There are people who prefer to say "Yes," and there are people who prefer to say "No." Those who say "Yes" are rewarded by the adventures they have, and those who say "No" are rewarded by the safety they attain. There are far more "No" sayers around than "Yes" sayers, but you can train one type to behave like the other.

I can't help but put pressure on myself to be a yes-sayer. Perhaps it's the vague belief that saying yes will lead to a fuller life and range of experiences and that saying "no" is the easy option. And somehow, the easy option in my mind can seem like the wrong option. That's why I liked Keith Johnstone's framing for yes-sayers and no-sayers, as it clearly shows the rewards for taking either route in a decision, not just one.

If you are improvising, saying yes and accepting offers takes you to situations that may not feel comfortable but give you new experiences.

Saying no keeps you where you are. Your situation is known and safe, and you feel good for that reason.

In life, we never have to be exclusively yes or exclusively no. And it doesn't have to be white-water kayaking for yes-sayers and reading books at home for no-sayers. But certainly, there are different joys in each path. I love both: the nerves and excitement of new experiences and the comfort and safety of the known and predictable. We needn't bucket ourselves into one or the other.

An adventure, even a microadventure, almost by definition, is the result of saying yes. And, like Type II fun, it can be rewarding and fulfilling. But balancing adventure with the safety and calm of staying in one's comfort zone at times feels nice to me.

"The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces"—in my book Big Ideas Little Pictures

Abraham Maslow, known for Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, shared:

"One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again."

The quote is from Keith Johnstone's book Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre, Theatre Arts Books, 1979, as quoted in Improv Wisdom by Patricia Ryan Madson.

Yes Sayers are Rewarded by Adventure, No Sayers are Rewarded by Safety

This post is sketch 900 of Sketchplanations, according to my numbering. To mark that, I've been reflecting and wanted to share what I've learned from over a decade of this project.

It's my longest post, but I created a version you can listen to, or even watch 🙈, if you prefer. And if you don't want to listen, watch or read a long article, I hope you can just enjoy the sketch of Brenda Ueland's lovely wisdom.

Listen/watch reflections on a decade of Sketchplanations on YouTube

After the first year of one-a-day, I've done one sketch a week, 52 a year, for over a decade without missing. I've tried to stick to James Clear's "Never miss twice" rule by first not missing once.

With a few years of experience in creating and sharing under my belt, I wanted to share some thoughts about this project, about sharing your work, and about creative freedom.

I watched a talk by Jack Conte a few weeks ago. Jack is the founder of Patreon but was first—and still is—a passionate, talented musician full of energy and drive. The whole talk is interesting—he called it the Death of the Follower. But what drove me to create this was some of what he said towards the end, kind of his "advice to creatives."

I want to talk about two things: The why and what of creating, and second, what sort of project a creative project should be.

I've been lucky in so many ways with this project:

It was accidental, so I wasn't staking my future or my ego on it.

It was a side project—until this year—so I wasn't staking my paycheck and whether we could pay the mortgage and support our family on it.

And I stumbled on a simple formula that's given me great permission, licence, and scope to explore everything that interests me.

Without getting too grandiose about it, my conjured up tag line of "explaining the world one sketch at a time" is a huge mission, one that never really ends. But it also allows me to cover whatever aspects of our fascinating world that I want, in the way that I want.

Cartoonists also have a tremendous scope to create, but they usually have to make people laugh. Fortunately for me, I don't have to do that each time. I can cover serious things, or sensitive things, or fun things, or complex things in whichever way I want.

I'm also lucky that my drawings don't have to be good. Sometimes, I look back on older ones and cringe, but usually, I don't cringe at what I'm sharing, only my drawing of it.

Just a year or so into this project, when I complained to a good friend about not being the best artist, he simply replied, "Yes, but it's the content." It really stuck with me, and it's grown on me over time. The drawings may not be as slick as other artists. Still, the content and topics I tackle are hopefully valuable, or at least interesting, in themselves. So people, I think, forgive me when I don't get it quite right and it's a bit cheesy, or my people are a bit janky.

Part of the luck in my formula is that it's become a unique collection in style and approach. The more I've created, the more unique it becomes.

I am regularly asked how I choose and find topics to include. I only recently found the answer that really nails it.

On my website, I've joked, "Sooner or later, everything I know will be on Sketchplanations." And in some ways, that's true—at least for the useful stuff I know.

At first, sketches were a combination of serendipity in what happened to me that was interesting this week and a process of trawling through my experience and memory for the things I've found interesting and helpful over the years. And they were also what I found myself using or thinking about regularly.

Over the years, I've trained myself constantly to be on the lookout for topics. Sometimes I see, or read, or remember something that I instantly know I'll sketch at some point. I add it to my list, and those that I'm excited about and have the clearest view on are those I tackle the next week.

But that doesn't really address the question of what makes it into the list and what doesn't. What ties these together? The answer I found most profoundly hit when I read a wonderfully opinionated book, "If you Want to Write," by Brenda Ueland. Brenda says: 

And what is the purpose of existence… but to discover truth and beauty and…share it with others.

And it was suddenly clear to me. What makes it into the list is when I've found something that to me was a truth, an insight, an aha, a new piece of knowledge, something beautiful or fascinating that I realised. I had to feel I'd discovered something. Sketchplanations has given me the wonderful vehicle to act on the impulse to share it with so many others.

I usually consider myself knowledgeable about most sketches but an expert in few. But like the age-old realisation that the teacher learns more than the students, I can tell you that there's nothing like spending a day or more a week diving into a topic, thinking how to visualise it, spending several hours sketching it and then writing about it to cement them in my own brain. I'm no doubt the one who's benefited the most from this project.

It's not too long in a conversation with me before I might struggle not to interrupt with a "There's a sketch for that."

And this diverse collection of 900 sketches therefore, in many ways, reflects everything I find interesting and helpful or beautiful in the world, and so is a reflection of me. In that sense it's really rather personal.

Which brings me to the second aspect of what I want to share here.

I'm very lucky that many people provide suggestions for sketches they'd like to see. I've worked in design and user experience for many years. Having direct feedback of what your audience would like to see is extremely valuable. I've tackled some of them, but too few.

I find that I'm not a very good judge of sketches that will turn out to be popular—at least in the short run.

I send out new sketches each week in my newsletter. It's funny that even though I send out 10s of 1,000s of emails each month there's relatively little feedback of what people think about each new sketch.

I started posting sketches on social channels many years ago to allow more people to discover them and make it easier for people to share them.

And I post sketches on my website, so that people can find them in the future and get the answers they want when they're searching for something or looking for something to use in their own projects.

Posting on social media is interesting as, with likes, comments, shares and follower numbers I seemed to have much more feedback about whether what I did was interesting to people or not. Certainly as compared to the newsletter where there's no lightweight, low commitment way, save writing me a direct email, to let me know if it was helpful. I love receiving them by the way.

Once you start getting feedback on what seems to be popular however, you have a double-edged sword. For example, what if there's some truth or beauty that I want to share that is unlikely to be popular? Or what if there are things that will be popular that I don't find to be a truth or beauty that speaks to me or makes me want to share it.

If I was a business I think the answer is fairly clear—you create the content that your audience wants to see so people come to your site and buy your wares.

But what if a project reflects you personally? And what if it's an amateur project, created for the love of it rather than the $ of it?

I have tackled some sketches of topics that people asked for and that sometimes people have paid me for. What I found is that very quickly it begins to feel like a job. It's fine to do, but they're not always something that excites me.

For me, who fortunately for so long wasn't depending on it for my primary income, I found it very quickly took the joy out of the task. Why would I use my spare time—and often time from my family—to execute something that I wasn't excited about and didn't find joy in and didn't find a little spark or fire in sharing with others?

Don't get me wrong. Reaching more people with my work is great. I came round to marketing when I kept hearing "Wow, I just discovered your site. I love it!" 7 years after I'd been working on it. These people could have been following from the beginning if I'd just reached them earlier.

That was part of the impetus to create a physical book and hopefully reach a new set of people in a different way. This same feeling also drives me to work on making the website better—as the saying goes: "Business without marketing is like winking at a girl in the dark." What's the point of having good content if people can't find it? It seems a shame.

Well, one way I could reach more people, I think of, as "feeding the machine."

What I should do is find topics that have high search volume, topics that are topical or current, topics that draw a lot of engagement, topics that may be easy to grasp or share with others, and I should and do those. I should check search queries, watch what others are doing, and look for the content I post that creates the most interactions and create more content to match.

Simple messages without nuance or complexity are easy to share and take in and hit repost. But I can't bring myself to do it.

The things I keep wanting to share are my version of what Brenda called the "purpose of existence"—discovering truth and beauty and sharing it with others.

So I've resisted too much of feeding the machine. I'm sure it's cost me. I'm sure there are a million ways I could grow my followers faster, get more subscribers, get more content engagement, exploit new channels, write traffic heavy content. But I don't want to do those if it means I can't share the truths and beauty that I find valuable.

So, at sketch 900, I'm sharing these reflections as the struggles of a creator trying to understand the point and value of their project.

And to say that I plan to keep this project idiosyncratic, unexpected, and personal. Or, in some ways, a reflection of me. This will at least keep it unique.

I know that you won't find it all speaks to you—you're not me after all. But for the times when I do get it right, when you can see the truth or beauty that I'm trying to share, even if it's just you and me who appreciate it, I hope that will keep it worth it.

Jack Conte talks passionately and knowledgeably about the importance of building deep connections with small numbers of true fans. He built Patreon, through which I've benefited so much. And a deep personal thank you to everyone who is now supporting and has supported me in the past. And I've decided I'd rather, slowly, create a deeper, more personal connection with the people, perhaps like you, who have enjoyed my project, by sharing the truth or beauty that I want to share than to feed the machine and create what the machine says is needed.

Selfishly, I hope that this will also keep it interesting for me even if it may not do the rounds of the internet as well.

Thanks everyone who's visited, enjoyed, talked about, listened to the podcast or shared my work over the years. So many of you have been generous in sharing and singing the praises of this little project.

There is of course still so much more to explain about this world. Maybe 900 is a lot of topics sketched—or maybe, I'm just getting started.

Thanks for being part of the journey. See you at 1,000.

If you made it this far, it'd be amazing if you considered helping to get to 1,000 by supporting me at any amount on Patreon 🙏

Discovering Truth and Beauty and Sharing it with others

Every creation is a mirror, reflecting something of its creator. If you and I were to paint the same subject, your painting would reflect some of you, and mine would reflect some of me. If we both write stories, each one will carry something of ourselves—our personality, our experiences.

The writer is in the writing. The artist is in the art. The musician's in the music.

Take writing as an example. If we're writing authentically, we can't help but share a bit of ourselves in our work. Our past experiences affect what we notice. Our timidity or confidence is reflected in the tone and style. Our education in the choice of words. Our kindness and patience, or cynicism and frustration, is revealed to the reader. And the choice of what you write or paint reflects you.

Not if we're trying too hard. Not if we're writing to sound like a writer or if we're adopting a "literary" style because we think that's how it should be done. And not if we focus more on pleasing a search engine or ticking off marketing goals than connecting with readers. But if we write honestly and directly, the writer shows through.

This phrasing hit me while reading Brenda Ueland's book If You Want to Write. She calls the writer the Third Dimension. I believe she means that when you read a book, there are the characters, the reader, and also, inescapably, the writer's personality. She writes that readers can tell when writing isn't authentic, when it's not really you, but instead, a performance to meet someone else's expectations of how one should write—or perhaps a creation of an AI's sycophantic personality.

The presence of the writer in the writing, or the artist in the art, leads Ueland to say, "…I have come to think the only way to become a better writer is to become a better person."

I believe this principle also holds true across other creative disciplines, though I thought "the cook is in the cooking" didn't quite have the same ring. Still, it holds a ring of truth if I consider a musician and their music, an entrepreneur and their business, a podcaster and their podcast and others.

It's hard to write this without wondering what I'm sharing about myself (and what gets scrubbed out and cleansed by Grammarly proofreading). In Sketchplanations as a project, I've come to think that sooner or later, everything I know of value will be there. So, in some way, the whole thing reflects me. Shall we go for a beer?

More sketches about writing — it always surprises me, for a designer and product developer, how many I have. 35 at last count.

Here are images for each alone in case you're more one than the other:

In addition to prints of this sketch, I added an individual print of the writer's in the writing and an individual print of the artist's in the art.

The Writer's in the Writing. The Artist's in the Art.

Too many interesting articles to read? Too many places to visit? Too many projects to work on? Too many podcasts to listen to? Too many interesting things to learn? Try thinking of each as rivers, not buckets.

Oliver Burkeman shared a beautiful and powerful metaphor to reframe the bucket list of everything we want to do but can't possibly get done. There's an endless stream of books to read, programs to watch, and things you may want to get done. Instead of a bucket list to get through, try thinking of it as a river where attractive options drift by. Rather than feeling pressure to clear out the bucket or tick off all the items, instead, you can choose from the river what interests you in the knowledge that more will always come along.

This reframing resonated with me when I considered everything I wanted to read or the emails in my inbox. When you have too many emails, you find you answer the ones that really need answering. There will always be more. Growing up with a scarcity mindset regarding photos, I used to carefully trim each photo I didn't want after a weekend away or travelling. It was a revelation to me to consider selecting the ones I liked instead of worrying about removing every one that I didn't. 

Maybe you do have to get through everything at work, but this mindset doesn't need to apply to your personal life.

Don't beat yourself up. It's impossible to keep up with everything. Consider thinking of areas of your life like rivers, not buckets.

Oliver explains rivers not buckets in "Treat your to-read pile like a river". Or listen to Oliver reading the short essay in the Waking Up app.

Rivers and buckets

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is fond of saying:

"Timing, perseverance and ten years of trying will eventually make you seem like an overnight success."

Rarely have I heard someone so clearly articulate what it usually takes to do well at something and how commonly we misrepresent the path to success.

Sketching an iceberg in which about 90% of the iceberg is unseen under the surface seemed like an appropriate approach.

Biz Stone explains his story in Things a Little Bird Told Me. 

Also see: the long nose of innovation, survivorship bias, optimism bias, Hofstadter's law, Kitty Hawk moment, starting a company, altruism and ambition

Overnight success

It's easy to want to complain at the weather. The trouble is, it doesn't have any effect on it.

Complaining at the weather

Only dead fish go with the flow. To me, this is a nice reminder to swim your path in life and be true to yourself.

I heard about this from Patricia Ryan Madson in her book Improv Wisdom, and she, in turn, saw it in a Welsh pub.

"To reach a port we must sail. Sail, not tie at anchor. Sail, not drift."

Only dead fish go with the flow

I've read that Steve Jobs used to tell a story to new VPs about a janitor and a CEO. If you were the janitor and were asked to clean an office, it's reasonable to have not cleaned it if you found the door was locked and you didn't have the key. However, somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, the reasons or excuses for why something happened or couldn't be done stop mattering. It probably isn't your fault that the system went down, or that you didn't have access to the office, but as a leader it's your responsibility to make things happen and mistakes are now your responsibility too.

The sketch is not meant to downplay the role or attitude of janitors in any way or say that this is the difference between janitors and CEOs. Here's more on how Steve explains it.

The story is a nice example of the accountability ladder.

I learned this from the excellent Julie Zhou.

Reasons stop mattering

Chesterton's fence put simply is: Don't take a fence down unless you know why it was put up.

It is tempting, in a spirit of progress, to want to do away with old designs, laws, policies, or institutions that no longer help. To think, perhaps, that the people that made them weren't maybe as smart as we are, or seeing things in the right way. Yet institutions, policies, or fences, weren't usually made by accident — they require effort and action, even putting up a fence. Chesterton's fence, after GK Chesterton, is a reminder that before we remove the old and perhaps replace it with the new we would do well to at least understand why the original was put in place.

Once we understand why the fence was there in the first place if we still think it's of no use, then by all means pull it down.

Read more on Chesterton's fence, including its origins.

Chesterton's fence

There's a lot of wisdom in this thought from Joseph Campbell: The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.

After all, if it was the easy path, if it wasn't the place we hadn't yet looked because we were afraid, we would have already done it. Perhaps tackling what you're avoiding most is what you most need to do.

The cave you fear to enter

The twin engines of altruism and ambition are a powerful force for positive change in the world.

They need to be balanced. Ambition without altruism and change may not be positive and altruism without ambition may be nice without impact. But put the two together, for example with a mission-driven business like B-corps, and it can be a recipe for wonderful, positive, and meaningful change — and probably what we need to deal with the challenges of our times.

This lovely concept is from Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent Drinks, and I learned it from Holly Tucker's Conversations of Inspiration podcast.

Also see: overnight success, building a plane on the way down

Altruism and ambition

It's an old, old Eastern story about some blind men who encounter an elephant. As the blind make sense of what each feels it's also a memorable illustration of how our own views are shaped by our subjective experience and, as so often, that we don't see the full picture. In various versions the men may argue over what it is, convinced they themselves must be right, or collaborate to identify the elephant together.

Most of our experience is somewhat like this. We rarely see the whole truth. When we stay humble and accept others' experience we give ourselves the chance to learn a little more.

The blind and the elephant

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

In these short lines he touched on an intriguing differentiation between wisdom, knowledge and information. Add data at the beginning and people have proposed various models such as a hierarchy, chain, or pyramid to help understand their relationships.

It's perhaps like a skier who's experienced the data points of snow and conditions in the mountains most days of their life. They begin to observe predictable patterns and then gradually distill these into knowledge of the relationships between the weather and avalanche risk. And over a lifetime of building and applying such knowledge they may develop instincts and behaviours for predicting risk and living with the mountains that may even be called wisdom.

In an unlikely scenario, I once wrote a class paper, that somehow people still find to read, on The Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom Chain: The Metaphorical link (pdf). It touches on some of the subtle differences of how we think about each of these, such as how I might complain of information overload, but never of knowledge overload.

Data Information Knowledge Wisdom

Some simple wisdom from Kurt Vonnegut: notice when you’re happy.

“My uncle Alex Vonnegut, a Harvard-educated life insurance salesman who lived at 5033 North Pennsylvania Street, taught me something very important.

He said that when things were really going well, we should be sure to NOTICE it. He was talking about simple occasions, not great victories: maybe drinking lemonade on a hot afternoon in the shade, or smelling the aroma of a nearby bakery; or fishing, and not caring if we catch anything or not, or hearing somebody all alone playing a piano really well in the house next door.

Uncle Alex urged me to say this out loud during such epiphanies: “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is”

"So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

Notice when you're happy: If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is

In both a “great! we’re improving kind of way,” and also a “teaching to the test” kind of way. From Richard Hamming’s, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering.

What gets measured gets better

Advice indirectly from Nigella Lawson in her husband Charles Saatchi’s book.

Also, a pretty direct reading from How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Wisdom sketches