Why is it worth it to develop your visual thinkings skills? What can you actually do with the diagrams and drawings that I’m always harping on about? Quite a lot, …
The Antidote to Information Asymmetry
I recently had a conversation in which someone mentioned how on a trip to the doctor, the doctor pulled out a notebook and sketched out the parathyroid in support of …
How to Get to Essence
As visual thinkers, what we do is make sense of the world by making marks on the page. Those marks can take all sorts of different forms, from words, boxes, …
Comprehensive vs Curated Note-Taking
When taking visual notes on a book or a podcast, it’s hard to avoid the trap of trying to capture that information source comprehensively. We think we need to capture …
All models are wrong, but some are useful.
“All models are wrong, but some are useful.” That’s what British statistician George Box said back in 1976. As a builder and user of models, his point was that we …
Draw It Wrong Until It Looks Right
When you’re doing the work of making ideas visible, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the first marks you make need to be the final ones. …
Debunking Learning Styles
What’s your learning style? Are you a visual learner? An auditory learner? A kinesthetic learner? In my work teaching visual thinking skills, the topic of learning styles comes up a …
How Sketching Keeps You From Lying To Yourself
As a sketcher of ideas, you’ve likely realized that relying solely on your thoughts can sometimes lead you astray. Our minds are incredible tools, but they can also create fuzzy, …
I Sketched a Book on a Mug
Do you ever find yourself reading an incredible book, feeling inspired by its ideas, only to struggle remembering the key lessons a few weeks later? I used to have that …
A Workbook for Visual Thinkers
Ten years ago I developed a workbook to help folks new to visual thinking build their mark-making skills. For the first decade of its life, that resource existed only as …