Why drawing?
It’s great to get off the computer and put pen to paper. When you need to be able to review and understand the results of your work quickly and easily, drawing your plan is a fabulous way to boost your productivity and enhance your creative thinking.
I don’t mean drawing something polished or beautiful, at least not in the first couple of drafts.
In fact, all of these are important:
- Imperfections
- allowing the thing to be messy
- crossings out
- re-doing it (possibly several times) to make it slightly closer to what you want each time
Try it now:
On a piece of blank A4 paper, or in a notebook, sketch out a plan of the space you are in right now. Focus on how you could improve it. Remember to make it imperfect and messy. Aim to include crossings out, and redo it at least once.
Types of visual representation:
Actually ‘create a simple visual representation’ would be a more accurate instruction than ‘draw’ in this context. Here are some varieties of visual representation you can use.
- Dividing your paper into four or six squares to make a storyboard
- Using a hand-drawn chart or a table
- Drawing a timeline
- Sketching inside a circle or wheel
- Mind-mapping
- Creating a flowchart
- Drawing a rough plan / map of a fictional space or location
- Drawing cartoons of the type of task or action
Six reasons to draw your plan or to do list:
- It gets you offline, and off the computer, and there’s something very different about actually putting pen to paper. It’s like walking a different way to work or sleeping in a different bed. The novelty stimulates your creativity.
- The process of drawing allows you to ponder whatever problem or task you’ve got in front of you. This works like doodling (which has been proven to help people to think) – while your hand is moving, your brain is mulling things over.
- A drawing provides a way of seeing the whole project at once, rather than in small parts.
- It can be quicker than writing it all out, and easier to communicate the finished project.
- A box or a chart or the skeleton of a mind map gives your mind something to fill in, or a constraint on which to focus.
- It feels light-hearted (as long as you can let go of the need for it to ‘look good’) – which helps you to think creatively, rather than getting bogged down by detail.
More soon. Until then, happy writing,
Lou xx
