Makes Sense - with Dr. JC Doornick - Making Sense of of Visual Learning? With Doug Neill - Episode 42

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

The Makes Sense with Dr. JC Doornick Podcast is your opportunity to wake up from your slumber and reclaim control as the dominant conscious force in your life. Today's episode Makes Sense of visual learning. This episode is available on both Apple and Spotify Platforms. Are you like me and enjoy and gain value from the visual component of learning? Perhaps from a White Board Instruction or any visual aids to help the information sink in? Our Guest, Doug Neill is the owner and creator of Verbal To Visual. Doug Neill helps people make sense of the world by making marks on the page. After training to become a high school teacher he got pulled into the world of visual thinking and in 2014 he founded Verbal to Visual where he teaches people how to sketch out simple drawings and diagrams as a learning, problem-solving, and storytelling tool. Doug loves to spread the word about the power of visual thinking through hand-sketched videos, online courses, and live workshops and talks. His favorite way to put these skills to use himself is by creating visual summaries of interesting books. Makes Sense Academy: Enjoy the show and consider joining our psychological safe haven and environment where you can begin to thrive. The Makes Sense Academy. https://www.skool.com/makes-sense-academy/about   Connect with Doug Neill: Website: https://verbaltovisual.com IG: @dougneill   MENTIONED RESOURCES:  DIGITAL MINIMALISM VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJdZ7kmA2QQ Doodlers Unite - Sunni Brown Ted Talk https://ed.ted.com/lessons/doodlers-unite-sunni-brown   Connect WIth Dr. JC Doornick “The Dragon” https://zez.am/makessense   Episode Highlights 0:00 - Intro 5:22 - How did you get started with verbal to visual learning? 11:12 - Does the School System need to make learning more visual? 12:37 - What’s the science that backs the value of visual learning and Dual Coding 22:04 - How does one learn how to learn how to interpret verbal to visual? 28:36 - What would that idea or book look like? 29:29 - How do you video yourself doodling? 41:14 - How would you draw and explain the idea of Making Sense? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Makes sense. Great morning, my friends. Great morning, humans. This is your boy, Dr. J.C. Dornick, and welcome to another episode, a special episode. They're all saying he always says special of the Make Sense with Dr. J.C. Dornick podcast. And today we are going to make sense of something that I have a particular interest in, and that is this concept of the science of learning, specifically the styles of verbal and visual learning. And we are so, so excited and honored to have this very special guest, Mr. Doug Neal, on the show.

And Doug, as you know, is the creator of something called Verbal to Visual. And I'm going to lay the backstory of how I met him. But first, I want to welcome you to the Make Sense podcast, Doug. Hey, thanks, J.C. Good to be here chatting with you. And I was just telling Doug, as we were prepping, that I'm getting some sort of a channeling of Steve Jobs from him right now. so I feel like this is a big deal. I'll take it.

I just got nervous. So anyway, let me explain, because I haven't told Doug this yet, how I found him. So as you know, an avid reader, I just read at least a book a week. And that's something that I've done for years and years and years. Shout out to my friend Jim Quick, who taught me at a speed read a long time ago. But I'm very, very fascinated with not only consuming knowledge, but also retaining the information that I read. So very often what I'll do when I'm in the midst of a book, especially one that I really like, like the one I was reading when I came across Doug, is I will go out and seek any

visual content, you know, YouTube videos, maybe by the author, but I also like to go out and see if anybody's created any creative, like whiteboards explaining it. And the reason why is I've always been a visual learner as well. You know, I've done a little bit of research on it, and I've identified that it's a good idea, but I actually enjoy it. So I'm reading this book, Doug, one of the better books that I've read in a long time by Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism. So I did my little, I read the book,

and I was like, ah, I love the book. So I went out and I did a little bit of research, and I don't know how I've never came across you, but I came across one of Doug's verbal to visual videos on digital minimalism. And I have to say that it was just so enjoyable to relearn some of these things, but also get the high points of the video

and then the visual attached to it so much so that I took that video and I took it to my community because I meet with a live community and rather than having them just hear me ramble about the things that I learned, I just showed the video. And there was this moment where I was like,

that's the way I probably need to do it from now on rather than let them listen to me talk for an hour. So anyway, that's how I found Doug and I reached out to him And somehow in the midst of this crazy world and busy schedules, we found a moment to have a conversation. Pretty cool how I met you, huh? Yeah, that's awesome. It's always fun to hear how people make their way into the world that I spend my time in is this realm of visual learning.

Eventually, you might come across terms like sketch noting or graphic recording. So I love hearing the entry point for people into this general world. Sometimes it is through like a YouTube video that I made, maybe like a visual summary of a book that someone just read or even like seeing someone taking visual notes at a conference, you know? There's lots of people that are doing interesting work in this realm. But at the same time, globally or like holistically, kind of tapping into these sketching skills as a learning tool,

it's still, it's not particularly prevalent. So it's fun to be in that space of consider my main job is to just help people develop these kind of visual skills to balance out the verbal skills that were probably predominant in their education. And there's plenty of fun and interesting ways to do that, one of which involves, you know, reading good books like you do and then creating something visual to help help you remember the ideas. Yeah, I love that so much. And as a father of three, you know, I've had the opportunity to have my own. learning experience, but then as you know, we learn through our children as well.

I got a show you this one, too. The digital minimal is in poster form. And those are things that people can buy as well. So I love that. I just bought Doug's book and we're going to get into it a little bit more because I actually have some questions. Sometimes we have these ideas and we want to hire someone, hey, could you do a whiteboard presentation? And then you've got these like dumbed down versions of like software and AI that can do it, but not that well. You're either caught between doing something crappy or spending too much money, but then you've got this guy that is actually teaching you how to do it. So this is going to be really, really cool. And just so you know, that was the main reason I reached out to you is I just feel like you're taking something that's

very, very fascinating and valuable and putting it in the hands of other people. So once I go through his course, because I have some ideas of some things I want to create, I'm going to share that with everybody. So what I'd love to do is just kind of, I think most people are more interested in why people do things than what they do at first. So how did Doug get into this? I mean, do you have to be an artist to do this? Or what prompted you to get into this to the level where you're teaching other people to do it? Well, you definitely do not have to be an artist. There is even, to cite a quick research study into taking visual notes, the benefits of sketching ideas out like this don't depend on the quality of the drawing. And I think in some ways, even drawings that were

only understandable by the person who created them, those were as valuable as something that maybe is a little bit more artistic or that someone else would view to be aesthetically pleasing. So they don't have to look good. The main goal is just to engage that visual part of your brain because when it comes down to it, like we are visual creatures. That's why this is a useful tool is because we process so much of the world through our eyes. But when it comes to learning new things, exploring complex topics, oftentimes we kind of leave that visual processing power on the table. We're not making use of it. And to get to my backstory, it's from that kind of independent learner perspective, much like you, J.C., I noticed after my kind of true,

traditional schooling experience, I would continue reading nonfiction books that I was interested in, but I realized that like a week later, especially a month or two later, I might remember maybe the one big idea from the book I read, but I couldn't really pull out the details or the specific lessons that I learned, which made it harder to apply those ideas to my life. So like the impact of that experience of reading a book was limited to the the week or two that I was actually reading it. And that's probably a common experience. When you're in the midst of a good book,

it's easy to apply it to your life. Because you read about something in the morning and then maybe it related to some work you were doing in the afternoon. That's fairly seamless. But when you finish that experience of reading, how quickly the things fade is what was frustrating for me. And it took a TED talk that I watched, a little six-minute TED talk called Doodlers Unite,

given by Sonny Brown. who's done a lot of good work in the world of visual thinking education, which has got a book called The Doodle Revolution. But that TED Talk kind of introduced this idea of processing information visually by making marks and marks that don't need to be artistic. You can think of them as doodling. At that time, I was kind of looking for a little bit of like a side thing to pursue. I was on the career trajectory of becoming a high school teacher,

but didn't love how that was feeling. So I was substitute teaching at the time, but was kind of looking for something else, saw that video, kind of identified that as like a cool creative skill that I wanted to develop as someone who was not an artistic kid, not a doodler growing up, but I saw it as like a,

just a thing to add to my kind of creative and thinking toolkit that would support that goal I had identified of wanting to actually remember and apply what I was reading about in good books. So that was the spark for me, and I kind of ran with it, really enjoyed developing those skills, and then not too long after that, kind of started teaching them, merging my background in education with interest in this broad field of visual thinking.

And over the years have kind of slowly built out my own little online school, online community at verbal to visual. To this day, continue enjoying kind of exploring like the roots of this skill and all of the different things you can do with it. pretty fun space to be in. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm always so fascinated with synchronicity and how things unfold. So whenever I run into somebody, even like we have today, I'm always questioning and trying to make sense of out of the eight billion people, why us, you know? But in hearing your story, for me, it makes perfect sense that, you know, you started as a teacher and you had your own

frustrations about learning, but you probably also saw the limitations that were placed on your ability to teach others. What grade were you teaching? High school. Okay. Yeah. High school, math and physics. Did you have these skills then? And did you ever beta test them in there? Or is this something that came up later? Mostly later. There was a, there were kind of a few seeds planted in my education program when I got my master's in teaching, one of which was in education, there's this concept of a graphic organizer, which typically looks kind of like a mind map, much more diagram in form than any sort of kind of detailed drawing. But learning about graphic organizers and there was this tool, I think it was called

Inspiration, like a software tool that allowed you to build up mind maps. So kind of had bubbles and boxes and arrows and you could kind of type in your text and link them to other texts and you could do some little bits of kind of image formatting. And I remember kind of one of the books we read using that tool to kind of build out a mind map. I mean like, oh, that's cool. I appreciate this kind of visual mapping of the ideas, even before you get to drawing. And that's the thing that I appreciate about this,

is that you can do so much with just like words, short phrases, boxes, connecting lines. You can do a lot even before you get to the drawing of objects or people or anything like that. So the diagramming piece is kind of as interesting to me as the drawing pieces. is. So a few seeds there in the education background that kind of exploded once I learned a little bit more about the world. Well, I think what we've probably just done, and I know you've already thought of this, is just opened up the space for the logical idea of every fucking teacher in the world

taking this course. You know, I mean, it's just, it's just funny to see that we're on the outside of the education system, which has a lot of flaws in it, as we know. And it's not the teacher's fault, but I just think it would be super cool if teachers were armed with, even the basic skills from a $35 book, you know, or course that could arm them with the ability to help the, you know, future humans of the world learn better. So I'm kind of a geek on, I'm not, I don't feel like everything needs to be proven by science, but in, with my sense-making machine, whenever I start to indulge in something, I always do a little bit of research. And I've read a lot of articles on the science behind different learning skills.

I know that my friend Jim Quick has written a bunch of stuff. You know, that indicates that certain people have different preferences or have different learning capabilities that resonate with them. But I also have read some science that indicates that the human brain's capacity to learn is, I think, almost 75% visual. So have you dipped into that a little bit? the science behind it, the validity behind combining visual and verbal? Yeah, yeah, and there is some pretty good science there.

One of the first studies that comes to mind is some researchers wanted to compare the concept of learning styles. Like you might consider yourself to be a visual learner or an auditory learner or a kinesthetic learner. So they wanted to compare that concept of learning styles against this theory called dual coding. dual coding is the idea that our brain benefits from accessing and working with information in a combination of verbal and visual. That's the dual part of it, because the parts of your brain that are activated when using language are different from the parts of the brain that are accessed when you're processing

visuals. And the idea is that when you use both of those together, you're just creating more pathways, you're exploring more pathways and creating more connections in your brain. That's the idea of dual coding. And the way they tested it is they first kind of did a survey to determine what type of learning style someone considered themselves to be. So again, some people already considered themselves to be a visual learner. Others considered themselves to be more of an auditory or kind of verbal learner. And they created these experiences, these learning experiences, where both of those groups were encouraged to process new information,

either by engaging their visual brains. I think, I can't remember if it was just through kind of some mental imaging or also some markmaking, but engaging those visual processing powers versus just engaging their language skills. And what they found is that both groups, those who considered themselves to be visual learners, and those who considered themselves to be more auditory learners, both of them did better when they incorporated the visual learning. So that study, plus I think there have been a handful of others now, that have kind of debunked the concept of learning styles

in the sense of learning styles being the best way for you to learn. I think you can still have learning preferences, and you should pay attention to those, because the more you enjoy the type of learning activity you're engaging in, the more you're going to do it. But know that visual learning and visual processing has kind of been shown to be good for everyone, no matter what type of learner you think you are. So even if it feels harder or uncomfortable at first, the benefits are still there. So that's one study that I'll mention up front.

I don't know if you want to. But you brought something interesting up, just the whole concept of preferences and what we know about humans and what we can see about people's inability to learn and retain in this increasingly distracting world. What I find, you know, and I don't have any science to back this up right now, but I know that it's there, what I find is that whenever humans state what their preference is, it's typically leaning on the side of what's comfortable and easy as well. So I think it's always something worth looking under the hood. But what you just stated is sensical. It's just the idea of saying whether I am an auditory or a visual learner or kinesthetic, it just makes complete sense

to be able to deliver a message in two ways. Although, you know, you look at something like TED Talks where the only visual aid is you're watching the person speak, which has a visual connection to it, but you'll notice that they don't use a lot of PowerPoints and things like that. I think that Doug Neal could give a kick-ass TED Talk with the whole system. I've just envisioned this huge white wall behind you and, and you're doing your thing, with your famous hand. So what are some of the results?

I mean, I would assume that you're somebody that has your finger on the pulse of what's happened since you started teaching this, because there's two ends of it. Correct me if I'm wrong. There's the end of it where people are learning from verbal to visual aids, you know, from people like you, like I loved watching his video, and I'm going to put that in the notes. And then there's the other side about empowering and equipment. people to teach. So what are what are some of the cool results or testimonials that you've experienced? I would assume that you're getting some positive feedback about it. I mean, you've got a huge

following now. Yeah, it's fun to see it essentially be implemented and used in all sorts of different settings. And I mean, we've been talking about education. One of the, I think it might have been the second or third kind of course that I created was a resource for. teachers and I kind of had kind of middle school and high school settings in mind. I created a set of videos and kind of follow-up resources that would essentially, I was speaking to middle schoolers and high schoolers about these skills teaching them so that I could be almost like a little bit of a guest teacher teaching the visual note-taking skills and then kind of throwing it back to the main teacher to say like, okay, and here Doug just shared this little skill, we're going to apply

it to this video that we're about to watch or this chapter in a book that we're about to read. So hearing from teachers who are introducing these skills to their students and how a lot of students who are the ones who've been doodling in the margins, like engaging those students, getting them engaged in the classroom experience in a little bit of a deeper way than they were beforehand. That's super exciting in the realm of kind of like passing these skills on to the next generation. It's also fun to hear about folks that are using it at work or at a conference. They'll be there with their sketch note, just doing their own thing. And a very common story is people who are relatively new to this world and just trying it out and don't think their work is

very good. They'll be sketching something out. And a coworker or someone else will just happen to look over the shoulder and see the notes and be like, oh my God, those sketches are so cool. you captured that talk or this meeting in a really interesting way. Like, can I take a photo of it? Can you send it to us after the meeting? So the response that folks who maybe like take a course of mind and then start using it in different settings, the response that they get from other people, fun to hear about as well. I'm almost getting this feeling because when I do a lot of public speaking and very often

in front of the large crowds or even, you know, semi-large crowds, there'll be somebody doing sign language and interpreting what I'm saying in a visual aid. It's just interesting. I don't know if somebody would be so skilled at verbal to visual that they would be able to keep up with somebody in real time. It's an established thing. Yeah. It's called.

I mean, that's what. You're kidding me. So if people wanted to look up, graphic recording is probably the best term to look up for that. It's people who do. And I think TED Talks and TED conferences have been a prime example of this. You can hire visual artists like this. to come to an event, they'll throw up even bigger than this.

They'll throw up this, like, huge poster board, and they'll be there listening to the talk and sketching it out in real time. I'm a little bit more interested in its use of the personal learning tool, but, like, that profession exists is pretty cool, too. Well, I mean, the only reason I say it is it's becoming increasingly attractive on YouTube and things like that. I mean, it's becoming more and more prominent. and we live in a world where the number one challenge people are facing right now is money.

So it's always nice to know that somebody can learn this skill and not only level up their game, but maybe even start a career. But I didn't know that. That is really, really, really cool. Let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor. The Make Sense podcast is sponsored by the Make Sense Academy, co-created by both myself, Meeker, aka The Chicken, and The Dragon. the Make Sense Academy is a live interactive community

where like-minded, solution-focused, curious seekers of expansion gather daily in a mastermind setting with both Chicken and Dragon where they have access to premium content, online courses, and powerful collaboration and networking, all for $24 a month. The Make Sense Academy and its members are solely responsible for funding the Make Sense podcast. So feel free to reach out to us, at www.

www. rise up with dragon.com and check out the Make Sense Academy, risk-free, with a money-back guarantee. Now, back to the Make-Sense podcast. So let's talk about this process

because from the outside looking in, like I'm a decent drawer, and I was that kid that was always doodling because I just preferred to be busy doing that. And also a very, very big advocate of understanding that if I have some thoughts and ideas about something that I learned, writing them down myself, you know, taking them from my brain and putting them on paper is one of the ways. I guess that's a kinesthetic thing as well. It's just a way

that I learn better. But here I am, everybody comes from a different category. So I'm somebody that feels pretty confident that I can draw some cool stick figures and maybe a house in a book or something like that. But I know that a lot of people might be saying, oh, that that's not for me. So tell me a little bit about how your system works, because Doug has a book. book, and I believe you can get it in a digital form and a real book, but he's also got courses. So can you give us a little bit of a taste of how anybody can learn how to do this? Yeah, absolutely. And I kind of have been thinking about it in terms of kind of like a three-stage process that starts with kind of identifying a bit of your purpose for engaging in this

particular information. Because the first stage in this process is kind of, kind of of a stage of filtering, right? You're listening to a talk or reading a book and you have to decide of that information that's coming in, which of it is actually going to make it onto the page. And that's kind of the first stage of the active learning process versus passive learning. And I think that's another way to think of it too. Like are you in consumption mode, which is super easy for us to get into as we're watching videos or swipe and TikTok or whatever it is. Like the culture of consumption is super high right now. balancing that out with kind of a culture of creating something and not just consuming.

I feel is important and kind of why this could be a useful skill for folks to take on. But that active listening and active filtering is kind of the first stage. And for me, I often just use my own emotions to do that filtering. If my interest is piqued, if something sounds exciting or confusing, or if I disagree with something, like anytime you have an emotional reaction to one of the things you're reading or or listening to, then that's a good indicator. It's like, oh, there's something there. Let me jot that down. And even if it does start with something like, you know, bullet points, you don't have to go straight to drawing. And if you were kind of weren't a doodler growing up, if you're not comfortable

drawing things, I think that's the way to start is doing this chunking of what's coming in in the form of like short little bullet points. Or if you wanted, you could go with kind of like a mind map format where you just do short words or phrases, put a box around it, wait for the next interesting idea, do a little phrase or word, put a box around it. And as you go, you can kind of connect the ideas that are related because the discussion or the book might branch off in this direction first, come back to the key idea and then it's going to branch off in this other direction.

You can do a lot of that mapping with just words. boxes and lines. That kind of taps into your spatial reasoning skills. But then at some point, I would encourage the non-doodlers to start experimenting with drawing because that taps into what I consider to be a different type of visual processing than the kind of diagramming does. Because when you start to draw, even if you're drawing like a simple, an object that was part of a story that you're listening to or a little stick figure person doing something, that That puts you closer to the experience that you're capturing and learning about. I think it makes it a little more real and brings it to life more when you commit those visuals to the page instead of just the words.

So there's that kind of initial stage of like doing that chunking in the form of words and boxes or little doodles, little drawings. And then what you can choose to do also as like a second stage of the capturing process, that I find to be just as valuable as at first. Once you get to the end of the book or the end of the talk, you have some rough capture. Might include drawings. Maybe it's just some diagrams. I find it helpful to step back at that point

once the information flow has kind of stopped and just spend some time with those ideas reflecting a little bit on, okay, like, what's, I've got all these individual ideas, what's the best way that they fit together? Like how do they come together in a kind of cohesive puzzle that can maybe be the final takeaway for me from this experience? That's what I try to do with my visual book summaries after I've read and underlined and maybe done a little sketch for each chapter. I asked that question of like, okay, how would I bring this all together? What's one overarching diagram or one overarching drawing, like some sort of visual metaphor that might be a useful container?

for enough of these individual ideas to kind of connect into. And that's when you get to something real powerful, when you have a little bit of an overarching structure and then the individual ideas within it, that makes for a really dynamic visual artifact that you can take with you and reference whenever you want to revisit that information from the book or podcast or whatever it is. So that's a little bit of an overview.

I don't know how that tracked with you, JC, or if you've got follow-ups. Very, very helpful. And as somebody that's already kind of like perused through your book, I just want to share perhaps a visual that I can put in somebody's head. I mean, just imagine that you were explaining something that was broken up into four quadrants. That would be an easy thing for you to think about

because you could put a line that broke up in four quadrants if you were talking about steps one, two, three, four. So now all of a sudden you're saying, oh, I know how to draw numbers, right? But what you'll see when you get Doug's book is that I think one of the things that maybe people are lacking in that are not frequent doodlers is the ability, like you said, to take a concept and compartmentalize it with an image. So what's cool about your book is you give concepts and show an image that would represent

it. And that's a fascinating thing to gift somebody, the ability to communicate sentences or ideas with an image. So I just want to state that's probably the thing that I'm most excited about is when I read a fantastic book like digital minimalism, I'm learning these really cool concepts. But when I read your book,

I'm actually learning a new way of communicating. And it's a fascinating approach. Even though it's a book that has a lot of images in it, it's a book nonetheless. And the weird thing in it would be like, how would I doodle to explain Doug's book? You know, we don't have time for that conversation. That's complicated.

Yeah. Yeah. And I find valuable, even asking yourself the question, what would this idea look like? Right. What would this book look like? Even that simple prompt takes your brain to a place of synthesizing, of integrating the ideas in a different way than like even asking, oh, what are the key ideas or what are the key takeaways? those are useful questions too, but they live kind of more within that verbal space, but just asking yourself, what does it look like?

I love it. Yeah, I mean, just when you ask a question, your brain will think about the answer. And I think a lot of people have a lot more creative genius inside of them than they believe to be there. So that's a lot of fun of, I'm a big advocate of just, you know, let yourself go from the idea of doing something well and just do it. I have a couple more questions. one would be the thing that I'm fascinated with,

because I believe that's actually your hand that I'm seeing when you're doing the picture, right? Because sometimes you can see that there's like potentially an AI version of a hand or something like that. So your style that you're presenting with is unique. Are we just looking at a whiteboard or a piece of paper and your camera is facing down and is lit up? I mean, how are you creating that?

Because it looks better than the, you know, the glitchy hand. Yeah. Yeah, there are those kind of software tools out there that allow you to do that type of whiteboard animation video. But for me, yeah, I've always enjoyed the pen and paper. You know, I experiment with digital tools all the time. Like the iPad is a crazy tool. Once the Apple Pencil came out, that was like, whoa. That's what I was wondering. Are you using a marker or is an iPad? Mostly I use a marker. There's a few videos where it is kind of iPad generated, but 95% is pen and paper. And it's just like you said, I've got a camera, overhead camera pointing down on a desk where I've got poster paper and a marker.

And it is my hand. You see me drawing. I do it freehand. I draft it, right? I have an idea. I know almost exactly what I'm going to draw. And I kind of have that in front of me while I'm drawing. But I'm not tracing or anything.

And it's kind of fun. Sometimes little like mistakes will crop up. I draw a thing in a slightly different direction than when I drafted it, but it ends up being like a useful thing where it shows up. It just creates a new opportunity to do something a little bit different. Yeah, it's fun. And it's been interesting to experiment too, in some cases with just the overhead camera. You've seen my hand sketching out ideas.

And then I'll come back and I'll record the narration for that video later. That's kind of one style of video. The only thing you see is the top down. you can only see my hands sketching out ideas. Lately I've been experimenting more with like poster paper on a wall and a little bit of back and forth, like you see me kind of in this format if folks are watching the video version of this,

like drawing on the wall, talking to the camera, drawing a little bit more talking. So a little bit more like if you were in a classroom or a workshop or a conference environment with me, it has that kind of live feel to it. So that's another fun format as well. It just brings in a little bit more personality

or human touch to be able to kind of like walk around the ideas and point to things and talk through them as I'm also kind of sketching it out and going from a blank wall to kind of a full wall. So that's just another format that's been fun to experiment with. So much fun. So much fun to make learning fun. The thought process that's going through my head right now is I'm always thinking about what projects I have on the table. And I have this concept for like I think a lot of people are doing this, some sort of a three to five minute promo video that a lot of people in my world are going to see that's going to invite them to look at something that I do. And I'm just thinking, why wouldn't I just do it this way? I think the consumer today doesn't really care about

so much flashy stuff. They just want to know value and they want to make sense of things. and they want it to be quick, easy, and have the ability to say yes or no. But I think we live in a world that has gotten so flashy and fancy that it's almost made the consumer a little paralyzed. I feel like if I had somebody do this three to five minute video I'm looking to do just in this format, I think people would appreciate that and it probably would help me.

I mean, have you worked on any ideas like that? Yeah, I think this format. does have more of a, obviously a human touch to it. When you can see someone's real hand sketching things out or you see a real person sketching something out on the wall, it creates a little bit of a different type of connection than if you're looking at something that's, you know, designed in Canva or has all this pretty stock images or whatever. So it just kind of brings it back to basics in a way that I think is helpful. It's not uncommon for, you know, again, talking about professions and services that are out there,

there are some visual artists that maybe choose to specialize in that live event recording, or live event sketching of ideas during a conference or meeting or something. Others focus on the creation of videos. So they'll do these whiteboard sketches for a person or a company that wants to describe a new product or service efficiently in like two or three minutes. And you can get, that's a thing about visuals in general. You can, there's an efficiency in the communication style when you sketch things out because the viewer, I mean, can literally see what's being presented. They can see like, oh, this is the, this is who this product is for, like the situation that the person might be in if they want to sign up for this thing. and then here's the benefits, the results that they will get from it,

I can see more quickly whether or not this product or service is for me. So that's definitely a type of kind of visual presentation that's out there. Yeah, and I'm also thinking, what a great way to train. I do a lot of trainings for a lot of people. What a great way to train people. And, you know, I was kind of wondering, because as you were standing there showing us how you could actually be visual and show them the wall, I was also recognizing that that was cool, but I think what I love the most about the real time hearing and watching the creative process

unfold is there's this moment where I see your hand drawing something and I'm wondering what it's going to be. So my brain starts to hear the words, but say, I wonder what the visual looks like. So I don't know if it's as effective to allow visual learning to just be you pointing to something you already drew versus allowing the viewer to be involved in the creative process of wondering what's coming next. Does that resonate? Oh, for sure. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

And that's what, even if I'm on, in this case, you know, I have these finished visual summaries that I'm referencing, even though we're not really specifically talking about either of the. these books. But from the videos that I record in this format, the way it starts is just a completely blank sheet of poster paper. And you do, there's something satisfying for the viewer. When you get to see it go from a blank page, whether the person is on the screen or not, whether it's this format or just a hand, to see things go from a blank page to a fully sketched out page, it's just super satisfying because you get to, you know, wonder how the page is going to fill or what that specific thing is that the person is drawing, how it's going to kind of all connect together once it's full,

and then there's that satisfying moment when it is full, and you're at the end of it. It's almost like a built-in story arc, really, right? That you start with this blank canvas, and then there's the first thing that's going to be drawn on the page, but then there's kind of built-in many tensions around like, okay, what's going to come next, and what's the full page going to look like?

And you probably know as a viewer that, like, okay, once the page is full, we're probably getting to the end of the video. I wonder how they're going to wrap it up or what the takeaway is. So, you know, what's interesting, thinking of it in a presentation form is that it can, it can take that format of actually seeing someone with a hand making those marks as you go from a blank page to a full page. But if that felt too daunting, and it takes a certain amount of equipment to be able to record all that.

But if you're building out like a slide presentation, you can still do something similar. You can still start with a blank slide and then bring one element in at a time as you build up to a certain diagram or drawing as you're kind of speaking through those ideas. So in the same way that people can start with diagrams and work their way up to drawings. From a presentation format, you can also start with something a little bit more staged and work your way. up to maybe doing something a little bit more live drawing style. So I like that there are various entry points, depending on your comfort level with these skills or different presentation styles or the equipment that you happen to have on hand. So what's the easiest way?

I just think it makes sense to the extent where somebody would say, why wouldn't I want to learn this? I mean, it's such a easy process to work on this basic skill set with Doug. So how would you recommend? I mean, obviously, we're going to share links to you and stuff. But just while people are listening and watching, what's the easiest way to get started with something like this? Yeah. It might sound overly cliche or simple, but like literally just try it.

Give yourself a blank sheet of paper, you know, instead of using, who knows what you're using to take notes or capture ideas right now, but like even if it's just a blank sheet of printer paper, right? Give yourself a blank page to work with. And then as you're, I think listening to podcasts is a great practice tool, especially one that's kind of more conversational like this. It's common. People like to go straight to like sketch noting a TED talk. But TED talks are so dense because people like, you're trying to convey your life's

work in 10 minutes or 12 minutes. find a conversational podcast. Go pick another of your episodes here of Make Sense. Like pull that one up, start listening, and then with this blank sheet of paper in front of you, start capturing not complete sentences, engage in that filtering, capture words and short phrases,

put a box around it, and build up either like a mind map style of diagram where you're just connecting related ideas, or if you're already comfortable drawn, do little, create little doodles connected to each of those ideas as you're listening. And, you know, when you get to the episode, to the end of the episode, look back at that sheet and do some reflecting on, see if it makes sense to you. And see if there are maybe a few of those ideas. Like, oh, you see how maybe you pull out three of the most impactful ideas and think about another, maybe more.

comprehensive sketch or, you know, identify that overarching structure that may be helpful. Like what's a, if you had to represent that episode in a single diagram or a single drawing, like what would it be and why? So that's what I would suggest for folks who want to give it a go. All right. So I'm going to put you on the spot right here as we close out. And I'm just going to, I'm going to ask you a question that's going to look to pull out of your creative mind as somebody that draws pictures all the time. And I want you to to try to think outside the box because I know I know the first that pops into somebody's mind. If you were to draw one picture that would indicate the process and concept of making sense

of things, what would it be? I know you're thinking light bulb. It wouldn't be light bulb. Because you do, like I use that a lot early on, but then eventually you get bored of it. me like, okay, this is a little cliche. I would picture a stick figure, and I would probably do like a big thought bubble above the stick figure with kind of an abstract diagram, something like an abstract mind map or flow chart, like a little schematic type thing in that thought bubble.

And then I would also have like some sort of an input, right? Because if you're making sense, you're making sense of something. There's clarity. And with just the prompt to make sense, you don't really know what that input is. So I would maybe, you know, draw a book or a little phone with headphones of someone listening to a podcast. So there's this like the input that's that's leading to this making sense output of a little like schematic diagramming, schematic diagram that someone is picturing. And then maybe the stick figure going like this indicating that it is,

is at ease with it or something. I love that. I'm good with that, yeah. Yeah. Awesome. I love this whole process. And, you know, thank you so much for taking the time to be here. It's just a no-brainer for anybody that is interested in learning and interesting.

I mean, first of all, go check out Doug's, you know, his book is just a simple, simple thing to get you moving. He's got online courses that teach you this skill set, which will help you with the presenting. and teaching and all of that stuff. But more importantly than all of that, go get the piece of printer paper out and play and play and not worry so much about doing it right. You know, when you watch somebody like Doug do this, it's like watching me on stage speaking.

You know, it's something that I've been doing for a long, long time. And you do anything for a long, long time without the fear of failure, you will be touted as a professional one day and wonder how you, accomplish that. So, Doug, thanks so much for being on the Make Sense podcast. And what I can say wholeheartedly is that the concept of visual and verbal learning makes complete sense. Thank you so much. That's awesome to hear, JC. Thank you. Good luck as you continue experimenting with

all this stuff too. Thanks so much. I'll give you feedback once I'm entrenched in the book. Please do. And who knows, maybe maybe the video that everybody is about to watch to find out about our new project will be from Doug Neal. Who knows? Hey, have a wonderful day, guys. Thanks so much for being with us. Makes sense.