Impact vs Effort, The Leitner System, & Essentialism

Issue #8 of Simply Sketched

When should you stop sketchnoting? That’s a question that came from a community member inside of Verbal to Visual a while back, and in this new video I try to address it by sketching out a graph of impact vs effort:

Drawing that curve for any type of activity that you engage in regularly could be a helpful way for you to see what matters most in your overall process, and help you identify when to stop working and move on to something else.

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I’m continuing to read and sketchnote the book Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. One of the learning techniques described in the book is the simple act of spacing out your practice sessions (often referred to as spaced retrieval or spaced repetition), so that you actually forget a little bit in between those sessions and your brain has to work harder to retrieve what it needs, which strengthens your long-term memory.

That’s where the Lietner system comes in, where you use index cards and a set of boxes to track that spaced practice, with newer knowledge or skills practiced more frequently in the first box, but after successful retrieval they move up to the boxes that are practiced less frequently.

For a good breakdown of this topic, check out this video from Thomas Frank: The Most Powerful Way to Remember What You Study. That video echoes a lot of what I’m reading about in Make It Stick.

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In a new essay published this week, I look back on my visual summary of the book Essentialism to identify what still resonates with me today so that I can continue down the path of the disciplined pursuit of less.

I highlight one big idea from each of the three sections of the book, and share how I’m applying it to my life right now.

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Inside of Verbal to Visual we’re continuing our live run-through of the course Digital Sketchnoting. On Wednesday we chatted about how you can make use of the layers feature that many sketching apps provide, and next week we’ll be exploring how to effectively use the ability to zoom in and out within your sketchnoting process, without wasting too much time and effort there.

If you’d to join us for that live event and also tap into our full library of sketchnoting courses, then come join us inside of Verbal to Visual!

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Good luck as you continue building your visual thinking skills and applying those skills to work that you care about.

Cheers,

-Doug