Lifehacker and a mention of polyphasic sleeping. Two hours later after reading all the sleep logs I sent Mr. Pavlina this message via his contact page. On that page it said I may receive better results by posting in the forums, so here I am. If any other users besides Mr. Pavlina would like to respond, feel free. If anyone has heard of this or has had first-hand accounts/experiences with this type of thinking, be all means please let me know. Thank you all for your time!


RE: Nonverbal Thinking

In day 21 of your polyphasic sleep log you mention nonverbal thinking. I am curious to know if that continued during your duration of the 5.5 months you slept in this manner. If so, what happened when you returned to a monophasic sleep pattern?

The reason in why I am interested in this is because I am a nonverbal thinker. I have been ever since I was a kid and could remember. Currently I am 18 years old and a freshman in college. I have always had trouble expressing my thoughts into words to explain to others, yet my way of thinking is exactly how you described it. I am surprised to say that I actually never tried to find out what this was called or if anyone else ever experienced this. Through my own experiences I could tell that others did not operate in this fashion and that they quietly spoke their own thoughts so to say. This has given me an advantage thus far in my life and now as I discover myself while I am in college everything seems to fit in place.

In the next two months I will be developing my own blog. Whereas your blog is about personal development, mine will be about leadership. As an Eagle Scout I have discovered I have an unusual knack for leadership and I love it. I think I finally figured out the one big thing that makes me a great leader; my nonverbal thinking. Even though I am horrible at communication I was a great leader, though I did not make friends easily and plentiful as others did, I had a few great friends. Communicating is my downfall. I cannot express my thoughts into spoken words, even having normal conversations has been difficult.

When you brought up the result of nonverbal thinking, I realized with great enthusiasm that I am not the only one like this. In fact I never thought of doing a search for this before because I never had a phrase to associate with this. I tried explaining my thought process (what basically is nonverbal thinking) to others in the past but I have never been able to successfully explain it. Now that I can use the term of nonverbal thinking I can easily explain it to others (I just explained this to my roommate and he was intrigued). I also did a quick Google search and found out some other things about nonverbal thinking. First, the idea is not that well known, only 1,800 results for it. Secondly, this is predominant in autistic children, but I am not autistic.

Anyways, if you could please tell me about your experiences of nonverbal thinking, it would greatly help me in my search for myself. I appreciate your time and your website very much. Even though I just discovered it, I will be a regular reader and most likely a great reference for my own website (I am a very loyal person and I hate to steal, expect many links from my site to yours). Thank you again.

[ArthurHung]

This is super-interesting to me. For most of my younger years I was this type of thinker, a non-verbal thinker, but I thought I had some type of problem and I distinctly remember thinking: which type of thinking should I use? Non-verbal or verbal thinking? I realized I could do both, but leaned heavily toward non-verbal.

I can't remember the reasons but I concluded that my non-verbal thinking was not as good and pretty much forced myself to think verbally, with much effort. I'm definitely going to do some major research on this until I figure out how to get back to non-verbal thinking at will when I want to, I remember it being very natural to me and very me. Doing a quick google search I found that one of De Bono's books may be very useful to understanding/getting to non-verbal thinking, which you may want to get. I won't have time to get it until about a month later, so if anyone wants to get it and write a review I'd be pretty appreciative.

EDWARD DE BONO - ATLAS OF MANAGEMENT THINKING

Amazon.co.uk: Atlas of Management Thinking: Books: Edward De Bono

[Thomas Palmer]

Hmm, it's interesting that you came to the conclusion that verbal thinking is better for you. Personally I think non-verbal thinking is the best, however since I have never thought verbally (except for writing or speaking as I choose my words), I cannot say for sure which is best. I feel however, that nonverbal thinking has given me an edge on others in school. Also, it has helped me become a great leader as I can "recognize situations in a flash instead of having to build them up piecemeal" (from your first link). Also, I have applied this to people as well and I can read them instantly with almost 100% accuracy.

It looks like that book you found will help you to start using your right side of your brain to process thought once again. I wish you good luck on your quest.

[Ilya]

As I've written in another thread, verbal and non-verbal thinking are just two modes of our mind. most of the people can do both. Even if the only time one does verbal thinking is when he writes or speaks, it is there. However it is safe to say that most of thinking happens non-verbally. Otherwise we would be too slow. To speak out every solution to every problem word by word would take too much time. People are used to be conscious about the internal dialogue in their heads and even learn to dislike it for obscuring the real thinking happening at the back of their heads. It is similar to disliking a person who talks in the movie theater. So a lot of PD is about shutting up that annoying guy.
Some people are blessed with non-verbal thinking, which usually means that the voice in their head is not noticeable or absent.
This can help with the skills where non-verbal thinking is important. For example it is often claimed that talented people and geniuses heavily rely on visual thinking. This may not be their only advantage, but it surely helps.

[ctutt]

Excuse my ignorance, but what is "non-verbal" thinking?

We gather information through our 5 or 6 senses and then express them to ourselves and others verbally, ie. with words.

To experience without words would be indescribable, would it not?

[Ilya]

Originally Posted by ctutt

Excuse my ignorance, but what is "non-verbal" thinking?

We gather information through our 5 or 6 senses and then express them to ourselves and others verbally, ie. with words.

To experience without words would be indescribable, would it not?

Nothing to apologize for. We all are here to learn.

You are right we gather information from all our senses. You are almost right about expressing information to others verbally. In addition to verbal communication there is a large portion of information that can be communicated without the use of words - non-verbally. This concept was made popular by the book "Body language" and the term "body language" is used to describe such communication. In fact, non-verbal communication includes also the tone and loudness of voice, the intonations, the rhythm, the speed and all other analog characteristics of the voice. Our appearance, our clothing (whatever is known as part of our image) also communicates certain information. The last bit is unfortunate for me, since I prefer comfortable clothes and not nicely looking

Some studies claim that all this non-verbal information takes about 5\6 of the total information leaving verbal communication only the measly 1\6. If you think about it, it is likely to be true. If a person is saying the right things but in an unpleasant voice, with scared expression on his face and the slouched pose, he is not going to win a lot of trust from the audience. This is all well known to good public speakers and is usually covered during public speaking seminars.

The point that is the most interesting is that you say that we express information to ourselves in words. Now, that is not true in my experience.
Think about it, how do you recall some past event?
Me, I usually have a short mental movie popping up in front of my eyes. Sometimes I have the sounds that accompany this movie.
I do sometimes name, what I'm seing. For example, I say to myself - this is my fourth birthday. And in the background I hear my own voice slowly reading the inscription on the birthday cake - Ilya, four years, hooray!
At the same time I see the cake - it is a rather small chocolate cake with four candles placed in a square pattern. The inscription is laid out in print with the rectangular pieces of the chocolate bar. I see the table the cake is standing on, I see the dishes, the glasses, my relatives around the table, the furniture and its contents, the wallpaper.... I could go on for hours describing this picture, but when I see it in my mind, I see it as a whole, as a movie.
That is the example of non-verbal thinking. Some people tend to recall sounds more than images. Some recall the feelings. Some mix it all up in different proportions. But there is just too much information out there to describe it all with words.
There are people who do just that. What they do not say inside their mind, does not exist in their reality. It gives them great control over their thinking, but somewhat slows them down. They tend to be very meticulous with detail and great with words. They make good lawyers, accountants because it is easier for them to deal with words and sentences that are too dry and complex to the other people. And when I try to proofread my texts I go precisely in this completely verbal mode. Otherwise, I just don't see the text I'm reading, I see the images this text creates in my mind.

I hope I clarifies this a little bit. And as you can see there can be a description of wordless thinking. How good a description it is for you to judge.