One thing that seems to be missing from these posts though is that this kind of uber-productivity with tools and shortcuts takes serious practice. Even ridiculously talented individuals still need to commit those shortcuts to memory such that they can recall them when needed.

On top of that, there's the learning of aesthetics along the way: what colors to use, what proportions to use, how much margin to set for better-looking illustrations, and so on. This takes serious practice.

But I ( native English speaker) struggle ( had to google to write the first sentence ) with which is which in _former_ and _later_. I always imagine the past stretching behind and the first thing mentioned is now further away from me, so it should be the 'later' and the second thing mentioned is now closer to me and should be the 'former'. I've had this conversation enough to know that some people agree and others respond by sharply downgrading their estimation of my intelligence. As a _predominantly symbolic/linguistic_ person I suspect former/later is something you would perceive as effortless.

Though I have hard time taking the visual/auditory/kinaesthetic learning styles seriously, and with no thought as to the contribution to the variation between individuals being learned or innate - symbolic/linguistic/visual seem to be different competencies.

And Gilles Castel seems near the top of the curve on all of them.

Indeed, as you assume, "former" and "later" don't pose any problem for me because I don't imagine anything visual at all when I evoke those concepts, I just think about what they mean in a non-visual way. But I can see why you would struggle if you think visually.

I guess the analogous weakness in my case is the one that manifests when I have hung my coat and forgot to take out e.g. the keys. I know what pocket my keys are in (e.g. suppose they are in the left inner pocket) but I totally struggle to find it when I'm not wearing the coat. Visual thinking seems to really outperform symbolic thinking in that problem, and sometimes memorization of the solution provides a shortcut in similar issues, but there it doesn't work because the coat can be hung in two orientations! So it's usually faster for me to take the coat, put it on, take the keys, and then hang the coat again, and in fact that's exactly what I do, at least if no one outside of friends and family is looking... :)

I'm not sure about learning styles (if a teacher provided a visual schema of a lesson I just translated it to words, or focused more on the oral explanation and ignored the diagram, and still learned it fine, it wasn't such a big deal as some people make it look like), but thinking styles are definitely a thing. I'm not sure if the difference is learned or innate either. In my case, I have always loved reading and read a lot since infancy, so it might be learned.

If the past is behind you, isn't further away earlier in time? The Romans are further back than yesterday, right? So nearer should be later in time?

I often have to stop when doing filesystem datetime comparisons, to work out if I want greater-than or less-than, and picture it as Unix Epoch in seconds, the later time is a greater number, nearer things are closer and bigger and more recent, distant things are smaller, farther and more ancient.

(btw, it's former/latter)

I'd say both.

Is it really within the reach of most people to be able to whip up figures like that in a few minutes?

I'd say no.

This is a question that goes directly to the core of my competence. In general we're living in a pioneers' era where demand trumps offer overwhelmingly.

The tools we have, we don't use them because they're the best possible tools, but because they're the only tools available.

We are in such a need of any tool that works somehow, that we're deceived to think that they're wonderful when they're just slightly better than the rest. The space for improvement is vast, including a tool that would make those diagrams easy for you.

There’s no way I’d use it in a lecture.