---
title: "Thinking differently is not a weakness."
url: https://sam-page.com/thinking/thinking-differently-is-not-a-weakness
date: 2026-07-30
author: Sam Page
type: Post or article
categories: [People and behaviour]
reading_time: 2 min
summary: "For a long time, I didn't fully see it that way. School was hard. It wasn't built for me. And when you don't fit the mould, it's easy to think you're the problem."
first_published: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn%3Ali%3Ashare%3A7488535329700847617
---

# Thinking differently is not a weakness.

For a long time, I didn't fully see it that way. School was hard. It wasn't built for me. And when you don't fit the mould, it's easy to think you're the problem.

![](https://sam-page.com/img/thinking/thinking-differently-is-not-a-weakness-li1.webp)

But dyslexia gave me something I didn't expect. A set of traits that have shaped how I solve problems:

- Empathy. Struggling at school gives you a real sense of what others are going through. I genuinely think I can sense what people are feeling. That means I go into problem solving with the other person at the heart of it, not myself.

- Thinking differently. When you can't do it the traditional way, you find another way. That's more of a skill than a workaround.

- Seeing A to Z. I'm not linear. I'll jump from A to Z, then Z to G. I'm comfortable not knowing every step in between. The ability to see the big picture and be okay with the messy middle is very useful more often than you'd think.

- Hyper focus. Last Saturday I started clearing our overgrown street. No plan whatsoever. Just cracked on. Neighbours joined in. We got a big chunk done. If I'd been worried about working out the full scope first, I probably wouldn't have ever got started.

- A bad memory. Short term is fine. Medium term is rubbish. But forgetting things means you go at stuff fresh. Constant naivety is underrated. I think so anyway!

Richard Branson is a good example of what doing things differently can look like at scale. He's looked at industry after industry, seen them differently, and done them differently. He's dyslexic too.

The real lesson I've taken from all of this is you have to understand your strengths and use them. Know your weaknesses, work on them where you can. That's how you grow.

Do you have a trait you once saw as a weakness that's actually helped you?