Whenever I hear folks question how to make sense of a complex situation, how to learn a complex subject, how to solve a complex problem, there’s one phrase that always …
Visual Thinking Tool Selection: Analog vs Digital
How do you choose the right tools to unlock your visual thinking potential? After years of experimenting with everything from simple composition notebooks to high-tech iPad apps, I’ve learned the …
Sketch Instinct: 2025 Book Club Selections
Want to make sketching it out second nature in 2025? That’s the goal of my new program Sketch Instinct. To complement the library of complete-at-your-own-pace sketchnoting courses, I’m introducing a …
What can you do with visual thinking skills?
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 …