been to so many meetings that you couldn't get your work done Ever fallen asleep during a bulletpoint presentation Ever watched the news and ended up knowing less Welcome to the land of Blah Blah Blah.
The Problem: We talk so much that we don't think very well, Powerful as words are, we fool ourselves when we think our words alone can detect, describe, and defuse the multifaceted problems of today, They can'tand that's bad, because words have become our default thinking tool,
The Solution: This book offers a way out of blahblahblah, It's called "Vivid Thinking. "
In Dan Roam's first acclaimed book, The Back of the Napkin, he taught readers how to solve problems and sell ideas by drawing simple pictures.
Now he proves that Vivid Thinking is even more powerful, This technique combines our verbal and visual minds so that we can think and learn more quickly, teach and inspire our colleagues, and enjoy and share ideas in a whole new way.
The Destination: No more blahblahblah, Through Vivid Thinking, we can make the most complicated subjects suddenly crystal clear, Whether trying to understand a Harvard Business School class, or what went down in the Conan versus Leno battle for latenight TV, or what Einstein thought about relativity, Vivid Thinking provides a way to clarify anything.
Through dozens of guided examples, Roam proves that anyone can apply this systematic approach, from leftbrain types who hate to draw to rightbrainers who hate to write.
This isn't just a book about improving communications, presentations, and ideation it's about removing the blahblah blah from your life for good, I picked up this book to prepare for a speaking engagement, and I'm glad I did, Reading through it has helped me clarify my message and come up with several drawings to show my ideas, As a writer, it also helped me realize where I can use more visual examples to get my ideas across,
The book is not perfect, however, It's twice as long as I expected or wanted, It's full of a lot of confusing drawings, and a bunch of ideas that didn't gain traction in my mind or felt too, . . lame. The phrases "blah" or "blahblahblah" or "blahblahblahmeter" are used hundreds of times, to the point of annoyance, and the fox and hummingbird that represent our different types of thinking felt confusing.
There's a Visual Forest, and Six Vivid Tricks to, . . something. There were too many disparate ideas for a book on clarified thinking and communication,
It's still worth reading, in my opinion, especially if you are a person who needs to present new ideas to an audience, I picked up several worthwhile tricks to help me communicate more clearly, especially in an environment when I have a pen and paper or a white board and markers in hand.
Dan Roam has expressed the basic concept of "Picture is better than a thousand words" very well with detailed implementation strategy and examples, The best take away from this book is how one can use a combination of words and pictures to express new ideas in most persuasive way, This entire book is based on the premise of leveraging both the sides of human brain when it comes to expressing thoughts, Dan calls this concept as "Vivid Thinking" which is combination of verbal amp visual skills, To make it easy for the readers to start using vivid thinking right away, Dan has giveninterlinked frameworks in the book namely:
blahblahblah meter to measure the noise in the ideas expressed
Vivid Grammar to link verbal grammar to visuals
Vivid Forest to implement vivid grammar
Vivid Grammar is the most innovative concept presented in this book and this is something one can start using right away to express new ideas, concepts, business plans visually.
In the world that we are living in, it is becoming increasingly getting tough to persuade people with new ideas as they already have access to lots of information.
This approach of presenting new ideas could help the presenters of new ideas to stand out and make it easy for the people to act! I do not want to sound ungrateful, this book was a rather good read, easy and fun, i learned many facts and book references as well, and i did appreciate two bits of infos in the appendixes.
But, it seems to me the author have started by creating a problem, or at least exaggerating it, where there was almost no problem, At least, how i see it, pictures ARE already involved everywhere, Charts, maps, graphs, are all over there, Yet the author make it seem as if our culture is only verbal, and goes from there to expose his methods and tools as something totally new, using original names for his tools Forest, blahblahblah meter, etc
So, and again, on a personal level, the Blah Blah Blah's real help to me was way less than what the book wants me to think.
As a matter of fact, in a quick seminar last year, we were told basically the same ideas : say the essential, use graphs and plans and charts etc,
This book is a good way to remember these thoughts, but it's message could have been said in lot less of words itself,
One thing intrigued me though : the author use "she" instead of "he" when referring to any third pronoun, Electronic Copy provided by NetGalley
I thoroughly enjoyed Dans first book “On the back of the napkin” and loved the way he presented his ideas and his information.
So I was excited to get a chance to read this new book of his that deals with speaking and presenting ideas better, and killing the blahscomplexity, boredom, and misunderstanding.
Dan gives us his theory of “Vivid Thinking” which combines the right and left side of the brain so that we can think and learn more quickly, In short, he shows the reader how not to be boring and explain ideas clearly and engage people, Dan also practices this idea in the book as he walks us through his theory with a host of different characters, ranging from Einstein and Captain Sully to his old math teacher.
This is a thoroughly enjoyable book and one that I would recommend to folks, no matter what their job maybe, so that they also might improve their presentation and speaking skills.
I give the bookout ofstars, One of the best books in the market on visual thinking and conceptualizing, The author makes a case for using images to create thinking as opposed to words and he does a top notch job of convincing us on this,
I have been using his principles to great effect in my writing, training and speaking exercises,
If you want to get away from boring text and step into the world of images and visuals, this is the book, Go get it. Jsem velmi spokojená. Kniha sice navazuje na "Ubrousek", ale není nutné číst tyto knihy popořadě, Nabízí zase nové "berličky", jak propojovat lišku a kolibříkem, tj, vnímání slov a obrázků, Výstupem jsou vcelku jednoduché návody, které je možné si uložit a opakovaně se k nim vracet,
Čtení je vhodné i pro učitele, protože si musíme uvědomit, že i grafická zobrazení ano, nemusí to být jen obrázky jsou pro pochopení učiva stejně důležitá jako výčty faktů.
A navíc svět "bla, bla, bla" bychom také z pozice učitele měli omezovat a používat pro naše "přednášky" BLABLAMETR :D
Doporučuji.
Dan Roam's Blah Blah Blah: what to Do When Words Don't Work is a clear, practical guide to visual thinking, Roam moves the focus of visual thinking away from creativity and places it firmly on clear thinking and communication, He provides a context for why
the visual is so powerful it accounts for most of our brain's processing! and then goes on to provide an approach to communicating visually that's tied closely to our verbal processing, with a grammar and structure all its own.
And he does it delightfully, as a storyteller,
It's going to require practice, but Roam's approach has given me a structured, simple way of breaking down complex topics and serving them up as stories, I look forward to applying it at work, especially, where our presentations are rife with mindnumbing blahblahblah, I would have loved to have applied it here, but I have a few technological constraints, I think our entire team will benefit from Roam's approach, Got this at a content marketing event where Dan was a keynote, His presentation was amazing. This book gives great insight into how our minds work, If I could post pictures in my review I'd post the cover of this book and me giving a thumbs up, A good book to understand why many meetings result in very few actionable outcomes and what to do to reverse that so that you can communicate better, Wow. This book delivered. I would recommend it for anyone in any kind of human relations role, . . actually I would recommend it for everyone who wants to improve their communication, Книжка хороша і корисна, можна дарувати друзям і не прогадаєш.
Але хочу ще версію у вигляді картинок і схем, бо іноді навіть в самого автора попадається "бла бла бла". While reading this book I really got clear on the need to draw little drawings as I talk with people to make the ideas vivid and understandable on many different levels.
It made my new found enjoyment of Draw Something on my iPad even more meaningful as I now I get to practice making words come to life with a very simple and fast drawing.
That may sound like I am kidding and I was as I typed that, but the reality is I have gotten much better at the simple little things that will work to do as Dan Roam teaches in his book.
I so quickly identify the BLAH BLAH BLAH that completely surrounds us all each day,
I would HIGHLY recommend this book to business people that communicate to make a living, sounds a little too broad, but it really is worth reading! A book about how to pair words with pictures to effectively relay information to others.
Side note: I found this one to be much better than sitelinkThe Back of the Napkin by the same author,
Favorite Parts/Quotes
"When we say a word, we should draw a picture and vice versa, "
The story of Dr, Seuss on page.
The six different types of pictures for verbal grammar:
If you hear a name, draw a portrait,
If you hear a number, draw a chart,
If you hear a list of objects, draw a map,
If you hear a history, draw a timeline,
If you hear a sequence, draw a flowchart,
If you hear a "stew" of facts, draw a multivariable plot,
"This is exactly where PowerPoint presentations go wrong, When we polish our slides to a high finish, we leave our audience with nothing left to add, Since they can't evolve the idea in their own minds i, e. connect the dots, they never fully engage, "
,
Bezpochyby zajímavá, čtivě, roztomile a vtipně napsaná knížka, Ale tak nějak si nejsem jistá, jestli to Dan s tím, jak moc nepoužíváme vizuální část mozku a jak moc velký je to problém, trochu nepřehání.
Nějak zvýšenou koncentraci bla bla ani odpor ke kreslení ve svém okolí nepozoruji,
Ale s některými závěry lze souhlasit a část tipů je též fajn, : Excellent reconceptualization of his first book "Back of the Napkin", Roam simplifies the concepts presented in that book while adding back in "the other half" of the tools used to present information words, While I found "Napkin" valuable in work I was doing as I read it, I feel this book provides a more basic and more usable and memorable way to embed these concepts showing and telling into my presentations.
In the writing of this book Roam included many simple drawings to help illustrate concepts, I believe because the drawings were simple the verbiage tended to be simple as well, Roam had more than this to tell and he resorted to including many, many footnotes along with a few pages of endnotes, I found this an interesting byproduct that will also need to be taken into account when giving presentations, BTW, I only noticed one footnote with its own drawing,
I see a possible followon question to the concepts in Roam's books dealing with unintended consequences of simplification, This approach leans heavily on using analogies, and while they may illustrate the point, the audience can take the analogy beyond its intended purpose, no matter the analogy, I'd be interested in seeing Roam talk about how to control how the audience expands concepts beyond their purpose, as that seems to happen often and it can hijack an otherwise good presentation.
It wasin a conference room in Paris when one of the great product minds in payment, Stephane Jacquis, uttered “blah blah blah” in reference to some fluffy, irrelevant details being talked about.
I loved the expression, the sheer audacity and “cut to the chase” of it, and Ive used the phrase ever since,
Then the absolute best author in visual communication releases his new job entitled “Blah Blah Blah”, His “Back of the Napkin” completely and positively changed how I communicate I had very high expectations for this book,
It delivered, complete with too many aha moments and insights that will stick in all my written interactions from here on, Its a grand book and a complete work on its own, not an augmentation of “Back of the Napkin”, It weaves grammar and drawing, simplicity and impact, This is a tremendous book and, if you ever have to convey ideas and concepts to others, you should read it, .