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. We have the tendency to want to get things right on the first go-round, but that’s rarely how it works when you’re sketching out ideas.
The first thing you draw or the first diagram you sketch out might not (and probably won’t) look quite right, and that’s okay, because once you see it on the page instead of just in your head, you’ll be able to have a conversation with it. It will suggest new structures, alternative formats, or adjacent levels of inquiry that you might pursue. That’s the “back-talk of sketches” that Annie Murphy Paul describes in her book The Extended Mind.
So if your first attempt at capturing an idea from a book you’re reading or a process you’re building at work doesn’t look right, simply sketch out a new version with a minor or major change, and see what that one says back to you. Is it a better fit than your first attempt?
As Rick Rubin describes in his book The Creative Act, you’re in the crafting stage of the creative process, where one of your tools is the simple A/B test: make two versions of the thing and then pick the one you like better.
If that still doesn’t feel quite right then make a third, and then pick between that one and your favorite from the first two. There’s value in having two things to compare to each other instead of having to evaluate one thing as it stands on its own.
Another way to put that for us as visual thinkers: draw it wrong until it looks right.
Don’t put unnecessary pressure on yourself by expecting the first thing you sketch out to be the final form of the artifact you’re creating. Allow some space for that sketch to talk back to you, to iterate on it, until you’ve got the feeling of “Yep, that’s it. That visual is an accurate and efficient summary of what I’m working with.”
Then go do whatever you intended to do with those ideas. Remember that the purpose of sketching things out is to bridge the gap between ideas and action. You’ve got your artifact. Now go use it.
Dig Deeper
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Here’s to making as many marks as you need.
Cheers,
-Doug