How to Train Yourself to Visualize Anything (6 Simple Tips & Habits)
Mental imagery is a very cool skill - it basically gives you your own personal whiteboard/television to visually play out whatever thoughts you feel the need to play - whether it be a sequence of chess moves, a solution idea for a difficult problem, or something completely unrelated.
This video covers why it's so cool and what you can do to get better at it.
yes, i am proud of this thumbnail
Sources (not exhaustive, and also not really used much):
plato.stanford.edu/entries/me...
bulletproofmusician.com/get-g...
Music (in order; in a loop):
Local Forecast - Slower by Kevin MacLeod
Link: incompetech.filmmusic.io/song...
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Sunset On Terra by HYBRID V (Creative Commons License)
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Sthlm Sunset by Ehrling
• Ehrling - Sthlm Sunset
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Paradise by Ikson ( / ikson )
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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro - hook
01:04 Intro - why it's so useful
02:18 About me
03:11 The tips (video structure)
03:27 Tip 1 (short-term)
04:48 Tip 2 (short-term)
05:52 Tip 3 (short-term)
06:40 Tip 4 (long-term)
07:35 Tip 5 (long-term)
08:37 Tip 6 (long-term)
09:32 Conclusion
Need part 2 - explain your process of building a model of a programming problem into your brain, and describe how you mentally hold and organize the info in your head (what does it look like, and how are the different constituents of the problem organized, where are they placed in your mind etc). Lets really dig into this.
agree
Nice
Yea please
+1
yes please
short term: 1. focus on the particulars at first (short term memory is limited) 2. think in 3D (expand, distort images/shift POVs) 3. work with physical objects - *vocalise the visualised* long term: 4. gradual TRANSITION from physical to mental imagery 5. LOOK DEEP: explore, recognise, edit, expand 6. PRACTICE SPEED- time constraints, recall
goat
thanks
Thank u
Thank you!
Pls
Studied maths, started programming professionally, have aphantasia. I wish I could experience just a glimpse of what someone with a logical mind with great visualisation skills experiences. I tend to do a lot of work in my head, even compared to people who can visualise well, but when it comes to keeping track of things like chess pieces or shapes of graphs I'm hopeless :(
Same boat as you, friend. Sure would be nice to visualise... anything at all.
@@sean_nel what disease he is talking abt
@@mayankgupt7237 I have aphantasia too! If I tell you to close your eyes and imagine an apple, an image of an apple will pop in your head, but people with aphantasia can't do that, or can only see an outline of the apple
@@yanis.mellikeche dreams also you can't have?
@@yanis.mellikeche if you can see an outline, that is the first stage for phantasia.
Also tips on memory retention/space hack for limited short term memory: Make it simple. Do chunking, chunk things with patterns, declutter, pattern, and familiarize the stuff you're trying to visualize. Reading books but having it visualized also helps with visualization/mental image. Just visualize daily, and make it simple and fun!
As an older guy, I got into the board game Go/Baduk during the pandemic. I used a problem book series for kids. It starts with simple 1-move capturing problems, the basic rules of the game. But after going through a few books, took ~1-2 months, my ability to visualize longer sequence of moves, like 10+ moves, improved drastically. The image is very clear on my head that it's kinda scary. I didn't use the board, I did everything on my head. Even though I was just doing comparatively easy problems for beginners, it actually allows me to solve much harder problems too. Because I can visualize and hold things in memory quite clearly. I'm not sure my point of sharing it. I guess, just try it. Perhaps with a chess book, like try to solve the problems in your head. Playing blindfold or (re)playing a whole game in your head perhaps can be very difficult to achieve, but attaining obvious improvement in your visualization ability is very doable imo. edit: Looks like youtube filtered/hid my replies below. They're nothing important though.
Wow! that's great. Can you tell me the name of the book?
@@aksiddiq Baduktopia's Level Up! series. Out of print unfortunately. Speed Baduk series is supposedly similar and recently reprinted.
@@vymague Thanks a lot ❤❤
I kind of did this for math. I won’t say I’m great, but trying to solve a math problem in my head vs writing it on paper makes a huge difference in how well I can remember it later.
@@ABC-jq7ve I'm not great at Baduk too. I stopped playing/solving problems after a few months. Although this video motivates me to go through the books and the problems again.
Proffesional animator here and also an aphantasiac and among other professional artists i have met people with it. And i have come to the conclusion that it is actually cureable if you are familiar with the apple scale then i would say that i have moved from a 5 to a 4 and i know a painter that went from seeing nothing to seeing entire highly rendered full colour full texture scenes through training. For the past month i have been doing imagination training/meditaion and i have made solid progress already. Another key note is that probably the most skilled artist of our time kim Jung gi spent 2 years in military service where he could not draw and in his words he spent almost all of it drawing in his head and studying various objects.
I'm also an artist with aphantasia, what do you do for practice?
Why would you want to though? I've also got complete aphantasia and it's why I'm able to imagine things in higher dimensions. I'm not stuck with the 3 dimensions + time that people that visualize are.
I trained as an artist and have been working in 2-D and 3D all my life. There’s absolutely no doubt that you can develop the skill of thinking and expressing yourself in multiple dimensions and you do it by learning to see, imagine and draw and learning to sculpt in either a physical or digital world. The skills used in learning to draw are so transferable to other things which require you to manage and manipulate complex ideas in your imagination. Yours is a fantastic video, bravo!
How start drawing ?
@@damenation type 'learn to draw' ino youtube, watch 5 videos then pick the one you think suits your temperament, then do what they say. draw everyday for 12 months, don't ever give up regardless of how bad you think your drawings are, seek feedback from someone who can draw and is a good encouraging teacher, ignore what critics say, draw, draw, draw, draw...
why waste time on it when there is AI that can do all the drawing for you?@@damenation
complete waste of time. dumbest thing you can do with your life now that AI can do all the art and keeps doing it faster and better each day.@@PaulMacklinAmazing
Initially, I thought that this was something that I would struggle getting to grips with since the primary example was chess, but as a musician I noticed a massive parallel in how the logic carries over for learning a song (especially since I learn by ear). Working out note by note, then bar by bar, line by line, imagining the shape of the music, recognising/applying patterns etc. Nice vid man :)
nice analogy 🙂
good for you bro
This upload literally made my day! Thanks for the tips
I really appreciate your ability to communicate these things, which, to me are so obvious that I can’t explain them to people who don’t.
Thank you so much, you deserve more recognition, these are life changing lessons
I've been getting into some hemi sync meditation but having never been much of a visual thinker i struggle with the visualization bits, this helps, cheers bro !
Thank you. I am grateful for the insightful videos you make, as they help give me better clarity.
One of the good exercises that I personally use is writing in my brain I just visualise words I hear and write down things that are important and I also wrote down math problems that are to solved mentally down in my head, this method of writing can help you with remembering things and learning new things like new languages, programming languages etc
🥳 Colin your channel is underrated. You are a fuc***ng genius 💯💯 No one talking about that. Thank you to share your knowledge with us. 👍👍👍
Speaking as a mnemonist of 2 decades, this is the best video of learning to visualize I have seen. Great job. Consider creating a training course.
first time in my life that i slow down a video, so much great information in one video awesome dude thx for ur efforts
Thanks for making me aware of this skill, and that it can be improved! I think that we often take things for granted because noone taught us that there's another way of doing them, and we end up convincing ourselves of false things
I think the biggest missing advice is to practice on something that is directly useful for you. Because then you will be able to leverage your new found power, which will: - make you practice without even realizing - but most importantly it will keep you motivated
I have aphantasia, I've made personal progress on this front. If you're curious I am open to discussing this topic since I can always learn more. For context, I got up to the point of being able to visualize on a small scale, about a 0.75 on the 1-5 scale. After I'd say 20 minutes of intense warm ups. And could maintain it for about 5 minutes before needing to rest and do the warm up period all over again. To me, it felt like more trouble than it was worth. But it was an interesting experiment into my psyche.
Could you please share your experience here, if possible? I have a similar condition, but my brain has found an alternative - I can imagine and modify multiple 3d shapes without visualizing them, something that I call a "spatial imagination". But the lack of visual part is sometimes (quite often) a huge problem :-(
@Igor I don't think an explanation here would do it justice. My view of aphantasia is a coping mechanism, not necessarily from trauma but a shortcut of sorts. It's like being given a tool bag and always using a screwdriver. Instead of a hammer you use the handle of the screwdriver, in certain situations it may be less efficient, but if you use it more than a hammer, there's never an incentive to learn to use a tool you never use in the first place. I think I still imagine, there is just no imagery. I think I have unconscious states of understanding. And I know conceptual relatives and comparisons. But I never let it manifest past that (in everyday life). What got me started was image streaming. It took me countless hours of practice but I kept thinking it was dumb and wouldn't work for me because my brain was different. I literally had to accept the fact it would work if I tried hard enough. And wouldn't let my brain skip over that process. I had to slow it down and take control of that unconscious stimuli. If I want to visualize, it takes 20-30 minutes of near meditation to rope it in and use the sensory stimuli. I don't see much 'use for it' because my brain seems to do what is needed without actual visualization. I just have almost a 'state of knowing indicator'. It can get me into trouble because in a complex environment I always have the "best answer" given what I know "so far". And it's usually a lack of knowing not understanding.
@@Thiole Think your reply does it justice. Have the same ‘issue’ I honestly thought that was the default. Not sure if summarised you correctly but in essence: imagination yes mental imagery no 🤔
@Deepmonkee sorry of. I think imagination is more of an intuition to us. A computer without a monitor. Maybe second hand information from the subconscious that is visualizing. Because it is vastly different as a process for us than when you use active imagery
@queerdo the problem is.... the better you get at using the screwdriver, the harder it is to develop the skills with the tools that are associated with visualization. You have to learn to catch yourself picking up the screwdriver to use another tool. Which is WAY harder than it sounds.
If visualizing is difficult for you, I would recommend a small whiteboard for quickly sketching out data and going through problems by hand. If you're not worried about getting first place it's fast enough to gain intuition. Sometimes I wake up in the wee hours of the morning where there's less visual stimulus in the environment and I'm able to visualize problems much more deeply in my mind, sometimes a problem from yesterday becomes as vivid as the dreams I have, and I can see the solution clearly. In a competitive setting I've only been able to solve 2/4 weekly contest problems in the 1&1/2 hour time limit. Sometimes I'm able to solve the third one in an extra hour or two. So maybe I can level up with some of the techniques you recommend
Thanks! like @surf said, really digging deep on how to use this tool practically would be really cool
Thank you! I was able to play two games of tic tac toe and conducted a bubble sort in my head on an array with 5 elements just for testing. I will definetly start training this! The tip about visuaize small parts, the part a need for the moment changed everything.
Love the videos. So cool to see how you're perfecting your formula of making videos over time
One of the best programming channel on KZhead. Great job!
You’re just goated bro ❤
Love your vids man!!
Thank you! I knew there must be a way to do this, but never had a process.
one of the smartest people on youtube. This is what I came here for! Outstanding sir
As someone who reads a lot of books, I imagine literally every single thing. Even a conversation.
I had in friend in last semester who could compute inverse matrices of like order 5 by head. For me, that is just insane.
Love you and Thank you for such great share!
You are literally helping what to think in order to guide us. Thank you this is helpful.
Appreciate your light!
Great job.
I've been trying to pick up blindfold Chess for 3 months now and been going about it differently, using Pokemon images representing each square. Most of files a and e are water pokemon, b and f are mostly grass, c and g fire, d and h are pokemon that start with same letter, so there is a logic behind it to aid retrieval. Cutting the board into 4 quarters, Gen 1 pokemon on bottom left quarter (Q1), Gen 2 for Q2, Gen 3 for Q3, and Gen 4 for Q4. Bottom row of each Q are legendary Pokemon, and above it are the 3 starter Pokemon and their evolutions. Then I came up with 20 something stories linking all the pokemon for each diagonal. So far I can tell you if a square is black or white, what squares are diagonally connected, and of course what pokemon belongs to each square. I can memorize a sequence of moves in exact order but can't actively keep track of possible attacks or defending pieces, basically keeping track of where all the pieces are. So my method has it's limitations. Thanks for this video going to solve the final problems I'm having to making blindfold Chess a reality for me.
Interesting, this method allows you to calculate more moves than you normally could?
@@ijack8575 not exactly, more like helps you memorize easier. There is something missing tho.
Pokemon VGC players do this all the time, you visualize what your opponent will do etc. Anything that has patterns attached you can visualize, even if is a closed system like chess,pokemon or music composition or an open one like mathematics,some arts etc.
I used this in college Anatomy and I also use it in studying wine geography. its amazing how much you can fit in with practice
A piece of art 🖤, keep up the good work
Your channel is a great treasure of resources and knowledge for programmers and problem solvers. Another amazing video
Love the videos. Thank you.
Its' insane, everytime i'm starting to be passionate about a subect and i make research about it, you made a video of it x)
I have aphantasia and can’t see things flying in my mind 😂 but i found that making mind maps and engaging deeply with it, help me to “feel” the information in my head and “move” around it, based on the map i made. Sadly I can see nothing with my eyes open or closed 😢.
What is aphan .... ??
Aphantasia is people who can’t imagine(visualize and see) things in their mind.
I was literally looking for this one week ago !!
I can't get enough of this. I read a book with a similar topic, and I couldn't get enough of it. "Unlocking the Brain's Full Potential" by Alexander Sterling
Absolutely awesome
You're quickly becoming one of my favourite KZheadrs...
I think a useful concept is that it's easy to visualize smaller concepts, and the amount of concepts that can be viewed at once is limited (but trainable). But by learning the smaller ones first and then building bigger concepts with those, it makes it easier/ possible to think of much bigger things. i.e. you can't really think of 100 dots but you can think 9 groups of nine with an extra 9 and 1 on the side. This is why I think practice is so important and starting small is maybe not just easier, but may even be better ("establishing the fundamentals"). tdlr: if you want to visualize something large, build it out of smaller, more well established concepts. (i.e.build a "concept pyramid": a lot of concepts linking to a single visualization through layering)
love the layering idea
That's a really good explanation, love the 'concept pyramid' idea. By finding/creating concept pyramids that are context-dependent or general, this practice could be taught more widely
omg that's so helpful !!
Your content is one of a kind. Thank you 🍭
this is THE BEST video on Manifestation! Great Job!!
thank you for this
this is what i need thank you
Really great tips, explanation and great graphs. Loved it :)
Very Good and Accurate Teaching 🎉🎉
Useful video,thanks! I have one question, how do you research?
Due to Aphantasia, you made me realize that I have Auditory visualization. Therefore your video has helped explain My brain And Why i offen reley on Imagination to figure out how to get through life. Excellent thanks.
I had a problem with my visualization but after the video i tried and it worked 😂❤️thanks and the way u said how the Brain can see in 3d really helped 😂 actually coz my brain already knows it exists appreciate u alot
Your advise are gem
About the short memory part.. Lets say you want to visualize a dodecahendron .What will your immediate natural way to visualize it? If you stick to a certain part of the shape you can construct the rest by association. The thing is very strong visual thinkers construct it almost immediately. I dunno i guess its like the rest of the shape just flows naturally without forcing it? I am a fairly good visual thinker but i need that flow.
Wt.f man this is such a great video, fyi what I learned is I can start with a 3 by 3 square and expand, rotate and play with it in my head. All these gurus can kiss my buns man. Please keep these gems coming- sincerely. Hopefully you have some knowledge on lucid dreaming? Would love to utilize the 7-8 hours too. I see that a lot of successful people do that too.
Useful Video ❤️👑
I think chess players visualize in a more top to bottom approach. Where they remember the games and move orders and openings and rebuild the chess board in their head from that. That's why they have trouble memorizing chess boards with positions that can't happen. And it's also why they can replay the game in their head easily. This comes from just playing a ton of chess more than anything. But I'm an amateur at chess so I don't know exactly what goes through their heads.
Thank you 👍
How strange! I was having difficulty in visualizing problems in the Aptitude preparation, and YT recommended this to me! love u internet.
That was great. Highly recommend the book Psycho-Cybernetics and The power of your subconscious mind. Your video was very helpful
Brilliant 👏
Bro you are great.
what's your advice to people with more or less aphantasia?
I’ve been wanting to figure all this stuff out for a long time. My head just as it is can basically just hallucination images chaotically whenever I close my eyes and don’t try and stop it. It does it all automatically but i can almost never control it at least as much as I’d like. Like the part where he said zooming in is hard mentally but whenever I try to think about something I always like fly forward and just get more and more detail and force myself back outwards like if you’re playing some flying game with the sensitivity crazy high. I’m not even really sure what I’m talking about anymore but I think I’m just excited about all of this now and I’m just hoping that I have enough motivation to actually do something with it longterm.
Also anyone know why my eyes shake like crazy when I try to visualize things and also shake way more when I do it when im hyper
I'm uncertain about whether I experience aphantasia. While I can manage to conjure up faint mental images of familiar things like faces, scenes, and artwork, they tend to fade rapidly and lack vibrant clarity. Interestingly, I can even manipulate these mental images, placing them in various settings, yet they don't linger and they even change rapidly from one thing to another. Additionally, I find it challenging to construct a mental scene based on a written description from a book. I wonder if this is because of a lack of practice or effort, or if it suggests a certain level of aphantasia.
I can successfully reconstruct a chessboard after studying it for a short period of time. However, I struggle when it comes to mentally visualizing each individual piece within a detailed scene, including the colored squares and other aspects of the board. i am able to visualize it, but everything flickers and changes very quickly and i spend more effort in actually trying to visualize the color pattern of the board than the location of the pieces or anything useful
This explains why audiobooks become more vivid for me after every relisten.
Thanks Charlie
We could totally use a sequel to this video on how you use these 6 steps for solving your coding problems.
What did your teacher grade you for this video essay
Good vid, explains process of learning recall. Another way to practice this skill is with reading. Read a short passage, rewrite the passage from “memory”. What youre really doing is seeing it again as you write the text down. Recall is a fundamentally different skill than comprehension so while this is kool, dont forget to focus on comprehension as you test yourself. Retire logic teacher. Crank on!
Thank you
Colin, I love this video, it is so helpful for me! But could you speak a bit slower next time? It’s so much information to absorb and process 🙈
I ended up here coz i realized that when i close my eyes to meditate, i had hard time visualizing scenery / objects in one place. It becomes random and fast paced, that's when i realized i may have visualization problem. And i assume it's strongly linked to lack of focus / lack luster with body and mind connection. I was far more familiar with emotions vs external.
perfect. naked truth no one is willing to admit, genius demands effort.
Years ago I red a book called "the Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Janes, a psychologist who had worked with schizophrenics extensively, and had come to the conclusion that ancient humans were unable to consciously solve a problem, so their subconscious solved it for them, then hallucinated voices to tell them the solution (the voices of the gods). He used Odysseus and Abraham as his primary examples, noting that their lives were quite similar to schizophrenics--hearing voices telling them what to do. So when you suggest the visualization allows the subconscious access to your thought process and that it's very powerful, you're right--the subconscious has been solving problems much longer than the conscious mind.
thank you
✌️😎as a chess player this was indeed helpful, thx
Please make a detailed video on flow state
I wonder how people categorize thing in their heads when they have mental images or inner dialogue. Back when I was a kid I always thought the other kids were lying about seing stuff in their brain, sort of like pretending to have a super power. Turns out that in fact a lot of people can visualize, at least some basic stuff and more if they focus. Same with the inner monologue, I learned about later, I always thought it was a made up thing or people were exagerating it.. I always talk to myself out loud because of this or at least mouth the words cause I cannot converse with myself or plan if i dont do it physically. What kinda pisses me is that when i fall asleep, my dreams are very picturesque and I just cannot acces, even a very basic imagery, when I am awake...
this is a good intp video
7:57. About wrong mental images. I've always had problem with drawing round objects like pool balls mentally. I've always imagined them having some king of a blade right at the center of it 🤣
how do i see a dot
Thanks
thanks very much for such info! one of the most useful video (as well as your others) i've seen in a while
I watched this video 2 times and still I don't have a clue as to what I'm supposed to do to be able to do this
Summary: solve problems, get better
@@egor.okhterov Thanks, omw to solve some shit 👍
What you’re supposed to do: daily practice visualizing things until slowly and slowly over time you get better and better at it, like with anything you practice every day.
I'm still fairly early in the video, but but how do you make the image to begin with? Where is it? where do you "see" it?
Great video! I have a question: after learning the image, should one recreate it only mentally, hold on to the mental image and then check it with the original image OR should one recreate the learnt image from your mental image onto paper and then check that blurted physical recreation with the original image? Thank you in advance! 😁
I think it's better to draw it out and then compare it, that way, you are solidifying that visualisation into your mind. Also, when you draw it out on paper, it's easier to see when parts don't look quite right and you can fix it in your visualisation.
Watching the whole video thinking that I would finally visualize things, and then I realized that I might have aphantasia. : aight bro: I recently wanted to multiply faster, and I can not see it in my head, so I have to "feel" that the numbers are there. The reason why I think I might have aphantasia is that when I close my eyes it is just black, maybe a glow or fractal like images here and there, but, just black. I read a comment that less visual stimulus in the environment would increase mental vision, but, even when my room is pitch black, I still can not see anything. Maybe I have it all wrong, and I do not have aphantasia, and honestly that would be great that if I can change those glows or fractals into images like chess boards and long mathematical problems. Have a good day, NotRealJohnny
When I close my eyes, it's all black as well. But I can kind of bring up familiar images "at the back of my head", sort of tucked away in my mind. This only seems to work for things I am familiar like faces, places, paintings, objects, etc. Unfortunately, these images are very unstable and not vivid, and I can't really organize these images well enough to create mental pictures from book descriptions, because they keep changing and flickering quickly.
One of the best KZheadrs in history
Agree. I would love to have more videos to watch. Such a brilliant communicator!!! 🤯🪄✨️💖🏆
Hey I found it helpful. Can you do a video on how to install beliefs by communicating with your subconscious mind and clear limiting beliefs? One thing I know is that the subconscious mind understands the language of emotion. Thanks
There's a book on it. Which basically says, you say things to your mind in a certain state ( alpha/ beta / theta) and then the the message reaches straight to the subconscious instead of fighting the conscious. It's name is : The genie within by Harry W. Carpenter. It's a good book
@@piyushdanej3930 Thankyou for the book recommendation, I'll give it a read. Peace 🕊️
hii ! one thing that helped me a lot was cutting out intrusive thoughts and paying more attention to them because thoughts create emotions, and when you create these "bad emotions" you are implanting them in your subconscious, so watch your thoughts and have a good internal monologue.
In order to start seeing images in your mind Practice Oculomotor control. mainly centering your Eyes, Expanding and Narrowing your vision target board helps as practise.
Can you explain with other terms ?
Yes, can you expand your idea, please sir ?
Thanx for these advices. My old (1962) humble ass has big difficulty seeing anything in his mind, except spots of light and darkness. Eyes closed among this fuzzy cloud, i hardly see the shape of thought numbers (0,1,2,....etc). And it does not seem to become better despite daily training. I think that the overuse of computers and screens, has killed my capabilities to imagine things and generate mental images. I am wondering if there is any drug that can help mental visualisation ? I am not encouraging the use of illegal substances....but younger, i tried poppy tea and it can give short bursts of vivid detailed realistic sceneries. LSD gives also exceptional visualisations but always of psychedelic geometric landscapes, over which you have quasi no control. Now the numerous RC (research chemicals of the gray market) could have some benefits for visualisations ?... Any sugestions are wellcome. Peace & love
Image streaming do help too
This is the thing that comes to me naturally and is easy but Im still bad at chess 😂😂 i have been playing for a month now But u still have a lot of room for improvement
Lol I’m only 1,000 games in and am starting to do it, especially when I’m just waking up but don’t feel like getting up. I just be having a random board with positions playing. I used to create combos in other games this way. It just comes from playing so much, but I haven’t watched the video yet. 😅 3:39 Small dot challenge 40 dots.
This is unparalleled. I had the privilege of reading something similar, and it was truly unparalleled. "Unlocking the Brain's Full Potential" by Alexander Sterling