Focused - 177: The Care and Feeding of Technology, with Mike Rohde

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

Mike Rohde is back to talk about the role of analog and digital tools in maintaining creative focus.

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Hey, David. Hey, Mike. How are you today? Doing great. How about yourself? Excellent. You and I got to spend some time together with the Creators Guild Retreat last week. So it's kind of fun seeing you on screen when you were just here a few days ago. But I'm ready to make some podcasts,

buddy. All right, let's do it. Yeah. My lightsaber came today. It was fun walking around Batuu with you. Yeah. And I'm just trying to figure out how you diplomatically handled that at your house with five kids when you're like,

dad got a lightsaber, but you didn't. So I don't know how that went down. Well, they'll, they'll get their own at some point. We, that's not the first lightsaber to enter the Schmitz household, to be clear.

I can join in the battles now. Now you're in. We got a special guest here today, though. Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the show, Mike Rohde. Hey, guys. It's good to be here. Awesome.

Yeah, you are the sketchnote guy, for people who are unfamiliar with you. You've written a couple books on sketchnoting, which I have bought and have helped me a lot in my own sketchnote journey, the sketchnote handbook and the sketchnote workbook. Anything else that you want to call attention to? Oh, Mike, you're leaving out the most important thing that Mike Rohde ever did. He wrote the illustrations for the Max Sparky email field guide. That was what I was going to say. How did you read my mind? That was a long time ago.

But man, that's the best illustrated book I've ever written. So there you go. It's a good one. Yeah. But Mike is a focused guy. And he does a lot of talking about sketchnoting. We're going to get into that a little bit today during the show. But he also just has a really intentional life.

I really love talking to Mike and catching up with him. And we thought it'd be fun to share Mike's story with the audience today. All right. So, Mike, tell us a little bit about yourself. Sure thing. So I am a designer by training for many years. I've worked as a print designer in the olden days. I was fascinated by the internet and got into that and became a web designer and then discovered there was this thing called user-centered design and became a user experience designer, which is what I do today for a software company, helping take software that was designed by and for engineers and making it usable for normal people. So that's sort of what I do during the day. And all along the way, I've always had sort of this, I don't know, a split or two sides to me.

One was the technical side where I'm fascinated by technology and what you can do with it and conceptually how it works. And then the other side of me, which is around, I guess, art and sketching and illustration and design and those things. And it served me well in my career, even back in the old print days. side of me was understanding printing, going to school for printing and understanding it in a way that would help me in my print design work to deliver successful print design projects where I was comfortable going on a press check and talking with a pressman or even farther back up the line in that process, actually knowing how the printing process worked and then adapting my design so that I knew it wouldn't have issues on press. So that was an early indication, an early skill, but the same thing for technology itself. So I was there in the really early days, amber screens when I was in college. So I guess that dates me a little bit. And the one thing that my dad taught me was,

you know, Mike, don't be afraid of technology. You need to embrace it and figure out what it can do for you and don't let it scare you. So, that always was sort of echoing in my head. Even though I was an artist and had a design perspective, this fearlessness, I don't know if it's fearlessness, but like being comfortable with trying technology and doing experimentation has served me really well because like the story I told about printing, like that was a form of technology. It was maybe more of an analog form. played around with these Amber screens and Macs and stuff like that, that when it came into the design firm, I was ready to help implement it for designers. And I ended up being both a senior designer at my design firm and the system manager. So I would maintain the backups. And when people's files would get eaten by QuarkXPress, I'd help recover them and troubleshoot problems and pull wires and stuff like that. So

it was always sort of part of my interest. And that was the point in time when I bought my first Macintosh, which is a PowerBook Duo 230 for those old school Mac people and a micro dock and ran that for many years and was really, really fun to be in that, have that experience and have been a Mac person ever since, since the old days. So you could really pull me down a rabbit hole with the connection between printing and the Mac, because I feel like there are a lot of old school printers who went down that similar path, right? right apple yeah was really the first company to kind of step it up and give people software that made sense for printing and then so many of those guys got into that early and and like you became very technically savvy at the same time right someone i think of who is kind of a kindred spirit is patrick roan now he leans more on the technical side he i think part of his work that he does is troubleshooting and supporting small businesses. So, but he's also, I would, I would call his work being artistic as

well, writing the form of art that he does. So he's, he's kind of a blended person as well, just like me. Yeah. And the, the other thing, a point you made there that I think is, is a little on point for this show, but it's just the idea of the fear of incoming technology and embracing it and using it. I feel like that is a theme that repeats itself over and over and over again. Currently, it's AI. I just had a longtime listener write me today saying, I think this AI stuff is nonsense. I'm not going to bother with it. I'm like, no, you've got to figure out how it works for you.

That's the trick. I think people are afraid of it because of the way it's represented in the press. But there's parts of AI that can help you. And just like there were parts of the coming technology boom when you were a printer that helped you. And for any of us to stay relevant, we've got to keep up with that stuff. Yeah, and I mean, something that keeps recurring to me is the things that I do for fun on the side always find their way into my work. It's just a recurring theme. So I can give you a couple examples.

One is way back in the day, I was into Palm Pilots. And for some crazy reason, I decided that, well, I needed to write a newsletter for my friends who use Palm Pilot. So they knew what the, what the cool software was, or a lot of the stuff I did was how do you use the tools that are already on the machine that you can use them better, right? So that was, I did that and ended up at the end having like 5,000 email subscribers and really into this, this space, right? And the same thing happened with say IRc chat so back in sort of in that same same time window got really fascinated by irc because i was in i was in aol and you could chat with people live that was really cool and then i discovered well there's this irc thing

and you can talk with people in other countries um so i got into that met a friend in uh sweden and many years later ended up visiting and with my wife and meeting that person. So now look at all the chat-based stuff, even like ChatGPT or discussion-based tools that we rely on. It's now demanded of us, right, whether we like it or not. So having all that experience and exploration put me in a good position to be able to handle those new technologies. So I agree with you, like exploring new technology is really important and finding out like where the edges are, doing little experiments, seeing, you know, getting at least the gist of it. So you can, when the time comes, you could say, oh, that would be

really a great use of it would be doing X or Y or Z. Right. So, but if you don't have even experimental exploration, you can't really make that, that happen easily. Yeah. And I remember those days, like when the internet was new and you could get on like a CompuServe server and you could go through it and say, well, that's it. I, I, I finished reading the internet, you know, and you were kind of true, but that's not true anymore. And that's kind of why this show exists, frankly, is because so much of this technology now has got to a point where it is a bottomless pit that you can fall into. Now, having grown up with the internet and, you know, this interest in technology, how do you fight that that loss of focus that you get from the attraction to the technology because there's a dark side to this too

right yeah i call it the care and feeding of your technology so once you accept some kind of a technology in your life you also have to accept that you have to take care of it and feed it and maintain it almost like a sourdough starter right right? Like similar, not so, not so different. And I'd recognize that pretty early with some of this technology and it's challenging. Like I'm not always successful. I do my best and I still make mistakes and get tripped up, but I've learned enough to know probably the approach that I take for focus is there's always going to be things I don't complete.

There will always be something I don't get to do. And to be at peace with that and accept it. And instead of like, freak out about it, turn and say, well, if that's true, if I can't do everything and I can't see everything, then I need to instead be selective about what are the things that I will do and what are the things that I will achieve and focus are the things that I will achieve and focus on those. And I do pretty good at that. There's times where I don't, I have things happen. I'm sure we'll talk about that, but it helps me to almost like accept, like there's no way that you can do everything. So you're better focusing on a few things and doing them really well. And it's an ongoing process for me as well. I think the thing that helps me decide what's worth investing the time and attention

into is asking the question, how can this benefit me and what I do? Because I think the approach that you're talking about, about being okay with just these things, that has a dark side too. You were talking about typesetting and that resonates with me because my dad's family's from the Milwaukee area and my grandpa actually was a typesetter, ran his own business, Schmitz Typographers, and my uncle took it over. And I remember even as a little kid, the resistance to the Macs coming into that industry. And it'll never replace real typesetting. And so being unwilling to even explore those things ultimately led to the demise of that business, I feel, and some stress and health issues for my uncle as well. But you do have to identify also when it's

time to let things go because you can't just try everything either. So how do you determine what might actually have potential value for you? You got to stay curious. I think probably another big part of it is you have to know yourself and what you're good at and maybe what you're not as good at, or almost like a scale of like, I'm really good at this. I'm pretty good at this. I'm okay at this, that I'm not interested, that I'm bad at, like, to sort of know that because then be real about it. So, when opportunities come in, you can say, you know what? I'm like, okay at that. This John though, he's really good at this. Let me connect you to John, right? That's something that's helped me is to part of like

realizing I can't do everything is really focusing on the things that I do well and staying in that space. And when things come in, my tendency as being a helper is, oh, I got to help these people. I want to do something with them. And I've through sometimes painful experience realized like, you know, you're actually doing them a disservice because you're just okay at this. You should give this away or turn them away. My solution is to make a connection to someone that I know who can handle it or give them ideas, right? And then that allows me to stay focused on the things that I really want to do as far as projects go. Yeah. A couple of points there I want to just catch up is, first of all, I think the fact that you recognize that you can't do everything is like the necessary first step. I think that is something that took me years to figure out.

Like there was a part of me that thought I could do everything for far too long into my adulthood. And I'm sure there are people listening that, uh, that have that same fallacy. It's just so easy to get caught up in it. So I think giving yourself permission to say, Oh yeah, that I can't do everything that actually, uh, that's a step that that's an important step that you need to take. And then the second one being when you are trying to acknowledge what you're good and bad at, I find a real good tip is it's more than just knowing in your head, it's writing it down. Like just make an Apple note or something where you say, this is the kind of work I take and this is the kind of work I refer. I did that for the law

practice and it really like grounded me. Like, because there's a part of you that's always like, well, maybe, but then, but then when you write it down, there's like some permanence to it for some reason. And then you're just, you don't question it anymore. I've been doing something like that at the beginning of the year where I sit down and say, so what kind of work do I want to do? Knowing myself, what am I good at? What am I okay at and how how do I redirect myself toward the stuff

I'm best at? Like, what am I the best in the world at that's going to help the world? And sort of try to set out outlines for myself. And then I review, I try to revisit them quarterly to make sure that I'm kind of on track. And it's not a real complex document. It's, you know, maybe a couple paragraphs or bullet pointed list, right? So, it doesn't, it doesn't, it's not like this huge, I have to go into the mountain for two months to figure out my... It's not like that. It's just like a list. And that seems to help me. Assuming that I actually am regular, I probably need... One thing I've thought about is putting in alerts in my calendar.

Hey, go check your thing. And then I go and review it again and make sure, is what I'm doing on track? And if not, what can I do to reset myself? Well, it definitely is that process of writing it down, though. I think that makes it real for me, at least. Yeah, I agree. And your point about recognizing that you can't do it all. I have a book recommendation already.

Some of your listeners may have heard of this book. It's called 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman. I kept on hearing about it, so I picked it up on Kindle and I've already read it twice. And it's amazing because it sort of shocks you into realizing how short your life really is. Even a long, well-lived life is limited. And he talks a lot about these concepts of accepting that you are not going to do everything you want to do in your life. And that actually can be freeing. Yeah, he calls it cosmic insignificance theory, which I love that.

And one of the things that I do is this concept of a life theme, like a personal mission statement. I really believe in the power of figuring out what is the impact that you want to have. You had a different way of phrasing it, which I thought was pretty cool. And it was kind of like what, I forget what you said, what value am I going to give to the world or what impact am I going to have on the world this year? But that's tied to this because the thing for me was, well, I want to make a difference. I want to have a big impact in people's lives, right? I want to leave my dent in the universe.

But cosmic insignificance theory is like, you're not going to do much anyways, so don't worry about it. And that can feel contradictory at first. But for me, when I read that book, it felt like a huge weight was lifted off of my shoulders. when I read that book, it felt like a huge weight was lifted off of my shoulders. I was free to have the impact that I can have without adding the pressure that it has to be this big thing. And I feel like that ties into, especially with people that you know online, these people that you listen to podcasts, you read books, you know, and you compare yourself to some of these other people and you're like, oh, well, they're bigger than I am. They have a bigger impact. Like you can't view it that way. And Oliver Berkman's book was one

of the ones that kind of helped me be free from that. And it's the tricky balancing act, right? On the one hand, you know, cosmic insignificance means whatever you do is probably in the grand scheme of the life of the universe is going to be a tiny little speck, right? But still, on the other hand, you have people that you can impact in your life. And we have, I would argue, sort of a call to do the best you can to help those people that you do encounter in the time you're given. So, you know, that's maybe the flip side of it is, okay, on the one hand, you know, in the grand scheme, it's just a tiny little thing. So it's like that lifts the weight that I have to do it all or that I've got to drive till I'm dead.

And then the other side is, but I do have an opportunity. And what can I do with my specific skill set that will move that forward? And having that why that you're talking about, the life theme, I think is really super important because whenever you have a question, you can always come back to that theme and say, well, does that fit against my life theme? Like doing this thing, like, yeah, it might be fun. I could make a lot of money at it or get notoriety, but is it really moving forward? What my real purpose is.

And that, that provides you with this, you know, something to kind of break the deadlock or stop you from rationalizing yourself into work that you shouldn't be doing, I guess. I learned the cosmic insignificance theory. I put it together myself when I was a kid reading the Isaac Asimov Foundation series. Ah, yeah. I was just telling Mike about this last week. But when I was a kid, I read this book, and there are people in the first book who are, they are it. The whole universe revolves around them. And a few books later, nobody even remembers them. And I was like

10 reading that thinking, ah, I see this. I see how this works. But it reminds me of one of my favorite Latin quotes, Materium supermat opus. The work was better than the material. When they put me in a box, I want to say that I gave it all. And I love the idea of just throwing it all in and ending the day with the gas tank completely bone dry. Yeah, it's a thing. And I agree with you. It shouldn't lead to despair. It should lead to freedom. This episode of Focus is brought to you by Indeed. When you're faced with what might be considered aggressive hiring goals, you don't have to be worried

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fast. Start hiring now with a $75 sponsored job credit to upgrade your job post at indeed.com slash focused. This offer is good for a limited time. Claim your $75 credit now at indeed.com slash focused. That's I-N-D-E-E-D dot com slash focused. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hire? You need Indeed. Our thanks to Indeed for their support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. Now, Mike, before the break, you had talked about your relationship with technology and you said, yeah, you know, technology requires care and feeding. And I want to follow up with you on that point, because I think you're right, but also technology can require so much care and feeding that you don't do what's important. How do you walk that balance?

That's a great question. And it's challenging too, right? It's not easy because the care and feeding can kind of sneak up on you. So I think of any time. So I sort of drew inspiration from when I learned about this, the Amish community in a general sense. But each, of course, each ordnum sort of chooses the way they approach technology. But their idea is, their question is, does this make us, does this bring us closer together or break us apart? Right. or break us apart, right? So as an example, a gas grill for them would actually be something relatively easy to potentially accept because what happens when you fire up a gas grill?

You make food and people hang out and they talk and you get together, right? So that's a drawing inward where like for them, maybe a cell phone gives you independence and you don't have to be around people. So in their context, that's sort of a problem, right? So I sort of think about it in the terms of like, what is the balancing aspect of it? I'm looking at my iPad Pro, which is an

old 2018 iPad Pro. So the benefit of it is I got lots of power to do sketchnotes. I can do all kinds of work on it. I can write with it. I can respond. It's really great for traveling. Some of the benefits are it's real easy to throw in a bag and much easier than maybe my MacBook, which is sitting on the desk behind it. But the care and feeding is I always have to remember to charge it up if I'm going to use it. Or, you know, I have this tendency to want to protect it, right? So I'm buying cases and those kinds of things. And then what happens when the battery gets to the place where it's on its last legs and I have to replace it? Then I have to make a decision. There's all this energy spent on, well, what should I replace

it with? Should it be the same size? Should it be the same spec? And those kinds of things. And then you go even inside of it. It's like, well, what software will I put on it? And what software will I focus on using it for? And where is it actually not a good use of the thing I want to do? Maybe paper and pen is actually better in some cases. So all that requires thinking and planning. And that's part of the care and feeding that I would see around technology in addition to costs, right? Like if there's any subscriptions around it, like software or anything. So now there's costs related to it. So you sort of look at it, it just looks like a piece of technology, but there's all these

little strings connected to all these other things related to it that you don't immediately think about. It's sort of like almost like you think of total cost of ownership for like, say, a vehicle. don't immediately think about it's sort of like almost like you think of total cost of ownership for like say a vehicle that includes like oil changes and replacing the tires and brake jobs and you know so you sort of think of it holistically uh that's that's sort of the question that i try to ask myself and and it guides me whether i want to accept it in and and make it a part or not and then on top of that is all of the um you know modern day um silicon valley distraction machine stuff that comes with owning an ipad like when you open it do you use it to

to draw or do you use it to check in on twitter you know that kind of stuff yeah that's and that comes to that's an even tougher one because it's more internal to what what am i going to use it for and what will I allow myself to be distracted into doing something that might be an okay use of my time rather than the best use of my time. time to time and I open up the iPad and then, oh, there's a cool new YouTube video. I want to watch that. So now they're 12, 15 minutes is gone and I haven't started my illustration project or I get an email. Well, now I've got this little, you know, the keyboard thing. I can reply to it where I'm at, which can be a benefit in some cases, but it requires sort of almost internal fortitude or internal structure where I make a decision to leave that go and come back to it later. And sometimes maybe the solution is simply going in airplane mode. So that stuff can't, can't bother you. So that's one strategy, but that doesn't solve everything, right? If even

onboard apps can bother you. So that's where maybe the focus mode stuff comes into play, where you just have a mode when you use your ipad that is built for it that kills all those things or most of those things and i know i know david you've done some work on that focus mode stuff which is really really cool i'm all in i'm all in but the uh they have a thing where they talk about distractions being emotion-based or sensory-based like you get a a noise or a dog barking might be a sensory-based distraction, whereas the desire to go do something else when you should be working is more often emotional-based distraction. I really feel like almost all of them are emotional-based.

A lot of times you let the sensory distractions in for an emotional reason. And I think it's a battle. And it seems to me like a guy like you, having known you all these years, you just create so much. And I think that in a lot of ways, this probably hasn't been as big of a challenge for you as it has been for some. Because for your whole life, you've been making art. You've been making apps. You've been making print. Whatever it is that you're working on at the current you just seem to me a very um uh creation focused personality

well i think for me it helps to so i try to i think about this in the same way as so touching on sketchnotes like what can i do for my my future self or uh who's going to do sketchnoting or who's going to use this tool or do this thing? Like, what can I do to put myself in the best possible position? So as an example, today the internet went out at home. I knew basically it was my router needed to be kicked in the butt. So I went down and restarted it and restarted my Eero and said, you know what?

I'm going to go to the coffee shop and work for a while, even if it's only for an hour, hour and a half. For whatever reason, this local little neighborhood coffee shop is a place where when I go there, I just produce a lot of work. I don't know why it is, if it's just the environment, the sound, the coffee, the whatever. But in my mind, it is a place where I produce lots of work. So if I need to focus and get something knocked out, that's sort of like my go-to place. And it just gave me the opportunity to like, okay, it's time to go do that. So I went and it worked again. Um, maybe another thing that I would do in the case of like getting work done is I find that I am, uh, I work well with sound and particularly music, uh music and non like music without lyrics, unless I really know the music really well. So I've lately been getting into, there's this DJ called Shingo Nakamura,

who does progressive trance music. And when I discovered him by accident on YouTube, I played his set was like two hours long and just started playing it. And suddenly I just went into this, it was almost like a weird focused, focused flow mode. And I came out two hours long and just started playing it. And suddenly I just went into this, it was almost like a weird focused flow mode. And I came out two hours later and had all this work done. Like, holy cow, what just happened? Like, I need to make this a regular thing in my diet, right? Where I know that it gets me into a flow state. So I do it. Or as an example, making my favorite tea or coffee, being in an environment where it encourages. So I just sort of make, I try to be noticing these things and then catalog them so I can proactively put myself in those good positions when I need them. So that's been one way that I sort of approach

that challenge. What other things do you do or what other tips do you have for people to find that flow state? We kind of went over that pretty fast, but as a artist, essentially it's the point where making the art is effortless, right? That you've conquered the resistance, you've shown up and it just comes pouring out of you. But everybody has the potential for that flow state, I feel, no matter if you're an accountant, an engineer, right? And I think you kind of touched on noticing the things that kind of unlock those doors. So what are the other things that do that for you? And where should people look? Well, I can only really speak for what works for me. And you can sort of listen and try these things. Number one, I would say is experiment. I think it's really important that you experiment and try things until you find what works for you. Cause what works for any one of the three of us may not

work for you, or maybe you have to modify it so that it works for you. And that's, that's cool. I think the first thing I think of is Jason Freed from Basecamp often talks about, it's important for creative people to have large blocks of uninterrupted time if you can get it, right? So, one thing I'll do is sort of set aside a chunk of time. So, that's one aspect. The second thing that works well for me is I'll spend more time on the prep side to get myself ready so that when I get to the point of doing the work, if I have to go back and do some admin thing and then get back into it, that ruins the state. So as an example, a practical example, I had a big illustration project I used on my iPad. I actually spent a whole day.

All I did was identify all the tasks, all the illustrations that needed to be done. I built all the templates in my iPad. I actually spent a whole day. All I did was identify all the tasks, all the illustrations that needed to be done. I built all the templates in my iPad. I got all the reference material and loaded up in layers underneath and grade that. I had built a master template so that all the layers that I knew that I would typically have in one of these illustrations in Procreate was ready. And then I just built out every single illustration that I needed to do. So there were like 60 in a big pile in Procreate with all the stuff and all the layers and stuff like that,

the numbers and the names. So that the idea was this, that when it was time to do illustration, I didn't have any crutches, right? To say, oh, I gotta make a new template and I have to build the layers. And like, it would be easy to sort of fall into that trap and then get next thing, you know, like the hour, two hours or three hours I'd

set aside for illustration is now turned into me like fiddling around. So actually knowing that that's a tendency, I actually sort of get it out of my system. And the benefit of that is when it comes time to do illustrations, I just open up the app and I just, I'm going to pick number 42. 42 looks like fun. I opened it up and I start working. And then I have the rule, like if I get out of the flow state, like once I get going, I've got my music going and stuff. If like, I feel stuck or like, rather than just force myself to do it, sometimes I'll

close that one and say, let's go to 32. Okay. 32. And I'll work on that. And so the freedom to sort of jump between tasks while I'm in the flow state also works for me. So those are a couple things that I do. And as I mentioned before, like favorite music, favorite beverage, anything that sort

of helps me stay in that flow state. Noise-canceling headphones. So there's all these things I try to set myself up to where I can, once I get in that state, I can just kind of keep rolling and things won't break it for the most part. One of those ideas I really love is the idea of front-loading your friction. You know, like taking out all the friction points, just do them at the beginning and be done. And I think a lot of people

do that but i haven't heard that verbalized very often and i think it's it's a really good tip you know just figure out all the little fiddly parts and rather than fiddle throughout the whole project just take an hour maybe put something on tv or your favorite song and just just do all that just get it done and then your brain has nowhere to hide you know it's like you can't say well instead i'll go you know fix the spacing or no i already did all that stuff just work you know just make something yeah yeah i also like the idea of the freedom that you touched on and uh the the picture i have have in my head is that you have all these things preloaded, right? And you work on one, like you said, until you feel that you're stuck and then

you go find something else. But that is very different, even though it maybe doesn't change the work that you have to do. It's very different than looking at a list of things and feeling like, oh, this one right here, I have to do this one next. And going into those tasks can kind of feel dreadful sometimes. And it's like you're relying completely on willpower to muscle through it. But I like the way that you talked about essentially loading these things on the iPad. So you've got these constraints, but then when you're actually doing the work, you're giving yourself freedom to go wherever you want within those constraints. And it just kind of struck me as you were describing that, how much that it's the same

work maybe that's getting done, but the way that you approach the tasks makes it way more fun. Yeah. And I would say, you know, there's a decision point. that's getting done, but the way that you approach the tasks makes it way more fun. Yeah. And I would say, you know, there's a decision point. Let's say I'm getting stuck on something. So if I sense like it's going to break my flow, then that would be an opportunity where I would say, I'm just going to mess around with 32 for a while and I'll come back to that later. But there are times, too, where it's like, dang it, I'm going to solve this. Like, that actually sucks me more into it. Like the solving of that problem. It's, it's, I haven't figured it out, but I will figure this

out. Like sometimes that can be a good thing and actually draw me in until, and then it's a real satisfaction when you nail it and then you can switch to the next one or whatever. So I think a little bit of it is a little bit of freedom within that structure. Like you identified to be able to move in different directions based on, you know, maybe you set some criteria, like if I'm stuck on this for more than 15 minutes and I haven't been able to power through it, then I'm going to switch to something else, something like that, maybe. Or, you know, maybe you know yourself that at the point of 15 minutes, now I'm going to start getting distracted to look at YouTube or check out Twitter,

whatever the thing is your normal escape, right? And so it's sort of like you're preempting your normal tendency to do this thing that you know will then really derail you and then you're never going to get back to what you wanted to. Do you experience focus like a muscle? I mean, is it a thing that if you do more

of you're better at, or is it just a quantified resource that you only have so much of every day? You know, if you're in a noisy place that's distracting you, it can be really hard to get into it. So I think there's some degree of it is muscle, but I wouldn't say've, there's sort of these pathways neurons have said, this is, this is where I get worked on that. It just sort of like, I, it's almost like I fall into it like a, in a record, right? I put the right record on and it's always going to play Steely Dan and I put the other record on, it's going to play, you know, the cars or something. Right. So that's sort of like a record that I know works and it always produces results. So I have that in my back pocket for when that comes up. It's the difference between swimming with the current versus against it sometimes.

But what about Mike, do you ever find that even switching to diagram 32 doesn't work? Like it's just not happening. What do you do when you hit the block wall? I think then sometimes it's actually important to have a break and sort of allow yourself to do something else. Maybe it's actually a timed, like, I got 15 minutes to go read this article I've been wanting to read as sort of a little reward for taking a break. And then I'll come back and try again. And maybe at some point

you just find like maybe the windows closed or the environment's changed or whatever. And it's, that's just the end of the session. And then you just have to take it up the next day. I think about when I wrote the sketchnote handbook and the workbook, one of the things that I learned in that process of writing a book was it was so big of a project, such a large project that you couldn't like in my past as a designer, you could like do a weekend and you could get a lot of work done. Like it was pretty much impossible to produce a book in a weekend. So I had to think about it as a long term, almost like a, you know, a long marathon project where I would start the day and sort of set out to do some things and say, I want to get these many pages. And when I got done at the end of the evening,

I would say, you know what? This is a good day's work. I would actually say that out loud verbally and we'll get back at it tomorrow. And then the next day I would schedule time and just keep on plugging away at it. I think the thing I know about myself and maybe this is true of others is if you look too much at how big the mountain is, you're never going to climb it. So I almost have to like set these micro or sectional goals like, okay, we're going to do three pages, right? And knowing that if I'm consistent with three pages a day, that eventually all 150 pages will be completed, right? In that path, in that pass. So having that mindset where I know that there's a lot there,

but I sort of put it out of my mind and just focus on the task. Let's just get a few things done. And the next thing you know, you're making good progress because you're just taking bite after bite and you're being consistent and you're putting yourself in the best position to make that happen. And I had, when I wrote books, I did the exact same thing you do with images. I would make a big Scrivener project and I would pick every day what I say, well, I feel like writing that section today. I didn't do it linearly. And that's a lot easier with nonfiction.

But if you're doing a project, I would really consider nonlinear. Is there a way to do this without having to do it from step zero to step 10? Can I jump in the middle? Because that really helps. I feel like getting into the flow state, you kind of go with the current again. You find the thing you're in the mood to do, and you do that. Yeah. Iteration's really important, and that almost sounds like iteration, too, where I'm going to write a first draft, and I might work on this section and polish that a little bit more, and you sort of keep moving your way around

until it's all polished the way you like, right? But there is a point sometimes where you just say, that's it for today and you don't beat yourself up and you come back the next day this episode of the focus podcast is brought to you by zocdoc go to zocdoc.com slash focused and find the right doctor right now you can sign up for free when someone is exceptionally good at what they do it could be a waiter, a chef, or a doctor, you know you're in good hands.

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So go to ZocDoc.com slash focus and download the ZocDoc app for free. Then find and book a top rated doctor today. Many are available within 24 hours. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com slash focus. ZocDoc.com slash focus. Check it out today. And our thanks to ZocDoc for their support of the Focus Podcast and all of RelayFM. All right, Mike. So one of the things that you are known for is sketchnoting. And I have gone all in with sketchnoting in large part due to the books that you had written that I had read. in large part due to the books that you had written that I had read. However, I, at the beginning of my sketchnote journey, thought that I was not creative. So you're going to give advice to past Mike. What would you tell him about sketchnoting and creativity in general?

Well, specifically, so first of all, I would say around creativity in general? Well, specifically, so first of all, I would say around creativity in general is I think everybody's creative and it just gets expressed in different ways. I have a real strong belief working with developers. I've seen amazing developers who are super creative

using the material for them, which was code, right? To do amazing stuff that I couldn't have imagined them doing, right? So I've seen creative accountants. Now, I couldn't have imagined them doing. Right. So I've seen, you know, creative accountants. Now I'm, I guess you can't be too creative with accounting because then you get the IRS after you, but you know what I mean? Like the way you think of like conceptually think about challenges and how you make it

work, like everybody's dealing with that. And I think the, the challenges is not every, not our culture doesn't always recognize those things as creative. They just think of them as problem solving. But really, there is creativity in everything we're doing. It's a human capability, I think. And some people really apply it or are aware of it more than others. So the first good news is you are creative.

And the question is, how will you choose to be creative? And one of the ways that you can be is sketchnoting. And what I would say around sketchnoting is all sketchnoting is, is this ability to use more than just writing to capture and share your thinking, whether it's sharing it for others or it's just for your own use later. later. So, with that in mind, expanding beyond just writing text to being able to draw images or do lettering just opens up your capacity to capture ideas. Because sometimes ideas are difficult to write, like concepts can be complex or something might take paragraph after paragraph to describe where, you know, in a couple of minutes, you could draw that concept or do that map or, you know, lay something out visually, even if it's rudimentary, that that might be actually the better way to capture and communicate that concept.

And the next thing I would say is because you're creative, it puts you in a good position to be able to do this, even if you don't feel like you're an artist. And a lot of what I teach really is mindset change around what is drawing. Like, you know, if you grew up as a kid being an artist and then for whatever reason when you were in middle school, it wasn't cool and you stopped doing it. And now you just don't do it. Like, it's still available to you. And it's a skill. You're a visual person. I mean, our visual skills are incredibly powerful. So leveraging it can be a way that you can expand beyond just the verbal stuff that you're maybe good at now and add another component and your brain is geared for it. So it's definitely an opportunity for you. And the way I would approach it is number one,

give yourself a lot of grace because just like this focus stuff we've been talking about, it takes practice. You've got to try it over and over again until you nail it and get it right. And so expecting yourself to do like one sketchnote and be amazing like someone else has been doing it for 15 years is unrealistic expectation. So the first thing is to give yourself grace to be a learner and that it's okay to, you know, make mistakes as you're learning.

And then the next thing I would say is find a way to do visualizations that overlap something you're already doing. So I give an example of, let's say you're a gardener and it's springtime here in Milwaukee. And there's lots of people getting all excited about what their garden is going to look like. Well, why couldn't you do a sketchnote and plan out your garden and have a practical application? I'm going to put the petunias over here and the whatever's over there. And you kind of sort of lay it out on paper before you ever go to the store and buy the plants or dig a hole in the ground and you have the whole structure kind of planned out, right? And then it helps you think through what's the right structure to do that. So that would be a case of taking something you already do gardening and then overlaying sketchnoting on top of it so

that it has a practical application. And then the very last thing I would say as an introduction is you can find training from me on YouTube for free that talks a little bit about how I think about drawing. So drawing with these five basic shapes, a square, circle, triangle, line, and dot is a way of thinking about drawing as an idea sharing or idea capturing way of drawing. That's not like you're not in art class, you're not doing, you know, still lifes and has to look realistic. It's communicating these ideas in a really simple way, using really simple components that even like my 10 year old son can do this stuff, right? So it's sort of like letting go of all the baggage that you have to be a great artist and just getting to work doing ideas.

And, you know, I'd like to rewind just a little bit just for folks who've never heard of sketchnoting. Just tell us a little bit about what sketchnoting is. Sure, sure. The way I think of sketchnoting based on how I came into it and when I gave it the name was it was this way of mixing writing and drawing to capture ideas. It was this way of mixing writing and drawing to capture ideas. And I did that because I was a really good note taker, but I hated taking notes because I felt like I had to write everything down. And when I got done, I didn't want to look at my notes because they were so full of information. I didn't know where to begin.

So in an experiment, I decided to take a very small notebook so I couldn't write all the notes and a gel pen. So I had to commit to what I would put on paper. And I realized that by being a very active listener and doing analysis in the moment and then drawing the best I could at the time on the page was a really good way of approaching information gathering. And it's using really simple drawings, maybe some bold letters, uh, and then just writing, but just writing a lot less and trying to get to the bottom of like,

what's the big idea that this person is talking about? What's the big idea that I'm thinking about? What's the big idea. And then sort of listen for it, analyze it in the moment and capture it on a page or on a screen in the case of an iPad to, um, so that I can go back to that information later and extract the value out of it. Yeah. And if you're a visual learner like me, it is a much better way to learn. I mean, it really, there's just some magic to it. I don't know how to explain it. I, I have the distinction of contributing the worst sketchnote to Mike's sketchnote workbook. The second book he made, because I started after I met you, Mike,

I tried it and everything you said was true. And I saw a problem in my life. I used to make a lot of court appearances. And when you're standing in front of the judge, he'll start firing questions at you. And then you have to look through a 15-page brief to find exactly the argument you were making or the citation or whatever. And I watched all these lawyers fumble in front of attorneys. And I tried to memorize it, but that didn't work because there was just too much. And so I started sketchnoting briefs where I would walk into court with a one or two page sketch note. And it is ugly. If anybody has the book and you look at the sketch note workbook, literally look at my sketch note in there.

It is terrible. But it's just the way I did it. And I did it for years. I did it my entire practice. And I still use it with some of the Max Barkey stuff for the same reason. I just find as a visual learner, man, it really lands. And just like Mike Schmit am my my sketch notes are not pretty i actually don't even really consider them artwork i i just consider them a practical tool

more than anything else i think my creativity probably comes in other ways but but the uh it is quite a remarkable thing you stumbled upon here yeah i would i would agree and i you know it's funny your your sketch note in there is actually one of my favorites because I think it's approachable and anybody who looks in that book and sees it says, well, I can draw like that, like David does. And I like the way he approached it, right? So there is something to be said about that. That is such a generous way to say that. What they're actually thinking is, oh, if this guy could do it, anybody could do it. Yeah, that could be another way to look at it too.

I mean, that's not necessarily bad though. I mean, I have come into sketchnoting because I found value from the ideas. And I think that's the thing from what you were talking about that really resonates with me is what's the big idea here in extracting the value from it? I came to sketchnoting because someone asked me one day, what did pastor preach about on Sunday? And I couldn't remember. And I was like, that's wrong. I spent all that time at church taking those notes and it had no impact unless I go back and read them. So I started taking sketchnotes. And my first sketchnote was like, like you're talking about the combination of pictures and words. It was primarily words with

a few stick figures and I've gotten better, but I'm still not, not good. And that's the thing that people have to get over is the comparison. You were kind of talking about that. You mentioned if do one, don't expect it to be great, but really like I've done it for several years now at this point, I have no intention of stopping, but I've stopped looking at other people's sketchnotes because every time I look at them, I do find myself falling into that comparison trap. However, it has now just become part of who I am and what I do. I just got done doing a presentation and all of my slides now, I bought a license to your sketchnote font back in the day. And I have my hand-drawn images from GoodNotes that I drop inside my keynote slides. And the first time that I shared my keynote deck that way, I was like, people are going to think

a five-year-old drew these. But the reaction that I've gotten every single time that I've done it, and which is why I continue to do it, is people look at it and they think it's great, not because of the artistic quality, but because I'm willing to put it is people look at it and they think it's great not because of the artistic quality but because i'm willing to put it out there and it's the fact that i'm willing to share my not perfect drawings they feel empowered to do the same thing that's great i love that

story um i love the way that you've also integrated it and you're not so worried and what's the statement the comparison is a thief of joy and i I think it can be true unless you can sort of tame it and, you know, comparison as a way to, you know, aim for something like, oh, the way they do their lettering is cool. I want to learn how to do that. That's positive comparison. But if it's comparison like, oh, they're great and I'll never be that good and so I'm going to quit, that's kind of a negative comparison, right? So, that can be sometimes tricky, but you found a really practical application just like David did in his law practice that works for you. And even if it's only a few areas of your life where it works, that's great, right? It helps you understand or communicate or do those things. And that's really the purpose. It's, uh, it's a practical art form. I call, um, sketchnotes, uh, which I would say are like

the pickup truck of the visual thinking world, right? They're just functional. You can, you can load trees in the back or you can go grocery shopping. You can take a camping, you can go to a fancy dinner, like it does whatever you want. Um, and it's, it's, you know, depends on how you want to use that, that that tool and it definitely is a tool for sure and if it rises to the level of art that's cool yeah and i would add to uh to mike's note there i've done that many times over the years too where i give a presentation i and i think the audience likes it because it shows that you're invested you just didn't go get the stock photo of two guys shaking hands and stick it on a slide. You actually drew a picture.

And if you're really, a pro tip there for me is draw it in Procreate, export the video of you drawing it, and then embed the video on the slide so the audience actually gets to watch the image being drawn. Even if it's like a five-second animation, that just like raises the engagement level with the, uh, with the audience even higher. Well, in the world of chat GPT and mid journey and those kinds of things, uh, seeing a human producing something is sort of attractive. I think it always has been. So the more you can set yourself out as a human who's doing work,

um, I think that's attractive to people. There's something that draws them in. What are some of the more interesting uses for sketchnoting you've heard over the years that you've been talking about it? Well, one of the ones that I'm seeing a lot of now in application is in schools. So lots of teachers, I've been engaged with lots of teachers and school districts in teaching these concepts so they can integrate it into their curriculum. And that gets me really excited because what that means is there are going to be kids coming out that this will be a natural tool in their tool belt that they can use in their professional lives. And they'll find even more ways than I can't even imagine. So that's one.

Often when I think about it, I'm really glad that the books that I wrote were principle-based. So, I focused a lot on what are the concepts and principles of the idea and not being so rigid about it has to be this or it has to be that because it freed people in different areas to take the concept and then apply it in their context. So as an example, I have several friends, one in particular, my friend Rob, who's a physicist, works in a nuclear test facility. They do neutron scattering. And he picked up sketchnoting, but he found that because of the technical, the highly technical talks that he was attending were difficult to do just to show up and capture something valuable because there was this assumption with a scientist like, well, you've read all my papers, so I'm just going to jump right in in the middle and you'll know what I'm talking about. So what he found was for a physicist, he had to adapt it a little bit and he had to do a lot of pre-research and prepare himself for the talks.

But the opportunities were amazing. And for him, not only has it helped him comprehend, but I think he's used it really effectively to communicate within his community of other physicists the concepts and the ideas in a really simple, compact way. So, that's another one that's pretty cool. And then, you know, I'm an experimenter, so I've tried using it for all kinds of things. I've used it at Green Bay Packer games. I've taken it traveling to other countries. I use it for coming up with ideas, so idea maps.

Even used some sketchnoting stuff when I worked for a development team that used Agile methodologies to use sketchnoting as part of that experience. So I think it can be applied in a lot of ways. And there's probably plenty of ways that I've not seen, or I can't imagine that will be popping up anytime. When I look around, I'll be surprised by something. What are the ways that you find it gives you the most benefit in your day-to-day life? Well, I keep a bullet journal. so I really like the analog aspect. And one of the things that I've, in the last couple of years that I've done is I sort of quote unquote waste two whole pages for a day, which some bullet journals were like,

oh, you're wasting half that extra page. But for me, what I do is on the left side, I do my schedule and my tasks. And then on the right side of the page, I call it the log page because I found if I did not give myself space intentionally, so I didn't plan for it, I would start filling in nooks and crannies and be drawing. So I thought, well, why don't I just reserve a whole page for anything I want? It can be written notes. It can be drawn notes. And so, you know, I'm looking at my book here and I see there was a video that I had produced at work of some updated interface that we were releasing. So I actually just sat down

and did a three-step little super doodly sketch note of how the video, what are the important things that I want to show in the video and what's the order that they should appear. And it's like super, you know, super functional. I mean, it's no one's going to see it but me, but it helped me process and think through, okay, this is how I'm going to do the video. And that led to doing the video. Or as an example, maybe a month and a half, two months ago, I had a big workshop on icons and I just took two whole pages and sketchnoted out everything I could think of around what I was going to teach.

I did a little sketchnotes of the templates that would be part of it. And so it was just like this freeform two pages. I could do what I wanted with it. And it was super helpful in kind of doing the mind dump. And then I could look at it and say, OK, I can make that template, template, template, the structures here. And then I started writing. So it was really valuable and sort of

getting me away from like, well, I have to do this outline. I have to make these templates, but I don't know where to start. So just doing this dump was a really important first step to kind of get the train rolling downhill, I guess. I mean, one of the things I love about it is just there are people out there for whom a written outline will never work. It's just not all of us have brains wired the same way. And what you've created here is just a solution for people that need the visual component. I think I'm kind of on the borderline of that. I can work with a word outline, but visual for me just works so much better.

And the little extra amount of time, you know, the way Mike teaches in his book, gang, it's like, it really is five basic shapes. And if you can draw them, you can, you can cobble together little sketch notes that are good enough for you. And you don't have to be self-conscious about it. It's just, it's a really interesting way of thinking. This episode of Focus is brought to you by NetSuite. Being a business owner or working closely with business owners means knowing your numbers. If your business earns millions or maybe tens of millions in revenue,

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No interest, no payments. Take advantage of this special financing offer at netsuite.com slash focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D. That's netsuite.com slash focused to get the visibility and control you need to weather any storm. N-E-T-S-U-I-T-E dot com slash focused. Our thanks to NetSuite for their support of the Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. Focus podcast and all of RelayFM. We've been talking a lot through the show, Mike, about sketchnoting. And I wanted to break down a little bit of the tools for it. How are you doing it

on your iPad? How are you doing it with an analog notebook? What are the tools of the trade? That's a great question. And the first thing that I would say is in all my teaching, I've taught the sketchnote workshops like hundreds of times now. And through trial and error, I found that, you know, the best tools are the simplest. And in the case of my workshops, I have anybody who runs them, I have them bring out a ream of printer paper and I have them buy a bunch of flare pens from like Amazon, like a pack of 20 or whatever. And that's the perfect tool, right? Because it's a sheet of paper is useful.

But like if you screw it up, you can just crumple it up and recycle it like it's no big deal. All right. You can just move on to the next one. It's not a beautiful notebook that you're afraid to ruin. Right. It's just that's just a sheet of paper. Recycle it. Right. a beautiful notebook that you're afraid to ruin, right? It's just a sheet of paper, recycle it, right? And then the flare pen or any kind of gel pen or something, I just happen to like flares,

provides sort of an immediacy. They feel really good on that paper and it forces you to accept that you're putting a mark on the page and it might be wrong, but it's okay. Like it sort of forces you to accept it rather than doing pencil and feeling, oh, I can erase that and fix that. That was a really important lesson when I started sketchnoting was to commit to ink because ink on the page was permanent. And it made me, what's interesting is it made me thoughtful about what marks I would put on the page instead of like, you know, if I had pencil, I might have drawn a bunch of stuff and erased it. And, you know, we talked earlier about getting into busy

work, like trying to make it perfect instead of focusing on capturing the concept. So I would say the simplest tool is just fine. So whatever pen you've got around in your printer paper will work just fine. In fact, it can be freeing. Up from that, there's so many great notebooks out there now. Leuchtturm1917 makes excellent notebooks. Moleskine has excellent notebooks. I know from my wife, who's really into bullet journaling as well, there's all these brands that exist. I did a collaboration with my friend Mike Sciano, and we did the sketchnote idea book, which is really great for it if you want to use that. So again, I think it's more important to find what works for you rather than me prescribing

that you have to use this notebook or these pens. It's more like the concept of finding a notebook that works. I think sometimes size is important to consider. So it could be a field note that's in your pocket. It's always with you. And you use that for sketchnoting instead of, you know, flipping through Twitter or something when you're at the supermarket waiting in a line or something. So it could even be that kind of level.

If I go into specific tools, which I can do. Um, I would say, uh, moleskin makes really excellent notebooks. The ones that I tended to use were the sketchbooks. So that reason I chose them is because they had a thicker, I think they were like a hundred and 110 GSM or something, 120 thick, like cardstock, almost sheets inside.

Uh, and they provided a nice stability and they wouldn't bleed through. So that was important for the kind of work I was doing on there. And then I discovered another maker, also a German maker, unlike Moleskine, which I think was nominally Italian,

is Leuchtturm 1917, Lighthouse 1917. Makes a really excellent line of notebooks as well in all different sizes. They also have a notebook that's got really thick paper, but they have improved for, I think, a lot of bullet journals, a thicker paper, which is, I think, normal paper, but it's 120 GSM, so it's thicker. So those are really great. And both those makers make them in pocket sizes. So if you want something small, that will work. You can do 5x8, which is A5 size, or you can get large sizes as well. And then, of course, the last thing you can do is maybe find an art store in your area and go check out the notebooks at the art store.

A lot of times, stuff from Europe might come through there, Japan, that you can find. And again, if you're someone who likes spiral bound, you can go in that direction. You can do regular bound. Maybe you're someone who just likes loose sheets. So you just buy one of these dog clips and you just clip it together, right? And you just carry a set of cards around or something.

So I think it's most important to find what fits and then experiment a little bit and see try it out and if it doesn't work then switch to something else so that would be from the book perspective or the paper perspective i have one one nomination extra i think the rodeo web notebook is also excellent that's right yeah rodeos are great that's a great brand as well i agree they've got a quite a quite a line as well so quite a variety of things that you can choose in their line i would before you get into the digital stuff because i am a digital sketch noter at this point however uh hearing you talk through some of the things that you recommend the

gel pens and the the copy paper because you can throw it up or crinkle it up and throw it away. And the big thing, if you're new to sketchnoting, that you'll probably encounter is you said, it might be wrong, but that's okay. And that was me. When I first started using, I was using the G2 pens on an Evernote Moleskine. And the first note I found myself when I would make something, I would try to rub it out like I tried to erase it even though it's pen like I knew I couldn't do it but that was just the natural reaction it's like I don't like seeing this permanent thing that I made and that was a hurdle that I had to get over mentally now I do it digitally but I honestly believe that if I had

started on it with digital, I would not have stuck with it because I would have made a shape and it wouldn't have been perfect and I would have undone it, right? That's one of the advantages of digital tools. You can undo things, but then you're just constantly striving for perfection. And that is a tendency of mine. I want things to be perfect. And I had to do enough bad art, bad sketchnotes with the pen and the paper to overcome that. But once I put in the reps, I did actually do that. And now I can sit down and continue to just move forward as I make the sketchnote without the judgment on the art that I'm creating. That's pretty cool. That's great to hear that you sort of, that the paper and pen helped you sort of get through that. That's kind of why I recommend like sheets of printer paper and whatever pen you've got or flare gel pen or something just to keep it simple,

right? So you can sort of work through that without feeling, well, I'm wrecking my precious notebook, right? I spent $20 in this notebook. I can't wreck it. Well, that's going to be more friction for you to not do anything than to help you, right? So maybe the first thing you do is just get a chunk of paper and clip it together. And that's what you use for a little while until you feel ready to do to switch to a notebook or whatever notebook you choose. As far as pens go, we've sort of alluded to some. I love flare pens. The beautiful thing about flare pens now is they're also very popular for bullet journalers. And there's tons of them. Any Target you go into, Walmart, if you're international, you probably can find these someplace.

And they're in really strange colors sometimes. My wife finds these really like tropical colors or whatever. So if you really like color and you want to make that part of the work you do, flare just sort of has you covered and they're pretty reasonably priced. So that's a good place to go. As far as gel pens go, um, you know, the pilot G2 is a classic. I like the Pentel EnerGels are really great pens. A Sharpie has a new S gel that I really enjoy. And, uh, I tend to like thick, juicy pens. So I will go for the 07 or if it's available, 1.0 millimeter. So really thick pen. And those, one of the things I do

like about pens that I carry is I like to be able to go into any corner drugstore and replace it. So like it runs out or I'm going to, I'm, you know, traveling or something. I want to have a pen that I can approximate by going into a grocery store or a drug store and be able to walk into the pen aisle and buy another one. So there's a definitely an advantage to that over fancy pens that you can't find easily, right? Because if it, if you lose it now, suddenly you, it's going to be maybe difficult to replace it. So, so that that's sort of maybe as a starting point to sort of stay with these simple tools that you get in an office supply store, a grocery store, or a drugstore and sort of play with them.

Again, I think it's really important to experiment as a sketchnoter and find out what it is that works for you. Like maybe if it works for me or Mike or David, that doesn't necessarily mean it works for you. You might find something unique that works especially well for you. And then probably the other thing I would mention is a brand that I'm an ambassador for because I really like the tools. That's a German company called Neuland, N-E-U-L-A-N-D.

And they produce really excellent pens for visual thinkers. They're expensive. Relatively speaking, they're inexpensive. But because they're coming internationally, the shipping can be expensive. So you're probably best off buying a larger quantity or going in with somebody if you want to get those. And the thing that I like about them is they think they're thinking holistically about the tool. So they're all refillable. You can buy refill inks. If the

nibs wear out in many of these pens, you can pull the nibs out with the pliers and stick a new nib in there. So effectively, it's a, you know, it's a endless pen that you can refill and replace and run for as long as you like. So that's one of the things I like about the Neuland brand. And they have other stuff like notebooks and other specialized tools for professional visual note takers that maybe wouldn't fit for you, but the pens are really excellent. So what about digital tools? You mentioned Procreate. I'm a fan of GoodNotes. What else should people look at?

But only after they've tried it analog. Yeah. So I still am a huge fan of a tool called paper used to be, it was created by a company called 53, which no longer exists. They were acquired by WeTransfer, the people who, you know, transfer large files, acquired this tool and among others, and they've been doing a really great job of stewarding it and maintaining it for quite a long time. It's free, so you can get this free. One of the things I like about paper is that they really thought deeply about how they were going to structure the tools that you use for drawing. There's not a lot

of, I guess, what would you say, chrome on their screen. So when you're using the drawing tools, they sort of slide up in a tray from the bottom and then you slide them away. So it's like you're working literally on a piece of paper. And I think some of the ink engines that they've created are still some of the best ink engines that feel the most like a real pen to me. There's, of course, limitations. They don't do layers. There's a limited screen size that you can't change, which you can do in many other tools. But like it also offers like diagramming tools. So if you do lots of flow charts, or you want to be able to draw,

you know, straight, straight lines or squares or circles or triangles, it's got a kind of a cool feature that will allow you to do that. So for a free tool, I think it's, it's almost like I hesitate to even call it an art tool. And it's much more of an idea capture tool. And that's what I've learned talking to the founders of it who created it, that it was really intended as that. So that's one to consider. Procreate's really great. I use that for professional illustration work because I can have multiple layers. I can have all kinds of brushes.

My suggestion for you for any of these complex tools like Procreate is sort of set your tools. Like we talked about spending a couple hours setting up. Choose your canvas size and pick your tools and sort of stick with it, right? Run with it for a while and use it because the temptation with Procreate is you could endlessly mess around with brushes and page sizes and layers and like you could really go crazy and never actually produce anything. So

my guidance would be, you know, sort of settle the basics and just work with it and see how it feels. So that's another really great tool. I think it's only like $10. So it's really reasonably priced. And many of these tools are really reasonably priced. The next one that I'll recommend is Concepts. So Concepts is interesting in that it's a drawing tool, but it's somewhere halfway between Procreate and Paper by WeTransfer, between Procreate and Paper by WeTransfer in that it's sort of a functional tool. Lots of interior and exterior, like architects and designers use it for environments. And what's cool about it is when you draw with it,

it's actually doing a vector line. So as you draw on the page, there's actually a mathematical vector that produces that line. And then it paints, you know, a brush stroke or a pen stroke on it. The beauty of this is if you need to modify your drawings in any way, it allows you to kind of move things around, resize them. You can even select a stroke and change it from, say, pencil to pen. So I've encountered that where I had a project that I did in pen and the client didn't

like it. So I just went through and selected chunks of the drawing and just converted it to pencil and it solved the problem. Saved me hours and hours of work. So it's a really cool tool. And it has, I think you were saying, Mike, GoodNotes has like a library feature. It has like a library feature where you can have your own drawings and then save them in a library feature. It has like a library feature where you can have your own drawings and then save them in a library. And when you need them, you just drag them out on the canvas, resize them and use them any way you like. So that would be a third one. I think as far as note-taking tools, there's a tool that I like called NoteShelf, which is probably comparable to GoodNotes. I use it for presentations, oddly enough.

It works really well for that. It lets me draw on my presentations, which I often do. And it's, you know, I think a lot of times there's benefits to these note-taking apps because they're really designed for note-taking and not so much art. So in a way, they're limited. The limited tools they offer actually can be a benefit to you to focus on the note-taking and not get too noodley and, oh, this brush or that, this or that. They're powerful enough to do the job, but they don't let you get distracted with too many options, right? Like running a nuclear reactor or something like that.

So those would be a couple that I would recommend. Mike, what about you? I'm all in with GoodNotes. I bought it back in the day and just kind of stuck with it. And that was the simplicity that kind of hooked me. They've added a couple features like the collections where you can have, like you can save certain pieces and then you can drop them in later, kind of like stickers would be an earlier version of that so that's handy when i'm putting together the the slides for the presentations and things like that i have to redraw things from from scratch i basically have that library ready to

go i can just drop it in lasso tool copy paste it inside of keynote i also like the fact that there's a mac app there so i'm using it for sketch noting on the ipad obviously i've got an ipad mini but when it's time to like put them in the keynote slides, I do that on my Mac. So having all that stuff synced to the Mac app makes that a lot simpler. I've tried to use Procreate. It was too complicated for me.

I did try to dial in the brushes and just limit myself to a few options. But it's just more than i need and uh the forced simplicity of the good notes and not having multiple layers actually was a benefit for me the other one i've tried that i liked was linear sketch but yes that's a good one again just good notes clicked with me in a way that's kind of hard to describe i feel like a lot of these apps have similar approaches similar tools but they'll feel different when you use them. And you'll kind of know when you start using it, whether it's the right one. I think it's a question of

finding the constraints that work best for you and actually solving toward that. I mean, some of these apps are, there are almost no almost no constraints i mean concepts is a great example it's an infinite canvas app there is like a lot of drawing tools in there but maybe that's too many toys to play with to do a good job of sketch noting you just have to kind of look at your own personality and kind of make a choice but the good news is there's a lot of options if you want to do it digitally. But what about what Mike was saying earlier about starting analog and going digital?

Do you have any rules of thumb for people that are getting started? Should they avoid digital, in your opinion? Or what's the best way to get started? One good reason to avoid digital is it's probably going to cost you at least $500 to get started, right? Assuming you have an iPad alreadyad already assuming you have one um like i would want to talk more with mike about what he specifically saw that he felt like going analog to digital was helpful i think there is some benefit to

sort of having like there's a tactile feel to it um I've done some things to the iPad to make it better. Like I use a screen protector that's a paper-like screen protector that makes it feel a little bit more like paper. But even so, it's not exactly like paper. So there is something to the tactile feel of paper and paper and pen. And, you know, talking about care and feeding,

like my notebook and my pen are probably not gonna run out of battery and die on me. So there are some benefits to analog, if that's important to you, if you go in the field or something like that, where battery life is an issue for you. Um, like, so say outdoor somewhere where you don't have access to charging or you have to plan for it. Um, but I think, you know, again, that sort of comes to, I would say, an individual choice. Maybe somebody who's got that iPad, they're going into it and they would be able to adapt to it. It would work for them. I would hesitate to say that I would require you to do analog first, but I would say try both of them out and see which fit. I just come back to like experimentation. Do lots of experimentation

with lots of tools until you find the ones that work for you. And do it kind of in a methodical order. Don't just have a huge pile of tools and then you're just overwhelmed and don't know where to begin. Like, okay, I'm going to start with this one and just get started somewhere. Try it for a while and give it a fair shake. And if it works for you, then you continue and maybe experiment with other ones and you just keep on working until you get the if it works for you, then you continue and maybe experiment with other ones and you just keep on working until you, you know, get the tools that work for you. That's kind of what we do with our software, right? I mean, some tools just don't fit me and some do. And the only way I can find out is by using them and see if they apply.

I also think you just look for the one that sparks the most joy, right? I mean, if you find that you really enjoy doing it with digital, then do it digital. If you really like getting the pens and paper out, I mean, then you're more likely to do it if you find the way that you enjoy the most. I agree with that. Well, Mike, thanks so much for coming in today. It's always fun to talk to you about sketchnoting,

but also focus in the way that you have incorporated that into your life. And you and I have similar journeys because of our similar ages, and it's just always so fun talking to you. Again, go check out Mike's books, the sketchnote handbook, sketchnote workbook. Also, don't you still have that notebook that you're selling with that sketchnote-branded idea book? Is that still interesting? Yeah, if you that uh sketchnote branded idea book is that still yeah yeah if you go to sketchnoteideabook.com you can find that and if you we have a code that

we've just activated um i think it's the code army a-r-m-y will give you 10 off i think it's 20 now so that gives you two bucks off nice and you can find that at airship.store excellent well mike congratulations on all your success and all the people you've helped with this great sketchnote method. I know, Mike, you do every sermon every Sunday, right? With sketchnotes, right? I try to sometimes when I'm out of town. What about you, Mike Schmitz? Do you do that as well? Yeah, we're actually at church multiple times a week. So I have multiple sketchnotes a week. And yeah, I have been doing it since digitally, actually. I was just looking at Obsidian. It started in September of 2017. Wow.

So I've got, I think, like 600 of them at this point. That's a good streak. You got a book right there, man. Yep. Yep. The other thing that's fun about sketchnotes that we haven't mentioned at all is how fun they are to share with people. If somebody says, hey, did you get the notes from that? I remember sitting at, I think it was World Domination Summit with Mike sitting next to you, Mike Rohde. And I said, hey, can I just get pictures of your sketchnotes because they're so good? I just wanted to have that.

From being at the conference, I just wanted to see Mike's little notes that it's just a great way to recap what happened. So there, it's a fun thing to share too, either way. So you can find Mike. So what are all the websites people should go to? Probably the easiest one is just roaddesign.com. You can find everything from there. I'm most active on Instagram, also at Rodesign. Sketchnotearmy.com is where I promote other people's stuff. And I'm on Mastodon now, so it's Rodesign at Mastodon.online. So if you want to ping me over there, if that's your thing, you can go over there. And we will have links in the show notes, but it's important to note that for Mike, Rode is the H is after the O, not before.

Not like the keyboard. For Mike, road is the H is after the O, not before. Not like the keyboard. Yes. Hey, gang, before we wrap up today, I just want to spend a couple minutes checking in with Kourosh Dini. I'm joined today by Kourosh Dini, one of the most frequent guests on the Focus podcast,

one of my favorite people. Welcome, Kourosh. Thanks so much for having me. I love being here. Now, for those of you who don't know, Kourosh is a psychiatrist, but he also writes a lot about focus and using digital tools to stay focused. But just the problem of focus and ADHD, I believe, what's the term or phrase you have for it, Kourosh? I'll also use this term wandering mind. I think the issues that people with ADHD have are often shared with others as well. But this idea that you can have many thoughts or emotions that throw off your kind of central

area of focus, that working memory is shared in common with people who struggle with anxiety, as well as focus difficulties and boredom, but also deep curiosity, intelligence, the absent-minded professor idea. All of these kind of share that wandering mind motif that can benefit from some learning of how to guide that. And so you can really find a more powerful flow. Yeah. I mean, all of us want to do our best work. We want to make the great things while we have time to make them, but it's very easy to get lost in this process. And so often that organ between our ears is the cause of distraction. And I think this is the study you've done on it,

and this isn't the first time. You've been doing courses on this now for a while, right? Absolutely, yeah. I've done a couple of rounds of cohort- classes right they were these live uh groups together now i've kind of extended it into this membership model so that people can do this at their own pace but still have accountability to each other build that accountability and um uh be able to access and discuss things live with me you can have we have, I've made it so that there are a couple of Q&As per month, discussions and forums, exercises,

so that you can feel involved, but still kind of have your pace. Yeah, it's really hard. I mean, you've got it right on the website at wavesoffocus.com. The big question, why can't I focus? I'm sure a lot of people listening can relate to that. I mean, you're doing the right things. You're getting the right information. The big question, why can't I focus? I'm sure a lot of people listening can relate to that.

I mean, you're doing the right things. You're getting the right information. You're trying to follow the steps and use all the tricks to stay focused, but still it's hard. And that's just something we all have to a degree, but you can get help with it. And that's what this course is all about. You've got, what is it, 70 lessons. You've got live group discussions, forums, exercises. I mean, Kurash Yang has really put a lot of effort into this. And I think it's really a tool that you may want to consider if you're struggling with focus.

It's one of those things where people, you know, the whole idea of like being able to get into something, of staying with something, of learning how to transition out of something, how to keep your mind on those things that fall into the peripher picture into the moment in a way that still honors past you, present you, future you, that lets you start guiding the actual, more than just riding the waves of focus, but to actually guide them yourself. That's what I'm aiming to do for people. Yeah, I love that visual. And I do think that one of the big ways you've made this easier is you've given people fellow travelers. If you get into this course, there's other people going through it with you. Then the vast wealth of knowledge you have about this stuff to kind of guide folks. I really feel like you're going to help a lot of people with this, Karash.

I really hope so. Thank you. Yeah. So far with the cohorts I've done, they've been, they've been really appreciative and helpful. Like I, it's really been heartwarming to see that to make that happen. Sometimes there's that live something that really makes things click in a way that, uh, well that not live doesn't. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And,

and I would really encourage you if you're listening and you're struggling with focus to check this out. It's called wavesoffocus.com. What else should folks do to get started with this, Kourosh? Well, I think if you go to the wavesoffocus.com site, it hasn't quite opened just yet, although maybe when this goes out it will. But there's a sign up there for the newsletter right on that same page where you'd get a couple of things. When you get a PDF, um, of what I call the,

uh, the anchor and sale or anchor and wind technique, I call it. And, um, the second thing is you'll get a, a series of about 10 or 11 emails that kind of describe the struggles that those have with ADHD or the wandering mind.

Like what, like how do all these problems all build up from what seems to be a simple problem but becomes so complex? You get that and then you're basically, you'll be getting notices about what's going on with the course as it comes out. Excellent.

Well, thank you, Kourash, for putting this on and sharing it with the audience. Gang, it's called wavesoffocus.com. Go check it out. We are the focus podcast. You can find us at relay.fm slash focus. Thank you to our sponsors today. And that's our friends over indeed ZocDoc and NetSuite. On deep focus today, we're going to go deep with the mics on pins. I've got two of these mics with me here today. They're both obsessive about pins. We're gonna to have a great time doing that.

If you're not familiar with it, the Deep Focus is a subscription version of this podcast. You get an ad-free version. You get the extended content every week. And we'll have that for you if you're in the Deep Focus group. Otherwise, we'll see you next time.