Visual Intelligence: Sharpen Your Perception, Change Your Life

by Amy E. Herman

FBI. They teach their agents to frequently turn around and survey the scene behind them when walking in unknown territory—an unfamiliar city street, a field, even an airport parking lot—since that’s the view they’ll have when they need to find their way back. Not doing so can mean that when you exit or try to retrace your steps—especially in an emergency situation such as a mall evacuation—you can get confused because the scenery is different; you’re suddenly looking at the backside of the things you passed when you entered.

Toyota’s famous genchi genbutsu concept—which translates to “go and see”: the idea that the only way to get the comprehensive picture of a scene, see a process as a whole, and absorb as many details as possible is for managers to leave their offices, get out from behind their computers, and physically go to where the work is being done.

“gemba walks”—gemba in Japanese meaning “the actual place.”

kaizen (Japanese for “improvement”) teams of employees who walk around the grounds outside of their normal departments to find sustainable savings.

As Discover magazine editor at large Corey S. Powell writes, “Our appreciation of the natural world is bolstered not just in sights but in sounds, smells, and tactile sensations. A walk in the woods would not be the same without birdsong, the loamy odor of decaying leaves, the brush of branches.”

How did I possibly miss the smell of bacon on a closed plane when my eyes were open? We were at cruising altitude; the bacon didn’t just suddenly walk on board. My eyes were commanding all of my attention; I needed to turn them off so my brain would allocate resources to my other senses.

nosegay,

Make sure you’re taking a complete inventory of your world when you need to share it with someone else. To do this, ask yourself these simple questions: What am I tuning out? What might I be taking for granted? What would someone else coming into my world not know? The more information you can gather, the more opportunity there is for accurate assessment, which in turn leads to a higher chance of finding what we seek, whether it’s the solution, the answer, or the truth.

capturing the colors he called “explosives,”

Like perception, our perspective can change. It is not permanently fixed. Many things can manipulate it: time, state of mind, new experiences through which we filter the world.

our changing perspective can change our observations.

the more we recall something, the more we either remember or remake our memory of that thing, especially if it’s connected to an emotional experience.

believes this is because of a direct line of communication in our brain between the visual cortex, the amygdala, where emotions are encoded, and the hippocampus, where memory is stored. When something arouses our emotions, good or bad, the amygdala tells our eyes to pay closer attention, giving our hippocampus more to store. However, while emotional involvement heightens our confidence in our memories, it doesn’t necessarily enhance their objective accuracy.

Having analyzed different perspectives in art, seeing things from a barmaid’s and favela resident’s eyes, Judy stepped behind this patient and saw things from her point of view. “I noticed right away she was asleep in bed with her glasses on,” Judy recalls. “As I laid the blanket over her, the contrast between the red blanket and the whiteness of the entire setting reinforced my perception of her description: cold. Cold means so much more than just lacking in temperature. There was nothing on her walls, except a small activities calendar that was placed out of her line of sight. She had one small window that overlooked a bland, urban landscape. And her pallor matched the room.”

The change in scenery dramatically increased the quality of the woman’s final days.

Is this an objective or subjective conclusion? While observational objectivity is emphasized in this book, the author ✍️ subconsciously introduces a potentially very subjective conclusion here. How did they measure the QoL? How did they attribute the improvements in QoL (if it were the case to the color changes in patient environments?

mangy

lunged

slats

scrawnier,

casing

When they asked me later to stand up and explain why I had, I still didn’t have a good answer. It was a visceral reaction: if you hurt my child, I will kill you. I didn’t have any proof that my child had been hurt, I didn’t have really good justification for homicide, but I did it. I fired.

It’s critical that we know how we prioritize information because what we label in our minds as most important is what we’re going to act upon.

we don’t consciously decide which task to deal with first, our brains will choose for us based on our built-in perceptions and biases. And that’s not always a good thing,

Everything from managing relationships to budgeting finances can quickly spin, or be spun, out of control. Having a clear understanding of our priorities ahead of time can help alleviate much of the damage.

Conscious, planned prioritization

Being able to rank information from most imp...

Prioritization allows us to be more focused, more efficient,...

At work or at home, we can’t just dump everything in no particular order onto another person or into a report. We can’t assume anyone else has the time or desire or skill to parse mountains of data from various sources. We need to give the information some order, or someone else will, perhaps incorrectly. We need to make sure that the important information doesn’t get lost or buried by everything else. To do this, we need a system to prioritize information. There are dozens of methods, some with arcane monikers: high/medium/low, MoSCoW, tops and bottoms, Pareto charts, Kano, matrices, scattergrams, and timeboxing. In the medical world, they use the triage system to find and care for the most injured first. In the military, reverse triage—which Dr. Pou employed in her hospital—is used to evacuate first those most likely to live. Six Sigma has a project prioritization matrix. SAP product integration uses value mapping. And while the Pentagon uses the CARVER matrix, the National Association of County and City Health Officials simply uses colorful poker chips dropped into shoe boxes at meetings. It doesn’t matter which method you choose to prioritize; what matters is that you do prioritize, making sure that you put the most important information first.

start a story with the most salient piece of information,

“Don’t bu...

l...

In order to prioritize, we must first sift through all available data and bring the most ...

“Interviewing the Victim Detectives shall prioritize the needs and comfort of the victim.”

the better a victim is treated, the more likely the case will end with justice for the perpetrator.

I do not know if this is another assumption. I wish this were the reality.

Like observation, perception, and perspective, priorities will differ for each of us and for each scenario. Different prioritization systems will work better for different people.

three-prong approach outlined in the CIA ...

The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis by Ri...

What do I know? What don’t I know? If I could get more information, what do I need to know?

bungling

we’re cataloging and still prioritizing what we see even if we don’t know what we’re looking at. Now let’s look at what to do about the things we don’t see.

In many instances, what is not present is as important as what is. This concept is called the

“pertinent negative”in

in emergency medicine, and it’s defined as “the absence of a sign or symptom that helps substantiate or i...

Within and beyond the world of medicine, the absence of an object, event, or behavior can help identify or substantiate a situation. When we are observing what we see, we must also note the important information we don’t see, especially if we’re expecting it to be there.

When we purposefully state the pertinent negative, we are more accurate. It isn’t enough to say that there are candlesticks on the mantel. If we just say “candlestick,” at least half of our listeners will assume there are candles in them. We have to specify that there are no candles to debunk assumptions.

“Velcro parents”

Organizational consultant Terry Prince recommends looking at who, what, where, and when from a “missing perspective” when project planning. “Who do we not need? What should we not include? Where are we not going? When are we not doing this?”

Acknowledging what we don’t know can be as important as identifying what we do. This doesn’t just include the pertinent negative or what’s missing, it also includes the information we gathered that is subjective, unclear, or based on an assumption. We cannot act as if these things don’t exist. Admitting them up front and labeling them correctly can lead to the extra data necessary to turn a “not sure” into a “definite.”

Asking the question “What don’t I know?” is not the same as throwing out an “I don’t know.” In truth what you are saying is, “No one right here right now knows, and I was observant enough to notice this important fact and open it up for others to help me find the answer.”

The final question to ask in any situation: if I could get more information about this scene or situation, what specifically would I want to know? Asking this question can help us prioritize potential follow-up work by showing us where to dedicate our time and resources.