I’ve been drawing since I was a kid. I loved sketching cartoons and characters like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Batman, and, of course, Star Trek. I didn’t just draw the characters. I drew elaborate sets on large pieces of cardstock and acted out my own adventures for these characters. More than just drawing, I was creating stories.

A funny thing happened on the way to high school … As I grew up, I sort of grew out of drawing. My creative focus shifted to theater, and the social energy of performing arts soon eclipsed the solitude of pen and paper. At first, I didn’t miss it.

Work is a serious business. The early days of one’s career are often spent trying to prove that you belong there. You start by dressing the part and following up with big words—all to credential yourself. That was me. All work and no play was on its way to making Nick a dull boy …

Making ideas instantly visible. Early in my consulting work, I often jumped up to sketch strategy discussions—buildings for companies, smiley faces for customers, hearts and clouds for emotions, all connected with arrows. A client once asked me to turn these into a strategy sketchbook. Inspired by Dan Roam’s Back of the Napkin, I created something that made their strategy instantly visible. Years later, I interviewed Dan on my podcast where he said: “Hand-drawn pictures make people smile, and smiling people think better.”

[INSERT PROFESSOR LECTURE HERE] A picture is worth a thousand words—and science backs that up. Like stories, visuals make information more memorable. But not just text-heavy slides—real images. Our brains code words once, but pairing them with visuals reinforces the message. Plus, visuals appeal to diverse learning styles, making ideas more universally engaging.

“How is your book different from everyone else’s?” That’s a big question publishers ask. When pitching my first book, Get Scrappy, I blurted out that it would feature hand-drawn illustrations. They loved the idea—meaning I had to actually start drawing again. Inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s whimsical illustrations in Breakfast of Champions, I grabbed a Sharpie and got to work. By the time Brand Now came out, I had doubled down on illustrations. But outside of my books, drawing still wasn’t part of my daily life.

Some people baked sourdough bread during the pandemic. I drew. It started when my young son and I became obsessed with Mo Willems’ YouTube series Lunch Doodles. Hooked on daily drawing, I decided to illustrate all my core presentations for speaking engagements. It was an ambitious goal—I finished but ended up with tennis elbow in the process.

Back to school, back to sketching. After a year of virtual school, our son finally returned to in-person learning. It felt like the first day of school all over again. To mark the moment, I packed his lunch and doodled a little picture on a Post-It note with one of my Sharpies. I haven’t missed a day since. As you can see below, I also make sketching a part of my work as often as possible.