I tend to visualize call trees. Much of my refactoring is manipulating the call tree--flattening it, re-extracting subroutines, moving expressions up & down. A

I tend to visualize call trees. Much of my refactoring is manipulating the call tree--flattening it, re-extracting subroutines, moving expressions up & down. Another non-symbolic style of thinking I use is kinesthetic synesthesia. I "feel" the design "lean" in one direction or another, then refactor in that direction.