An interesting thing happened when I was in grad school: I learned how to learn better. While studying international relations and human rights, I often found that long-winded, confusing narratives and theories kept me from fully engaging with the subject matter, which I otherwise found vital and compelling.

As a result, I started to clarify complex texts and ideas by translating them into visuals.

Here’s an example. It’s a mind map, a study guide that helped me master theoretical concepts by representing the relationship between ideas in ways that were easier to grasp.

These are skills that I further developed during my career and now apply in my client work. It’s all about simplifying information into images so that we can understand how to put the abstract to practical use.