Editing The Pen Addict 543/transcript (section)

== Practical Tips for Starting Sketchnoting ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, let's talk actual sketchnoting here. Someone wants to go and consider, you know, sketchnoting this meeting they're going to or this conference trip that they're going on. Can you give us kind of like the top level tips that you teach when you're talking about sketchnoting to someone for the first time?

'''Myke Rohde:''' Sure can. I would love to. So there's two things that I would say immediately if you want to do. Number one is experimental mindset. Think of yourself as a scientist running an experiment. And if the experiment goes crazy and haywire, you've just learned something and you can apply it on your next experiment. If it fails, you know, you don't say, oh, experiment failed. Can't do sketchnoting ever again. Like that's not, that's just not the way it works. It's iterative. It's experimental. And you give yourself the freedom to like see what happens. That's kind of fun, right? So that would be the first mindset thing I would say. The second thing I would say is focus on really simple drawing. And I've got a free video on YouTube and I'll give you the show note link to it. That you can watch.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's like links in the show notes for everyone to go grab.

'''Myke Rohde:''' It's like 20 minutes long and the drawing part's even shorter. It's like five, six minutes. So you can get a feel for what drawing with this approach that I teach is five basic shapes, circle, triangle, square, line and dot. And you kind of put them together like Legos. So it reduces drawing to this, hey, we're capturing ideas. We're not worrying about it being perfect. It takes all the baggage away from artwork and just makes it idea capture. So that would be the second thing. I guess that there'd be a third thing. And I would say if you're new to it, don't feel like you have to go draw everything and it's got to be beautiful and perfect. Like, and, you know, comparative to someone who's been doing it like me for years and years. Like that's not a fair way to put yourself in a position. It would be better to simply do this. And I say, if you're taking notes, let's say analog notes now, this is a pen addict podcast, right? So you've got a notebook, your favorite pen, and you just write notes. So what I would say is the very first step is on your page to just designate a column on the right side. And that's for drawing. On the left side, you continue to write your notes. You can do bullet points or whatever you do, right? And you write that information in and then you've got a column on the right. And when something comes to your mind, because you're going to go into it with an experimental mindset, and something comes in your mind and says, oh, that image is in my mind, or I see something on the PowerPoint up on the screen, or I observe something in my environment, that then you have the freedom now to draw some little tidbit really quickly using those five basic elements in that column. And then when you fill up the column, you're done. And then, you know, if you want to flip to the next page, you can do so. But basically, it's sort of this really simple toe-in-the-water way to experiment, where you just have this dedicated column for drawings. And the cool thing is you can do them while you're taking notes if it occurs to. Or if you get done with the notes, and let's say you've only filled half that right-hand column, which is maybe, I'd say maybe a quarter of the page on the right side. Let's say you've got empty space at the bottom. You could just reflect on your notes, go back and read through your notes, reflect on them. And then, oh, that's an interesting idea. Then fill it in and just fill up the space with images. So that would be a really great way to enter into sketchnoting and sort of do that for a while. And then the goal would be is to slowly integrate the images into your text so they sort of work together. But that can be a longer-term experiment, right? You start first with this designated space. And then as you get comfortable with that, you say, okay, I feel pretty comfortable. This is working for me. Maybe you stay that way forever. I don't know. That would be a fine sketchnote. But maybe then you say, okay, I'm going to now integrate a drawing. I'm just going to leave space in my written notes and then assume that I'll put a drawing there and then come back and fill it in. That could be level two. And then level three could be like really embracing it and sort of trying some new things. But that's for later on when you feel more comfortable. So I would say, you know, take it gradually. It's an iterative process. It's experimental. So if it goes haywire, like laugh about it. And then, you know, just like a good improv person, you'd sort of roll with it. And that would be what I would recommend for somebody listening.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, I think the experimentation aspect is key, right? You just want to start, kind of figure out what works for you. Like one of the recurring themes I always talk about when we talk about planning or journaling is the, I call it the hashtag Bujo look, right? People get intimidated by the Instagram bullet journaling spreads, which I just call the hashtag Bujo. And that is not what this is about at all, right? You need to open up the planner, you know, write down the dates or the things you need to do today. And that's as good as it needs to look, right? You're not creating a hashtag Bujo spread, right? So don't be intimidated by the end result of the professionals who've been doing this for a decade, right? You have to get started, like Myke's saying, you know, write down your notes on the left side, draw yourself, you know, a column on the right side to maybe start adding in some little diagrams and notes. And then those things start working more and more towards each other. And then you get there and have fun doing it. And yeah, I think that's great. So one of the things that I overthink, and it's probably a question you get a lot because, you know, I would be sitting here thinking, okay, well, I'm going to sketchnote this webinar that I'm going to go watch, you know, about blogging or whatever. And how can I pay attention to what this person is saying while also taking notes? Oh, and then thinking about doing a little bit of sketchnoting as well to kind of like visualize, like, is there a way to like, get the essence? Is that the idea is trying to get the essence of whatever you're trying to sketchnote down on the page as opposed to getting everything? Because I think that can be a little bit intimidating as well.

'''Myke Rohde:''' Yeah, this is definitely a learned skill that takes time to build. So again, give yourself grace when you begin. I would say the thing I always talk about is listening is much more of the secret weapon of sketchnoting than drawing is. Like I think in sketchnoting, drawing is actually secondary in my view. Really good listening, active listening and trying to determine like what, so where is this person going with these ideas? Like they're obviously adding things up and they're stacking these ideas on each other. You're heading for a conclusion of some kind or a huge overall point, right? Like, can I determine what that is and listen? So that would be the first thing is approach it with a listening mindset. One of the challenges you might be identifying is this feeling like I have to write everything down. That's kind of, that was the problem I was trying to get away from because what I did is I literally tried to write everything down and it was terrible, right? It was bad. So the whole point was how can I like stop, stop my hand from moving, do a lot more mental processing and understanding the concepts and then start seeing like, what is the general idea that this person is talking about? Can I summarize that in a sentence? Can I summarize that in a paragraph? Maybe they're, you know, revealing it a bit at a time. So it's sort of adding up. But so that would be the first thing. The second thing I would say is going back to, remember we talked about, maybe you start with a column, I don't believe it's cheating to not draw anything until you're done. So if you are just starting, do the writing first and just leave spaces where you think I want to put a drawing in this circle and that square and I have, and in this corner. So I have three drawings I'm going to do and I identify where they're going to be. And then I write around those spaces. And then when I'm done, this idea is in my head while it's still fresh. I review my notes and think about what they look like. And then I draw images into the little spots that I've reserved. So that would be a completely normal sketchnote in my view that doesn't, it takes away the pressure of feeling like you have to do both things at once. And then as you start to get comfortable with that idea, again, you start to bring them together where like, as you're starting to process and you're focusing on this listening practice, images are going to start coming to you and you're just going to probably put them in. And I would say you can write a lot less and you can draw a lot less. So the goal is to kind of really get this, I don't know, compressed or like, you know, we're not trying to make a pot of coffee. We're trying to make a really good espresso with a crema on top, right? That's the goal, right? Because on the backside of it, think of it this way. The other problem that I had with the old notes was I wrote so much that I didn't want to go look at them because there was so much junk in there. I don't want to go through it all again and trying to find out what's valuable. I pushed all that analysis into the moment so that I could capture the good stuff and sort of capture it down in my perspective so that I wouldn't have to do that later work, right? It made reviewing my notes so much more enjoyable because I could scan them in like, you know, five minutes and get the gist and have enough information. And, you know, we live in the world where the internet will give you anything you want, right? So if I want to dig deeper, I just start doing search queries or something and dig into the things I want to go deeper on. So really, like, don't feel like you have to be a court reporter. There's probably recordings of the thing you're watching. So why are you replicating the recording, right? Just focus more on like, what does it mean to me? What are the things that I will actually apply in my life? Because there's some stuff that's just going to come through like, yeah, I'm never going to do that. So don't write that down. I don't know, like, it's this whole process of compression and understanding and figuring out like, how to make all these things make sense to you, because ultimately, you're the one that's going to make use of it in the future.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I'm just sitting here nodding my head vigorously. Like, it's so important to have like good editing, right? Like, we can write all these words, but it's probably too many words to begin with. And then translating, you know, can I mentally edit this live, like while I'm doing these notes or in steps, you know, taking these notes first and then drawing later, you know, as like this editing down to like the core process. Like, I really, I really like that idea a lot. Any other challenges your students have or just hangups or getting started or any last tips on getting started? Do you want to talk about?

'''Myke Rohde:''' Yeah, I'd say, you know, drawing is always the big hangup. People come to me and say, I can't draw, so I can't sketch down. I'm like, sure you can. And here's a different way to do that drawing. The link that we mentioned before will show that. So, that is a huge one. And what I find is like, so this is really funny that people that are designers like me often have a harder time than non-artists doing sketchnoting because non-artists don't have anything to unlearn. They don't have perfection of drawing to like unlearn where designers or people who have skills, like they actually get hung up like spending too much time drawing and then like all the points pass them by, right? Someone who doesn't have the drawing skills actually comes at it almost from an inverse perspective where they're really focused on listening and then their drawings are simple and they're happy with that and it helps them to really capture the information. So, I would say, yeah, don't let drawing hang you up. And the last thing I'll mention in this is I'll send you a show note from the sketchnote handbook, we did a video companion and one of the videos, I have a friend who gives a talk and you see me sketchnote it from beginning to end.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Oh, cool.

'''Myke Rohde:''' And what's interesting is as you watch it, like he sort of opens, you see his face and he starts to talk and then it switches to me. And you can see like people have commented like, Myke, you're not writing anything. Like I'm listening and listening and the stuff that I write was very minimal. Like I was doing it in a pocket notebook and captured this, I don't know, 15, 20 minute talk on two pages of a Wolfskin notebook. So, there's not a lot of space to work with. And yet the gist of the talk is there. And so, I think that will give you like, if you're kind of like, what does this thing even look like when it's being done? That would be really valuable to see. Okay, here's Myke who's got practice and has worked with this. Here's how he approaches it and notice like, man, Myke's not really writing or drawing that much. He's just absorbing and sort of churning it in his mind. And then suddenly he's like, something goes on the page and it's not exactly one-to-one what John is saying. It's like a summation or a compression of what he's saying through Myke's perspective and then put on the page. So, it's kind of a different approach. And when you see it, I think it helps to see it in action to really see what it looks like. And then I think it sort of opens your mind to like, oh, I can do that, right? So.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Absolutely. That's fascinating. Yeah. I think that's super valuable for people to see, especially getting started and trying to figure out just how this process works. So, yeah, that's great. We'll definitely have that link in the show notes. And while you were discussing that, you said the magic word, Myke. You said notebook. So, people want to know what you're using. So, of course, Panatic listeners, we're going to talk about what Myke's favorite analog tools are. First, let's hear from another one of our lovely sponsors here this week and we'll get right back to Myke.

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'''Brad Dowdy:''' All right, listeners. You know I'm going to tell you that the tools don't matter. And Myke is going to tell you that the tools don't matter. But you're not listening to a show called The Pen Addict and think that we're not going to say the tools. At least they're fun, right? They're at least fun. We enjoy them. What tools do we use? Right, Myke? Anyone can grab a ballpoint or pencil and a napkin or anything they have laying around to sketchnote. We get it. That's fine. But this is The Pen Addict. So us Pen Addicts want to know, what kind of tools are you using these days? I know you started when I was listening back to the podcast. We talked about this and like the original, some of the original like first sketchnotes when you were traveling. The Moleskine Pocket Sketchbook and then like the Pilot G2 .7 millimeter in black. So that was well over a decade ago. How have those tools held up? Have you switched? Have you found other things? So what's going on now?

'''Myke Rohde:''' Well, I definitely could run with those tools if I needed to because they're still good quality tools. I've sort of migrated to a slightly larger A5 page size as my standard just because it gave me a little more freedom and I started to just feel like that was the natural direction that I was going in. So one of the books that I really like is The Leuchtturm, 1917. And I really love the new 120 GSM books. I think you get fewer pages, but the quality of the paper is really great.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, those are super nice. Just I think with the past few years, they've started doing that. That's great.

'''Myke Rohde:''' Yeah, that's pretty recent development. And I still really like the regular non-whatever-their 80 GSM or something. For my bullet journal, I actually use those. I don't mind the show through, like it doesn't bug me. Right. And so that's, but the 120s, if I'm doing a sketchnote, I would do that. Of course, I have to be a little biased. Yeah. My friend Michael and I created this thing called the sketchnote idea book, which I think you've got some shows where you talk about it.