So now here’s the story about an experience that led to my understanding of cloud thinking and how to flip it from a disability to an opportunity.

I was working with a student who was dyspraxic. She was in her first year at university. She was studying entrepreneurship, which requires agility in thinking. The kind of thinking that sees an opportunity and seizes it.

And yet when I spoke to this student and asked her about her learning style, she said that her mother told her she was always blinkered, never considered somebody else’s point of view, and never adapted her position in light of new information.

She was just about scraping passing marks, or grades, which implied that she could remember and regurgitate information but was not showing any evidence that she processed or applied it.

I wasn’t sure how to deal with that. I’ll be honest, this was shortly after I started working with adult neurodiverse students, and I wondered why she was even at university.Like many of my colleagues, I assumed her lack of success might be “a recruitment issue” – that the student did not really have what it takes to pass a bachelor degree. How wrong I was.

One day she walked into my room and I asked, “What are we doing today?” She’d showed me her new essay assignment. So I looked at the title of the essay, and I remember asking, “What’s it all about?”

Quick as a flash, she told me exactly what that essay required as a conclusion. That shook me to the core. It was the first glimpse I had that she could do it. I had seen that essay topic before and she was spot on.

I asked her why and how she knew this. She had no idea. I suddenly realized that there was something here to be explored. Over the next few months, we developed a technique that I now call convergent mapping.

We wrote the answer that she seemed to intuitively know in the middle of the paper. And then we drew arrows pointed towards that intuited answer. Each arrow was labelled with the things that she could come up with that supported her intuitive assumption.

Then we looked at each of those arrows going in. We discussed which points justified her opinion, where the challenges or limitations were, and what the balanced view might be.

It was game changing. When she put down the ideas leading into her intuited answer, she now had something she could look at to check if it was true.

Over the next few months her thinking changed. She began to make the connections, to lose her dogmatic insistence on the first idea. She began to both understand her thinking and see how to structure an argument. She learned how to make changes in the light of her exploration.

Her grades went up, and she began to do quite well. She left with a good grade implying an ability to adapt, use, and apply what she was learning.

For me that experience was an eye opener. Over time, I realized she was not the only one. Undergraduates, post graduates and even a PhD student showed aspects of the same thinking style. I began to ask students who may appear slightly dyspraxic or slightly clumsy, “Do you ever know the answer but you’re not quite sure where that answer comes from?”

There was often – though not always – a correlation between those dyspraxic tendencies and a positive answer to that question.

You may be completely dyspraxic and not use cloud thinking, or you may be using cloud thinking and be as agile as an athlete or a dancer. But that question is key and an honest answer to it is key. “Do you ever know the answer but you find it hard to explain where that answer came from?”

Let’s look at another case. My student, this time, didn’t seem to do very well with essays. She was barely passing. What was bothering her more than that was that every time she had a debate with her father, she lost the argument.

We started using the convergent mapping technique to address her main concern: the arguments with Dad. We worked on justifying her opinion around those ideas that fed into the convergent mind map.

It seems that the very process of using convergent mapping and then justification of opinion seems to develop new ways of understanding what we know.

As if magically, she began to win the arguments. She was absolutely delighted. Within six months her grades went up to a first class degree.

So there’s something worth exploring here.

All this is true not just for college students. Secondary school students, when asked the question, “Do you sometimes know the answer and you don’t know where it came from?” often look as if you’re the first person they’ve met who understands what’s going on.

I’ve been using convergent mind mapping with students of all ages now, and it is amazing how it helps to tie the intuitive thinking into that part of the brain that does more logical thinking. This allows them to examine the data that they’ve used to develop the argument and change their minds if they need to.

Are you one of these people who use cloud thinking? Would convergent mapping help you with an argument, a debate, an essay? Try it. It doesn’t need to be tidy and neat. It’s just for you to look at.

You can start with a circle (or even a “cloud” shape in the middle of your paper and write your intuition, your best guess, in it).

Then draw arrows pointing in from different parts of the page. On each arrow put something, any fact or principle or argument that you believe can support your best guess. When you’re done, you can start checking each one. Check your facts.

Did you justify your opinion? What are the advantages, the positives, the limitations, the challenges? What is the best answer? What may be a balanced view? When you’ve done all that, look at everything you’ve got and wonder if this is the complete story. Is there anything else you’re missing? Something else you need to know? You have now become a competent, independent learner.

If you use this technique regularly, I believe your grades will improve and life may be more fun.