Sketch Your Mind
Turning Notes into a Playground of Ideas
Abstract
Discover how Hybrid Notes, where sketches and text meet, make knowledge more memorable, connected, and actionable.
In this opening session, Zsolt will set the stage for a conference built on curiosity, creativity, and connection. He'll introduce the core ideas from his book Sketch Your Mind and show how Hybrid Notes combine sketches, text, and spatial layouts into a living system of ideas. You don't need to be able to draw, Hybrid Notes work just as well for text-first thinkers as they do for visual-first ones. By “LEGO-izing” your notes, you can move beyond linear thinking, spark new connections, and turn your knowledge into something you can play with, share, and grow.
Key takeaways:
- Why visual thinking is for everyone, not just people who draw
- How to build Hybrid Notes that are both memorable and connected
- How play transforms note-taking into creative, collaborative thinking
Speaker Bio
Zsolt Viczián
Visual thinker, developer, and author of Sketch Your Mind: Nurture a Playful and Creative Brain. He is the creator of the popular Excalidraw plugin for Obsidian and host of the Visual Thinking Workshop. With a background in engineering, IT, and knowledge systems, Zsolt has spent over 25 years exploring how visuals, space, and structure can transform the way we think, learn, and create.
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Session Summary
Zsolt Viczián's presentation outlines a manifesto for a new paradigm in personal knowledge management (PKM), advocating for the integration of text and visuals as equal partners in a concept he terms “4D thinking.” The core idea is to move beyond text-centric note-taking systems by leveraging the brain's capacity for spatial and visual recognition, making thinking more creative, playful, and deeply understood.
The Foundation: The Conflict and Resolution
Viczián starts by framing the core conflict between two established truths: “writing is thinking” (where a poorly written sentence is a poorly conceived idea) and “a picture is worth a thousand words” (images offer compression of meaning and a higher effective information bitrate). The resolution lies in William Saroyan’s observation: a picture is only worth a thousand words if you say or think those dozen words. The goal, therefore, is to achieve the “holy grail” of connecting words and visuals to create profound, actionable meaning.
This pursuit is driven by the speaker's self-described “productivity heretic” philosophy, which champions passion, play, and flow states over strenuous, target-driven effort.
The Paradigm Shift: From 3D to 4D Thinking
- 1D Thinking: Individual, disconnected, linear text notes (e.g., Post-it notes).
- 2D Thinking: Notes organized into notebooks or folders, allowing simple flipping, but still primarily linear.
- 3D Thinking (PKM): Linked text notes, epitomized by systems like Zettelkasten or Obsidian. While highly effective, this structure only engages half the brain, leaving out visual thinking, pattern recognition, and spatial awareness.
- 4D Thinking (The Goal): Interconnected, linked visual nodes that are non-linear but supported by textual information. This system seeks to fully activate both textual and visual cognitive processes.
Key Insight 1: The LEGO Approach and the Ripple Effect
The mechanism for 4D thinking is the LEGO approach, where individual components of illustrations are treated as atomic, interchangeable building blocks.
- Atomic Components: Simple icons are combined to create concept visuals, which, in turn, build into larger structures.
- Play and Flow: The ability to rearrange and reconfigure these “LEGO blocks” introduces a level of playfulness that facilitates the creative flow state.
- The Power of Constraints: Like actual LEGO bricks, the system benefits from self-imposed constraints: standardized sizes (for guaranteed compatibility), a standardized color palette (for visual consistency), and the “card” or index-card size (a forcing function to focus attention).
The most powerful technical insight demonstrated is the Ripple Effect. If a base illustration or icon (a LEGO block) is updated (e.g., a change in color or design), that change automatically ripples upstream to update every single larger visual note or diagram where the block is used. This systemic consistency ensures that the knowledge base remains integrated and current without manual rework.
Key Insight 2: The Front and Back Approach (Hybrid Notes)
To achieve the “holy grail” of integrating text and visuals, Viczián proposes the Postcard Metaphor, leading to the creation of hybrid notes:
- The Front: The visual image or sketch, offering immediate holistic comprehension and spatial awareness.
- The Back: The corresponding textual content, which can include detailed thoughts, links, references, talking points, or supporting arguments.
This pairing ensures that the visual structure and the depth of written thought are contained within a single note, allowing for both the holistic, non-linear view and the linear, deep dive.
Practical Application and Organization
For organizing and retrieving these 4D notes, the speaker uses a system based on Richard Saul Wurman’s LATCH framework (Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, Hierarchy). This involves applying multiple “hooks”—tags, dates, strict file naming, and category structures—to each note, maximizing the ability to navigate and find information based on different contexts.
Ultimately, the presentation advocates for a fundamental shift: seeing visuals not as mere illustrative tools, but as the primary structuring system for knowledge, leading to deeper understanding and unlocking greater creative potential by intentionally fusing visual and textual thought.
Play is the highest form of research
On the surface this means that research requires playfulness, the ability to take imaginative solutions seriously, but in reality, this is about the misguided nature of an obsession with productivity. When you are playing the question is never if you have achieved enough, but if you are continuing to have fun.
I make the assumption that when Einstein used the word “play” he was thinking of the infinite game which has the purpose to continue the game as defined by James P. Carse, and not the finite game which has the purpose of winning, of beating the opponent. In this regard, play is the highest form of research also resonates with the idea that true research should not be competitive, but rather collaborative, where ideas are not safeguarded from others by patents and secrecy, but where ideas are shared for mutual exploration.
How does playful research look like?
- It goes off on unexpected tangents following interest, not so much a predetermined path
- It measures the effectiveness of research not on the output, but on the joy it brings
- It is fueled by imagination, it treats every idea plausible, and the more unexpected or unconventional an idea is, the more it is drawn to it to explore
- It induces flow. It is an activity you lose your sense of time in.
- Play is free flowing, boundless
- Apart from the odd examples, play is an inherently social activity. It involves others who participate in the game.
- Play follows rules, but true play will bend the rules if it leads to a more joyful outcome (similar to Carse's idea of modifying the rules in order to keep playing)
Maybe a paraphrase of this quote is also true. Play is the highest form of craft... and maybe the highest form of craft is research at the same time. As a craftsman will always push the boundaries, to explore new, different, better ways of achieving their goals.
For me, play is relaxing. Play does not tick off items from a to-do list. Play is not concerned with results, at least not first and foremost. Play could be measured by the freedom and stress reduction, not by the output, however, I believe that play is the only “work” that can be done with freshness, enthusiasm for an extended period of time.
Play is how children experiment with the world. It is how they experience different situations, by imagining they are adults, they are doctors, they are shop owners, etc.
Interestingly true, deep play often does not require anything else, just imagination. Play is not dependent on the expensive tools or research grants, startup funding you get, but on your time, energy and most of all motivation to explore.