Draw something

 When did you last draw something?

My children (ages 8, 6, and 4) are prolific artists. As soon as they fill one piece of paper, they move on to the next. It struck me recently: this is one of the ways they put their ideas out into the world. They are evaluating what works, as they land on preferred shapes or colors that get rolled into their next piece. They are seeing what resonates with their audience—often, my husband and me—learning, iterating, and having fun while they do it.

You should draw, too. When you get into a groove, it can feel like productive meditation, where you have something tangible to show at the end of it. It can also be immensely useful professionally, even if you claim that you aren’t any good at drawing—fast, rough sketching is enough to reap the numerous benefits.

Imagine yourself in front of a clean whiteboard with a marker in hand, or at a clutter-free table with only a stack of blank paper and a freshly sharpened pencil. As you begin to draw, here are a few things you might notice:

You are more creative. Starting with a blank slate frees us up from the "usual" approach. When you draw by hand, you aren’t bound by the constraints of your tools, or limited by the scope of your perceived abilities in this or that particular application.

You can iterate quickly. There’s a good amount of downtime when you work on your computer in graphing applications or slideware: moving your mouse and clicking through drop-down windows. Drawing is a more fluid process that can make iterating faster.

You don't form attachment. In the same way that my kids cycle through paper without a second thought, you can recycle rejected approaches with ease. Contrast this with the scenario where you've spent time building the thing in your tool—even if it's not quite right, you're now invested. This can make it hard to change or discard it even when you'd benefit from doing so. That doesn't happen with a quick sketch.

You are thoughtful in your approach. Putting pen to paper makes us think. Each stroke takes conscious effort and energy. So while we benefit from quickly iterating, we are simultaneously more thoughtful about the things we create.

It only takes moments to have something you can share with someone else. A quick sketch or mock up gives others a visual to react to. This can be better than a conversation, where you might think you're saying the same thing but walk away with different ideas. In some cases, you might draw with others to ensure people are on the same page, or provide something concrete on which to offer input. Doing this in a rough manner can be particularly useful when you need people to focus on the big picture or general approach, and not get distracted by the details of a more polished looking version.

All of that said, I'll reiterate my simple suggestion to you: draw something.

In the event you need additional motivation or guidance, here are some specific activities in the storytelling with data world that may pique your interest:

• Participate in the current SWD challenge (runs through 2/28/21) to draw your data.
• Join my live video chat with Data Sketches authors, Shirley Wu and Nadieh Bremer tomorrow (2/11/21)—we'll talk about their new book and, specifically, the role that sketching plays in their overall data visualization design process. This will also be recorded and released as an upcoming podcast episode.
• Attend our upcoming virtual event, "rough ideas" on 2/25/21 and have your pencil and paper ready! Mike will guide participants through a series of drawing activities (open to premium members in SWD community, learn more).
• Listen to or watch my recent chat with Catherine Madden about the power of drawing (Catherine illustrated my second book; you can read her post about the process). In our chat, she shares a number of insights for drawing as a way to facilitate discussion, brainstorm, and align in a team setting.
• Check out exercises in SWD community that ask you to sketch: let's draw! gives you some simple data to draw; a matter of taste and improve this graph each encourage you to sketch various graph approaches before creating one in your tool; overcoming resistance invites you to draw a resistant audience member to get your creative juices flowing as you brainstorm challenges and strategize how to overcome them.

Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic tells stories with data. She is founder & CEO of storytelling with data (SWD) and author of best-selling books storytelling with data: let’s practice! and storytelling with data: a data visualization guide for business professionals, which has been translated into a dozen languages, is used as a textbook by more than 100 universities, and serves as the course book for tens of thousands of SWD workshop participants. For more than a decade, Cole and her team have delivered interactive learning sessions highly sought after by data-minded individuals, companies, and philanthropic organizations all over the world. They also help people create graphs that make sense and weave them into compelling stories through the popular SWD community, blog, podcast and other resources. More info at storytellingwithdata.com.