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90 Power Up Your Mind

Jennie has a strongly developed visual sense and she prefers to take in
information in pictorial form. She loves using flipcharts or PowerPoint to
visualize concepts and help her solve problems. She glazes over when
colleagues at work give her densely written documents to comment on. She
loves to think big and enjoys being creative and open-ended when dealing
with new information. She is very much an afternoon person and loves
group activities. She throws herself into projects and learns a lot from them,
enjoys developing networks and doing voluntary work in the community.
Jennie is very comfortable airing her opinions in meetings; indeed, she often
uses such occasions to work out what she really thinks about an issue.

John cringes inwardly when his manager asks him to give his views to the
rest of the team without any briefing beforehand. He is at his best in
structured situations and hates ambiguity or uncertainty of any kind. He
would much prefer to absorb information from an email that he can read
on the train on his way into work. Like Jennie, John also enjoys solving
problems, but his approach to dealing with information is quite different.
He prefers to analyze the facts in a logical way, preferring systems and
concepts. John loves to walk on his own, allowing a sensible order to
settle on his sometimes worryingly contradictory thoughts. He is quiet
and apparently withdrawn in many meetings and only comes alive on the
squash or tennis court. He is reluctant to change unless the intellectual
case has been made beyond doubt.

John is different from Jennie and both are different from you or me.
Each one of us operates in different environments, takes in infor-
mation differently, and deals with it in distinctive ways. Neither
John nor Jennie is better than the other; indeed, each has useful
skills for both business and home life.
Let’s concentrate on how information gets to your brain in
the first place.

HOW YOU TAKEIN INFORMATION

You take in information through your five senses that is fed into
your brain. Four senses—hearing, some of sight, touch, and taste—