HARD THINGS, PART 1: Info Overload
The Art of Applied Visual Thinking
The official newsletter of
Applied Visual Thinking SUPERHEROES.
Vol. 7 No. 14 July 10, 2026
Superhero Truth:
The problem isn't that you don't know enough.
It's that you know too much.
WE CAN DO HARD THINGS, PART 1:
Too Much Information, No Structure
At least four times last week, we heard the sentiment "it's hard." They weren't talking about the peanut butter getting too hard in the jar to jam a knife into. They were referring to that difficult feeling about getting things done — like slogging uphill in the rain wearing heavy, mud-caked boots. At AVT, we like to encourage each other (and ourselves!) with the mantra heard in great kindergarten classrooms, "We can do hard things!" This got us thinking…
Visual thinking is like a multi-tool. How can it be applied SPECIFICALLY to ease the hard things?
In this series, we will dive into WHAT a few common challenges might be popping up for these days, WHY visual thinking is a better go-to than the word-focused methods you may be more familiar with, a SIMPLE APPROACH to leveraging visuals in this situation, and a PRACTICE activity to lock in the learning. Enjoy.
Name the Hard Thing
You sit down to make a decision, write a report, plan a project — and the problem isn't a lack of information. It's the opposite. It's INFORMATION OVERLOAD. You have notes from six meetings, three articles you bookmarked, a half-remembered conversation from last Tuesday, and a gut feeling you can't quite name. It's all relevant. None of it is organized. And somehow that feels harder than not knowing anything at all.
This is one of the quieter forms of "hard right now." Nobody calls it a crisis. But it's exhausting in a specific way: your brain keeps re-reading the same pile of information, hoping that if it stares long enough, structure will appear on its own. It usually doesn't. Structure isn't something you find by reading more carefully. It's something you build.
Instead of procrastinating, pushing out the deadline or finding more "important" things to do (all forms of running away with which I am very familiar!), read on to learn a better way.
Why Words Alone Fail
When you try to "organize your thoughts" by writing a list, you're still moving information one item at a time, in the order it occurs to you — which is rarely the order that reveals the pattern. Lists are linear. Most real problems aren't.
This is exactly the gap a simple visual structure closes. Not a beautiful diagram — just buckets. Take everything swimming around in your head and sort it into a small number of categories. Three or four, not twelve. The act of sorting is the thinking. You're not documenting a decision you already made; you're discovering the shape of the problem by giving each piece of information a home.
Momentum is key here. One simple action can be like the first step that gets you to slightly more solid ground. The second step gets easier.
The Simple Visual Fix
There is a core concept for which visuals are a perfect partner — dump first, categorize second, then let labels emerge.
Personally, I am a huge fan of the sticky note sorting method. I like to generate ideas with wild abandon, then sort through them, maybe parking lot the less helpful ones, and find where the synergies are. I have observed, however, that not everyone likes the "chaos first" method. If that's not your jam, here are a few options to choose from.
- Sticky note sort — Write every scattered thought/fact/worry on individual sticky notes (or scraps of paper), then physically cluster them on a table or wall. This moving-around-by-hand method is good for people with a lot of items or who like a tactile process.
- Brain dump, then circle — Write a free-form list of everything on your mind. Then take a colored pen and circle items that feel related, using different colors for different clusters. Let the categories emerge from the circling.
- Rubber duck debugging — This is a problem-solving technique where you explain your issue aloud step-by-step to an inanimate object, like a rubber duck. Then draw 3-4 boxes. Intuitively sort what you said into the boxes from memory. Articulating the problem forces you to slow down, organize your logic, and view the situation from a fresh perspective, often revealing the solution.
These visual methods work because of how people typically process complexity: we can hold size, position, and grouping in mind far more easily than we can hold a long list. A box of five things encircled and labeled is a group, or a contained thing, even if each of those five things is complicated. The same five things in a bullet list just feel like five more things to remember.
Try This at Home
- Pick one situation right now where you feel buried in information — a decision, a project, even a tangle of feelings.
- Grab something to draw with and draw on.
- Pick one of the methods above.
- Set a timer for ten minutes.
- Spend 5 minutes getting the information out of your head and on to paper.
- Spend 3 minutes reviewing and sorting what you've created, and identify any patterns, clusters or common themes that emerge.
- Step back and spend the last 2 minutes looking at what you drawn. What has become clearer? What structure has emerged? What next step could you take?
Too much information without structure is hard. Spending just 10 minutes visualizing the information can help you over the information overload hurdle and get you moving in the right direction.
Coming up in Part 2: Next time, we'll dive into how visuals can help when making decisions with incomplete information feels hard.
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