When it comes to brainstorming or when I need to sort out the jumbled thoughts in my mind, good old fashioned pen and paper works best for me (and most people I know).

But besides straight writing – my writing is not the best, I also love colors. I have 8 pens with different colors on my desk right now and my calendar is an explosion of colors. That’s a good sign of visual thinking. Up until now, I’ve never attempted to draw. Never being an artist, I just didn’t think I could. Besides how effective is that for business? Then I stumbled on these 7 lessons from Bigger Picture, a company that teaches people the power of visual thinking and tried the process myself.

You may have seen some of my drawings appear in blog posts over the last 2 weeks or so. Not as polished as theirs but I never imagined I could even do that.

While I don’t think I’ll plan an entire project based on drawings, I’ve found drawing kinda therapeutic and it really helps me visualize my thoughts that I can later organize into a concrete list of action steps. They could also be an interesting way to build process charts. Anyway, here are the 7 video lessons. If you try it, show us what you come up with.

Intro

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqAZz3Yotmk[/youtube]

Part 1: People

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkEogROyup0[/youtube]

Part 2: Places

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNYeDa7EGig[/youtube]

Part 3: Process

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW-A4kQg7VA[/youtube]

Part 4: Speech

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT_iK6zgR5I[/youtube]

Part 5: Using Color

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYj7-Nxmb24[/youtube]

Part 6: Effects

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A4yZJFO88I[/youtube]

Part 7: Everything else

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZZmuYlR6lc[/youtube]

Part 8: Putting it all together

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0vZ9HOAyr4[/youtube]