Sketchnoting – Don’t let fear stop you!
How common is it that during a meeting, class or workshop you are taking notes and then, not understanding exactly what you wanted to communicate? Or worse, if one of your colleagues asks for your notes and inevitably has a “difficult time” to understand or decipher them, because let’s be honest, we do not all have a magazine calligraphy … well, through sketch note all this we can be changed.
The point of doing this exercise is to be able at the end of the day to have a “universal content”, a universal language, something that you and others can understand, apply and share without complications.
Your understanding of each topic will be re-framed and it will help you write much stronger arguments in the future. By using illustrations with words, you will begin to notice how concepts overlap. It will also help you to observe those valuable insights that you may miss by only writing the ideas.
In addition, it is known that by doing “sketchnoting” you are retaining the most valuable information from the conferences/meetings in order to make the upcoming times more efficient. It will open you a new world of ideas and connections letting you think differently about strategy, writing, and even on processing study time.
Let’s say it is a personalized study technique, through which we will not only save time but become more effective.
So, don’t let fear stop you! Sketchnoting is for everyone, you just have to give it a try, enjoy and have fun while doing it. It does not have to be perfect, it’s something you can identify with and translate your words through icons, let’s say it’s like putting your personal stamp in your annotations.
Now that you know this awesome-fun technique, get empowered, take out of your drawer that notebook you have time without using, look for a pair of colored pens and practice, practice and practice. Not for nothing do they say that practice makes perfect and remember that it is never too late to try new things.
If you are as obsessed as we are with Sketchnoting, our colleague Florian has some tipps for starters here in the announcement post for Tommaso’s and his workshop during World Usability Day “Get more out of your meetings with visual thinking”.