Tracking Progress

Setting goals is one thing. Reaching them is quite another!

You're much more likely to reach your goals when you track your progress. Doing that visually helps you see the big picture at a glance. It also keeps your goals in the front of your mind so you're less likely to forget about them.

That's what performance dashboards are for. They're like the dashboard in your car in the way you can see at a glance how things are going. But they're for tracking progress towards your goal, instead.

Here's a performance dashboard I created to help me track how often I stretch throughout the day. All I have to do is put a dot by the time of day when I stretched. At a glance, I can see if I've been remembering to stretch or not.

A performance dashboard like this is super simple, yet so much more specific than just saying, "I need to be sure to stretch throughout the day."

Visual Thinking & Lettering: Variety is Key

Visual thinking is all about using visuals to help you think better. And if you're going to think about something, it's got to hold your attention. Maybe even grab it in the first place.

Great big blocks of text can be pretty boring visually. And if you're not interested in the content, your mind will probably wander. Probably far, far away from the content, too. And that doesn't help you get stuff done.

If the text is a bit more visually interesting, though, it will hold your attention. When there's stuff to look at, people will look! And if they're looking at words, they'll read them, too. Even if they're not interested in the content. The visual appeal draws them in.

Visual Thinking: Have a Supreme New Year!

Want to be a more visual thinker by this time next year? More creative? More productive? More confident? And a better communicator, too?

Then make this the year you dive into visual thinking! By visual thinking, I mean drawing out a picture to help you think better. Not drawing to create a great picture to hang over the couch. Physically drawing out the idea in your head makes it much easier to work with. Then, you can really flesh it out because you can see what's missing. And what you can get rid of. Or maybe you'll decide it's not such a great idea after all. If it just stays in your head, you'll always wonder.

The act of drawing your ideas can help you think more creatively, too. It makes you look at things in new ways. And figure out how things fit together. When there are gaps in your drawing, you'll naturally brainstorm ways to fill them.

Once you have a clear picture of whatever you've been thinking about, you'll be much more confident about doing something with it. You'll be able to explain your idea or information to others much better. And they'll understand it more quickly because you've explained it so clearly. If you're fuzzy about it, they will be, too.

Not sure where to start? Email me and I'll give you some options!

Visual Thinking & Drawing: There's Power in Numbers!

This is by no means the most exciting drawing out there. But it's a great example of how simple shapes and lines can turn into something far more powerful.

The entire city is made of rectangles. Simple lines make up the windows. The stars in the sky are just the letter x. That's it!

The way everything is put together is what makes those simple lines and rectangles turn into a city. They fill the page. That creates far more impact than one building alone. And the dark colors make it clear it's night time.

Next time you want to make a simple drawing more powerful, try filling the page with the simple things you do know how to draw.

Visual Thinking & Lettering: Designing Lowercase D's

There's more than one way to draw pretty much everything. Especially letters!

For some great visual and creative thinking practice, pick something and try to draw it as many different ways as you can. If you set a time limit, you'll actually work a lot faster. It also helps you to not focus on whether or not you like what you just drew.

Here's my 2 minutes worth of lower case d's, drawn on a white board.

Visual Thinking & Creativity: Draw What You Can!

Want to draw something but don't know how? Or have time to draw it all? Then it's time to get creative!

Often, drawing just a hint of something can be just as powerful as drawing the whole thing. It adds an element of surprise or mystery. That draws people in and keeps them engaged. Both good things!

Take the image above. You know it's Santa in a chimney, right? All I drew was his hat. And not even all of it! Yet, it's still very clear that's Santa in the chimney. That's because our brains take in the whole picture to make sense of it. Everything else in this picture points to Santa, so that hat obviously belongs to none other than Santa himself.

Even with very limited drawing skills or time, you can create a complete picture. If you give the viewer enough clues, the brain fills in the rest!

Visual Thinking & Creativity: 17 Umbrellas

It's been raining a lot here lately (we need it!) so I decided to draw some umbrellas...and make them all a nice, bright sugary-sweet pink!

It's the same simple umbrella shape over and over again. But each one has it's own unique pattern. Some I like. Some I don't. But even the ones I don't like so much look OK mixed in with all the others. That's because they're unified by the basic umbrella shape.

When you take one idea (like an umbrella) and change one thing about it (like the pattern) you can come up with a lot of ideas super fast. Just be sure to keep all the ideas, including the ones you don't like. Those icky ideas often lead to good ones later on.

Visual Thinking & Creativity: 15 Christmas Trees

Want to generate a lot of ideas fast? Pick one thing about your subject and change it. That's it!

That's all I did to get these 15 Christmas trees. I used different types of lines to draw the main shape of the tree. I experimented with different shapes, too. In a few of them, I had to change the trunk a bit for it to make sense. But the star stayed the same in all of them.

Changing one thing makes it clear how everything fits together. Visual thinking lets everyone see if that change will leave a big hole or maybe other things to get rid of. That's true for Christmas trees and corporations alike.

Visual Thinking & Lettering Practice: Designing Lowercase E's

Another super quick visual thinking, lettering design, and creative thinking practice - all in just 2 minutes! Just choose a letter and if it will be upper or lower case. Get some paper or whatever you're going to draw on and something to draw with ready. Set the timer for 2 minutes. Draw your letter as many different ways as you can until the timer goes off. That's it! Whatever you draw stays there - no erasing, no scribbling out. The ideas you don't like this time around may be just what you're looking for later on.

My 2 minute practice above was done on a whiteboard.

Lettering: Fill the Space!

Flowing calligraphy. Fancy script. Bouncy bubble letters. Bold block letters. They're all great but can take time to create. Sometimes you simply don't have the time.

Don't let a time crunch stop you from giving your letters some style! All you have to do is draw your letters instead of writing them. That means you really think about each line before you draw it. Also, think about how the letters fit together and look as a whole.

Your goal now is to make an eye-catching design with a message. Not to write out a word as quickly as possible. That's what computers are for!

Take a second or two to imagine how the image would look with a line in a couple of different places. Try to really see that line on the page before you draw it.

If you have a longer word, make it fill the space. Don't worry about making it all fit on one line. As long as you keep all the letters in order, people will get the message. But make it look like you broke the word up on purpose to make it look good. Not because you didn't plan ahead and ran out of room! If you have some extra spaces, fill them in with something simple related to the word. Like I used a star in mine.