Drawing Out Your Thoughts
a short post about a new project
My home is scattered with many of these:
Some of them are lined, some blank, some are graph paper. For years I have used them with pencil and Pilot G-2, to get my ideas in front of my eyes. They are not written journals - text is generally limited to concepts, words or very short sentences. Circles, underlines, arrows and asterisks, punctuated with question marks and exclamation points, describe the gist of whatever it is I am trying to sort out. Often there are illustrations, sometimes little doodles.
I will spend anywhere from 5-minutes to 3-hours working on pages like these (the low end may be a packing list for a short trip, the high end generally involves big dreams and graph paper). These notebook sessions are an essential part of my thinking process - a sort of board meeting for me and my brain.
Looking over them I noticed a pattern. Every single notebook is an undifferentiated mishmash of:
schematic plans for carpentry projects
grand realizations about The World
packing and grocery lists
self-improvement journaling, answering the “Now its YOUR turn!” chapter-end questions in books by motivational authors
sketches of sleeping pets and humans
plots to do great things
bullet lists such as this one
These writings and drawings all have their immediate uses as well as lingering benefits, but I sense an opportunity for improvement.
I keep our house in order by creating “homes” for objects, and putting things away into those homes. Now I will outline a process for doing the same thing with ideas. For the next several Tuesdays, I will post about how to use illustrated notebooks to help organize your thoughts and structure your life. Topics will include:
the history of written records and journals
thinking with drawing
domestic planners
vision books
daily journals and travelogues
illustrated memory books to tell your life story (best time to begin? now!)
project books, using generative design for renovations, room makeovers, carpentry projects and yard plans
project books for planning events such as parties and weddings
visual journals as teaching and learning tools for the classroom
It is my hope that these posts will coincide with, or culminate in, the launch of my new website - if the chickens don’t see fit to intervene…
