“Not Getting Through” Is Rarely About Your Idea
Every day, you try to communicate something to someone.
A quick update to a colleague. A recommendation to a friend. A report for your manager. A post you want people to actually read. An explanation that somehow never quite clicks the way you hoped.
When it doesn’t land, the instinct is to write more. Go deeper. Add more context. Explain it better.
But more often than not, the real problem is the opposite.
You’re over-explaining with text — and that’s exactly what’s getting in the way.
The Brain Processes Visuals Before It Even Reads a Word
Imagine two versions of the same message. One is a paragraph of text. The other is a single diagram with a short label. Which one does your brain understand faster?
There’s no contest.
Research suggests that roughly 80–90% of all information the brain processes is visual. Reading and parsing written language is actually a relatively slow, high-effort task for the brain. Visuals — images, diagrams, photos — are understood almost instantly, before conscious reading even begins.
That gap shows up clearly in the numbers:
| Format | Compared to Text |
|---|---|
| Text | Baseline (×1) |
| Image (photo, diagram, illustration) | ~7× more |
| Video | ~5,000× more |
Why Video Is 5,000x More Powerful Than Text — The Research Behind the Number
The 5,000× figure comes from Dr. James McQuivey of Forrester Research, outlined in his report “How Video Will Take Over The World” (2008):
“A minute of video is worth 1.8 million words.”
For context: 1.8 million words is roughly equivalent to 3,600 standard web pages. No one reads that in 60 seconds. But a video can deliver that depth of meaning naturally, without the audience even trying.
The math starts from the familiar idea that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Video runs at approximately 30 frames per second, so 1,000 words × 30 frames × 60 seconds = 1.8 million words per minute.
This is figurative rather than literal — but the underlying truth is hard to dispute. Video delivers moving images, sound, voice, facial expression, pacing, and tone all at once. No amount of written text can replicate that combination.
This Has Nothing to Do with Formal Presentations. It’s About Everything You Communicate.
When people hear “use more visuals,” they often assume it’s advice for slides and pitches. It isn’t.
The same principle applies everywhere you communicate — which is essentially all day, every day.
📧 Email and team chat Writing out a multi-paragraph explanation of three options, each with pros and cons? A simple comparison table does the same job in a fraction of the space — and actually gets read instead of skimmed.
📝 Reports, memos, and meeting notes Prose describing a sequence of events is harder to follow than a timeline or a simple flow diagram. The information is the same. The experience of receiving it is completely different.
📱 Social media and personal publishing Posts with a strong image or an original diagram consistently outperform text-only posts. This isn’t an algorithm trick — it’s the brain’s natural preference for visual information doing its work.
💬 Everyday explanations and conversations Trying to explain something complex in a message thread? A rough sketch — even photographed by phone and sent as an image — can cut the back-and-forth in half.
📂 Personal notes and reference documents Even notes you make for yourself benefit from this. A visual structure you made last month is far easier to re-read and act on than dense paragraphs written in a rush.
3 Shifts That Make Visual Communication a Daily Habit
1. Ask “Can I draw this?” before you start typing
Before you write anything, pause and ask: could this be a diagram? a table? a simple sketch?
Flows, comparisons, timelines, relationships between ideas — almost all of these communicate faster as visuals than as sentences. And the visual doesn’t need to be polished. A rough hand-drawn sketch photographed on your phone can be more effective than a perfectly formatted paragraph.
2. Treat text as annotation, not the main event
Text has a role — it adds nuance, precision, and context. But it works best as a complement to a visual, not as the primary vehicle for an idea.
If you find yourself writing a long explanation, ask whether you’re compensating for a missing visual. Often, you are. The explanation you’re working so hard to write might become unnecessary the moment you add the right image.
3. Video doesn’t have to be “produced”
The word “video” can trigger thoughts of cameras, editing software, and hours of work. But in everyday communication, a 60-second screen recording or a quick phone video of you explaining something often does more than a carefully written document ever could.
In day-to-day sharing, a short video people will actually watch beats a long document people won’t — every time.
A Quick Checklist for Before You Hit Send
- Could this be a diagram, table, or visual instead of text?
- Is the amount of text here truly the minimum needed?
- Would adding one image make this immediately clearer?
- Would a short video or screen recording communicate this faster?
- Will the person receiving this look at it and understand, or will they have to read through it to find the point?
The Takeaway: It’s Not About Talent. It’s About What You Reach For First.
Most people who struggle to communicate clearly aren’t lacking ideas or intelligence. They’re just defaulting to text out of habit.
- Images communicate up to 7× more than text
- Video communicates up to 5,000× more — the equivalent of 1.8 million words per minute
These aren’t statistics about formal communication. They apply to everything you send, share, post, or explain — whether it’s a quarterly report or a message to a friend.
The shift is simple: instead of asking “how do I write this better?”, start asking “can I show this instead?”
That one question, asked consistently, changes how people experience everything you put out into the world.