Before language, people must have thought without words. I often have the impression that I have a thought fully-formed in my head, yet I wait to listen to it unfold in words before moving on to the next thought. Perhaps I could think much faster if I weren't addicted to words.
Has anyone developed techniques for thinking without words?
This would have a little in common with Buddhist practices of emptying your mind, but wouldn't be the same thing. For one thing, Buddhists also try to empty their minds of images. More importantly, they are trying not to think, while I'm trying to think - just not unpack everything into words.
I think this is an interesting question. What is it that you want to be able to think of non-verbally? Some of the replies discuss using this to perform mathematical manipulations. Is this your primary goal, or is it something else? What is it you want to process faster? Also, does this mean you want to be able to visualize more, or that you want to somehow think of things in an abstract but still completely non-verbal way (abstract meaning nothing that you could see, hear, touch, taste, or smell)? I may have some input for the first, but not really for the second (at least, not that I know of--the only things I can't see, hear, smell, taste or touch that clearly exist in my thoughts are my emotions, though these are often also imbued with linguistic and visual associations).
Being able to visualize doesn't necessarily require cutting off your word-thinking abilities at all. I know this because I think of a lot of things both visually and in words and symbols and tend to swap between the two interchangeably. This is actually my natural mode of thought. Whether you can adopt my approach may depend on how your mental architecture works. On the other hand, maybe it is possible to learn how to adopt this approach even if your mind doesn't currently work this way, much like people can train to improve their memorization skills. I don't currently know how easy or hard that is, but I like the approach of trying to change something to see if it works. As I understand it, some people are very good at visualization and some never think in pictures at all and are even surprised to learn that some people do. Some people can play songs in their head, and some people can't (I can do this, though I have no special musical ability). I know that I often use visualization both when I am doing math and writing novels, and also when I'm just daydreaming. On the other hand, I will sometimes both see and hear words and symbols in my head in addition to or instead of visuals.
What is the current way that your mind works? Are all of your thoughts in your personal voice, like hearing yourself speak inside your head, or are some annotated with pictures, sounds, smells, etc? People have very different ways of naturally thinking about things, so I'd need to know more to write a more detailed response to your question. I would also be immensely interested to know what kind of thinking styles people have here.
Oh?
One classic evil genie move is when someone wishes to be the best at something, it makes everyone but the wisher incompetent at it.
That illustrates a sense in which unique special isn't as special as we feel it is, unlike awesome special.