The power of infographics

I remember when I read a book and was able to visualize the whole story in my head, down to the smallest detail. Over the years we started getting more and more visual input and information in general and our imaginations and attention/retention spans took a serious hit, my own included. Now I don’t believe 99% of the people that tell me they suffer from ADD as the vast majority are self-diagnosed and it’s just an excuse not to pay attention, then there are those that have been diagnosed with it (usually in school because teachers don’t know how to handle kids) but don’t have it and finally the 1% that actually have ADD. Those 99% that are on the ADD train without having ADD might just suffer from information overload. In this age of information overload we have to be more selective of what we focus on and pay attention to, we receive enormous amounts of information every single day! It’s becoming more and more difficult to get the information we want/need/ask for and filter it out from all the information we are bombarded with. There is no time anymore to emerge yourself in a thick book and let your imagination do it’s wonderful work for you so the books get thinner, illustrations take over, books are now read on iPads and most information is reduced to 140 characters. My point with all this, we are not equipped in getting all this bulk of information in text. We need the relevant information to grab our attention and stick in our memory without taking up much time. We do much better with visual information and this is where the infographics come in.

I’ve been a fan of infographics since late last year and after reading another one yesterday that helped me a lot while I was looking into something I decided to start using them on my blog as well. If I can find a good, relevant infographic I will attach it to a post (yes, I will still write more than 140 character posts).

You can also find good ones yourself, just do a search for “password infographic“, “potato infographic“, “hello kitty infographic” or whatever topic you want information on. You’ll get relevant information and usually a good starting point to the rest of your research.

Before you leave, have a look at this infographic. It explains it all.