I recall being taught the concept of learning styles at some point in school. The idea is everyone has a certain learning style that works best for them. The four main learning styles are visual (images, charts, diagrams), auditory (spoken information, podcasts, discussions), reading/writing (engaging with text-based input, writing notes, working with written instructions), and kinesthetic (hands-on experience, physical activity). They aren’t intended to be mutually exclusive and ideally can be combined for best effect.
When I first learned of the concept, I don’t recall identifying strongly with any style. But in the past few years, I’ve come to really appreciate how much better I learn and retain new information when there’s a visual component. It seems so simple it’s kind of silly, but it’s a pronounced difference for me. If someone can SHOW me something, or draw it, or share a visual, it helps immensely.
I started to become more aware of it when I was working 5 days a week in the office. Amin and I spent a lot of time chatting through things in each other’s offices and we both had whiteboards on our walls. Amin is a natural teacher and I came to realize how helpful it was for him to draw things on the whiteboard as we were discussing. Having moved to an almost entirely distributed work environment, I’ve had to adjust accordingly. Now, I find I’ll often ask someone to share their screen so I can actually SEE what they are talking about. And if I have any significant planning work, or need to come up the curve on a technical or complex topic, it’s essential I can draw it out or see it in front of me.
I did a bit of googling on the concept as part of writing this post and there’s a lot of criticism of the Learning Styles concept. Apparently, it might be pseudo-science and the empirical evidence is lacking. I didn’t dig deep enough to validate one way or another nor do I necessarily care. I’ve learned for myself, finding ways to incorporate visuals into conversations has made a meaningful difference and being aware of it has real value to me.