sacha chua living an awesome life

It’s hard to get better without knowing what better is.

I want to draw better. What does better mean? For me, “better” means having a wider visual vocabulary for both individual concepts (icons? shapes?) as well as layout (graphic organizers? metaphors?). “Better” means cleaner lettering and more font or design choices. “Better” means being able to draw more things more recognizably, and to design pages so that they’re visually appealing as well as informative. “Better” means becoming more comfortable with colour and shade, and using them to emphasize what’s important. Someday, “better” might even include working with animation.

How can I learn how to draw better? Practice is a big part of it, of course. I can revise my previous sketches, and I can make new ones. I can also look at sites like Sketchnote Army for inspiration. I can collect graphic organizers and visual metaphors. For deliberate practice, I can draw lines, circles, and other shapes, and I can work on lettering.

I want to write better. “Better” means adding more vividness to my writing: picking just the right verb, noticing little details and fleshing them out, adding more specifics and more data. “Better” means pushing beyond clichés. “Better” means writing so that other people can learn more effectively – digging deeper to find things people might be curious about, organizing my notes so that other people can learn more from them.

How can I learn how to write better? Again, practice and inspiration. I can revise my posts and organize them into a coherent e-book or blog series. I can challenge myself to research and share a topic I’m curious about. I can read other people’s work and play around with their styles.

I want to connect better. “Better” means knowing more about people’s lives – it’s easy to know about mine, but I think it would be interesting to know more about people too. It boggles my mind wonderfully that I now have old friends here in Canada (by golly!). I’d like to cultivate more friends and build deeper friendships both in person and online.

What does your “better” look like?

It turns out that when I have more control over my schedule, I don’t fill it with development. I haven’t been working on open source or personal projects, much less client websites or applications. This is a surprise to my 2010 self, who figured she would spend the whole day coding if she could.

I spend most of my discretionary time learning instead: drawing, writing, Latin, business, life. Maybe it’s because I’m in the fledgling stage of business and there’s so much to learn. Maybe it’s because 3-4 days of consulting a week takes up a large chunk of brainspace. Maybe it’s because development won’t get me where I want to go in this short-term search for a business that can survive unpredictable schedules and the primary care of young children.

Learning time. Yeah, that seems like the focus that fits me. If I imagine days and weeks stretching ahead of me – maybe in half a year, after this consulting engagement – I can easily see myself spending time exploring ideas and sharing my notes. I’d want to plumb this, deepen my understanding of this, before I focus on something like development.

Self-structured learning time is intimidating, but I want to see if I can get past the initial anxieties and figure out things that work. Writers have been able to do so for millennia. Things will be okay.

I’ll still build things, of course. Code is a powerful way to crystallize learning and make it easier for people to do better. It also helps me ask questions that would be hard to answer manually.

Okay. I give myself permission to focus on learning after this. I know I’ll probably feel that itch to do something that creates immediate or measurable value for people. That’s okay. I might feel insecure at some point. That’s normal. But there’s so much I want to learn, and I think I’ll be able to stay motivated even without outside drivers. Worth trying it out and sticking with it through at least the initial bumps.

This will be fun!

(Thanks to Mel Chua for the nudge!)

The consulting work I’m doing now is a wonderful fit for who I am at this moment. In the past two months, I’ve been able to do a lot. They’d like to keep me, and I can see how I could make a good difference here. But I didn’t leave one wonderful job just to start another wonderful job, did I?

My primary reason for experimenting with entrepreneurship is to build something more flexible and more scalable than employment. By flexibility, I mean that it should be able to accommodate the unpredictable schedules and irregular demands of raising young children if W- and I have more kids. By scalability, I don’t mean the mind-boggling aspirations of venture-backed startups. I mean the ability to create more value with less time, and possibly by involving other people.

My secondary reason for experimenting is to learn what I can learn so that I can share those lessons with as many as people as possible. Thanks to frugality and other factors, I enjoy the privilege of being able to learn about entrepreneurship without immediate financial pressure. Thanks to a great network, I can learn from people’s experiences instead of struggling in isolation. Thanks to a keen interest in both technology and business, I can try things out instead of waiting for the missing piece. With all these advantages, maybe I can make things easier for other people.

With these reasons in mind, it becomes easier to say no, even though I also really want to say yes. Full-time work doing what I’m doing now? It would probably be awesome, but it doesn’t follow my reasons, so I’d prefer to help people learn how to do what I do. If I could be in more than one place, I would be in so many. Since I can be in only one place at a time, I’ll focus on training people, and I’ll work on the questions that I most want to ask.

One of the things I really like about this business experiment is my new time flexibility. I work on a consulting engagement for three to four days a week. I spend the rest of the time on other things: meeting people, learning stuff, practising skills.

I’m still getting the hang of managing that time. It’s been a while since I’ve had large chunks of solo discretionary time to work with. It’s so different from weekend time. During weekends, we usually spend one day handling all the chores and getting the house sorted out, and the other day relaxing and hanging out with each other or with family and friends. These weekdays are different

The weeks will be even more different when I wrap up with this consulting engagement. I’ll probably refer consulting or freelancing gigs to other people for the next little while. I think that by August, I’ll be ready to make the most of full weeks, and I’ll have some ideas to focus on building.

It’s almost as if I’d set things up so that I can learn gradually, although I don’t think I could’ve engineered having such great clients right out of the gate. Instead of going from full-time employment to full-time experimentation, this transition period helps me learn how to manage my time and energy when there’s no one calling the shots but me. The consulting engagement gives me some structure, regular interaction, and a clear task list, and my discretionary days let me practise moving towards my own goals.

Looking at it on a day-by-day basis works well, but not amazingly. I feel energized and engaged throughout the day. When I make my decisions day by day, though, I find that some things keep drifting to the the bottom of my list. Between the habits I’m working on building (ex: study Latin for at least half an hour, draw for at least an hour) and the appointments I make, I sometimes don’t shift into the mood to work on some things, such as responding to mail or working on book summaries. It’s a little more embarrassing because I know time isn’t the limiting factor. It’s more about interest and energy.

If I plan my day more, I can probably shift into the right mindset easily. For example, I might make a short list of current projects using Org Mode, the Emacs-based organizer that I use. I can set aside small chunks of time to make steady progress on the kinds of projects that benefit from that, such as languages. For projects that benefit from larger chunks, I might dedicate a 4-hour slot for concentrated work, and choose different projects to work on each time. Planning will also help me make progress and track it even if I’m working with small steps, such as with habits.

Here are the current projects I’m working on, how far I want to take them, and why:

Ongoing habits:

• Write: If I don’t take notes, I can’t review them. Writing helps me understand, remember, and revisit ideas. Time commitment: At least 30 minutes a day. Chunks of 1-3 hours, the occasional quick note.
• Practise drawing: I want to communicate more effectively. Drawing is both fun and useful. This also includes learning how to use different tools. Time commitment: at least 30min each day, often chunks of 1-2 hours.
• Finish the exercises in this beginner’s Latin textbook: I want to learn Latin because it hacks my brain. Besides, schoolboys before managed to do it, so why shouldn’t I? Time commitment: 30min each day
• Garden: Water and weed the garden as needed; plant new seeds occasionally. Time commitment: 15 minutes a day
• Cook: Prepare bulk meals. Time commitment: 3-4 hour sprint.

Special projects:

• Quantified Awesome: Make this even better so that I use it to track and analyze more data.
• Miscellaneous work: Supporting a Rails site, etc.

I like making lists of things I can do to make the most of chunks of time. Lists make it easier for me to answer the question: “What do I want to do now?” That’s because it’s easier to pick something from a list than to come up with an idea from scratch. I’m still open to spontaneity, but I’m never at a loss for things to do, and I can match my discretionary activities more closely to my preferences and priorities. By starting with a long view and zooming all the way in to things I can do in a few minutes, I can align these snippets of time with my long-term goals.

I posted one such list three years ago, and periodically post updated lists as my circumstances change. Now that I have my own business and I’m focusing on other interests, how would I like to spend my unstructured, discretionary time? What do I care about and want to develop long-term, and how can I translate that into on-the-ground actions?

This list is long, so I’ll keep it out of the excerpt. If you don’t see the list, click on the link to read more.

[Read more →]

Here’s what I want when it comes to visual notetaking. I’m going to go through thousands of books, presentations, blog posts, conversations, ideas, and thoughts in my lifetime. Maybe even millions of these little pieces of content.

I want to get really good at remembering, reusing, and sharing the significant ones, a tiny fraction of the whole. I often refer to ideas I’ve picked up in the past. I recommend books to others. I review items to see if I’ve been applying the lessons I learned, and if there are more I can use. Sometimes I come across unexpected combinations – part of one book resonating with a presentation on a different topic mixed in with a conversation I’ve just had. I benefit from holding these ideas near working memory.

Like the way I can flip through a slideshow faster than I can speedread a book, it might be easier and faster to review an archive of visuals than to refresh my memories using text notes. If I can convert some of this abundance of content into visuals, then I can use that to get around the limitations of time, attention, and memory.

Maybe other people will find the sketches useful. Maybe I’ll scale up and work with other illustrators, readers, and writers. Even if I don’t, though, I think that having these visual notes will make it easier for me in the long run.

Here’s a project for myself: convert my book notes into sketches. I could do the Lean Startup thing to find out if other people would be interested in the idea before I invest a lot of time and effort into it – mock up a minimum viable product with payment options or a subscription model. But then I want something like this for myself, too, so it’s okay to spend some time figuring out what I want before pitching it to others.

What would wild success look and feel like?

I have visual notes for the key ideas I want to revisit. I flip through them rapidly once a day, and rotate my desktop or screensaver through random ones for serendipity. They’re searchable through Evernote and accessible even when mobile. I’ve posted many of them online. Subscriptions, book reviews, and advertising provide a stream of income. People recommend other books and ideas I should check out.

I occasionally do sketchnotes on commission: simple sketches of key ideas captured in real-time during webinars or recorded presentations, used for marketing and post-session follow-ups. I also sketch summaries based on blog posts, e-books, or books sent to me. I do the occasional meetup or lecture as well, taking notes on my laptop. Focusing on electronic content means that I don’t have to travel or lug large rolls of paper around, and it takes advantage of my setup with multiple monitors.

In addition to sketchnotes, I offer or coordinate useful complementary services: presentation planning, design, coaching, transcription, e-book creation, writing, and so on. These help people scale up their ideas and engage more people.

My visual style is crisp, simple, with visual metaphors and the occasional pun. I usually work with one or two accent colours, and have figured out how to draw people with character and objects that have some heft. I draw in high-resolution mode just in case I want to make a letter-sized print of something, although I’m okay with redrawing in case I want to make a poster.

Most of the time, I work at a standing desk I’ve rigged up facing the garden. I take breaks and go for long walks, or do some gardening. Sometimes I go to art galleries to immerse myself in colour and shape and line. I keep a digital notebook of things I like: title treatments, hand-lettering, colour combinations, visual metaphors, drawing techniques. I flip through it for inspiration, and add my experiments to it as well.

I use my sketches as anchors not only for ideas, but also for memories. Like the way people flip through their photographs, I go through my sketches. I like it because I can sketch scenes that I didn’t get to shoot, and I can draw them the way they felt like instead of just what I saw. Drawing has become a part of my life, and I sketch regularly. I’ve even started drawing on paper, using ink and markers.

So, how do I get closer to that?

I’ll start with the sketchnotes, because that would be a great way to review things, develop style, and practise the craft. As I accumulate more notes, I’ll put them in a special section of my blog so that people can read them easily. I already have the standing desk (actually a kitchen chopping board). When I want to take a break from making sketchnotes, I can draw memories or fiction. Looking forward to it!

Consulting is going well – so well, in fact, that I’m going to make myself take a three-day break, Monday to Wednesday, so that I can focus on building a business that is different. I want something that doesn’t focus on the time = money equation. Besides, there’s so much to learn.

I keep coming back to this idea of visual summaries. People respond to them. I want visual summaries even for myself, so that I can quickly flip through visual triggers for the books I’ve read. (We’re talking maybe hundreds of summaries, even if I’m just focusing on books worth keeping instead of the thousands of books I’ve probably read by now – and even more over my lifetime!)

In terms of copyright, I’ll probably have to arrange for permission from authors before I can publish a book of graphic summaries. In the meantime, I can test the idea as book reviews, which should fall under fair use. When I put together a book, I think the paperwork will be a good excuse to reach out to my favourite authors. =)

I thought about whether I should hire an illustrator so that I can focus on the key business questions: Would people be interested in this? Can I make money at this? How can I scale? There are talented artists who do graphic recording and illustration for a living, and I regularly flip through their work to inspire myself. (I’m getting better at not being intimidated by the gap between our skills!) If I outsource parts of this work, I might get to answer those questions faster, iterate faster, punch above my weight class with beautiful illustrations and more content.

I’m holding off, though. I can learn slowly, immersing myself in this, understanding it, imagining new things because of it. And besides, maybe this fabled minimum viable product doesn’t require a totally awesome illustrator. Maybe it’s fine with an authentic voice.

Sure, a big outfit like Soundview could easily swoop in and do this while I learn. All the better, because they already have a lot of the summaries and rights agreements. If a startup is an experiment in validating an idea, then having someone else take over that idea frees me up to create the next one. It’ll all work out.

I’m thinking about other possibilities, too. People who give webinars or write e-books might also be interested in visual summaries, and I’m better set-up for those than I am for the large form-factor needs of graphically recording in-person events. I can also offer transcription, or connect with other people to get transcription covered. Established executive summary companies probably won’t cover webinars or e-books anyway. We’ll see!

Here are a few things I can work on next week to move this forward:

• Highlight visual summaries on my blog
• Create a landing page
• Plan a site redesign
• Get inspired to draw more colourful sketchnotes by looking at examples and trying out techniques
• Draw more books! This is fun
• Start building a graphic vocabulary and a lettering vocabulary
• Look for people who give good webinars or write decent books on topics I like, and see if they would be interested

It feels good learning about these things. =) Looking forward to drawing better and making stuff happen!