Doodle Diagrams; For Learning, Programming, and Tactical Office Shenanigans

A long-doodle-diagram is just dozens and dozens of doodles, all drawn from unique and incompatible perspectives with colorful markers.

The smaller and more detailed your work, the more it will look like art, I personally termed it Content Art as that is the focus of a page.

If you were to take two well rested programmers, and made one stare blankly, and gave the other a pretty drawing notebook with micro tip markers.

It would be cruel, it would be no match.

The person staring blankly into infinity, could only dip into ideas they previously explored or navigated.

The notebook and colorful markers person, would quickly turn the pages, into something that would look like the incomprehensible scribblings of a mad scientist.

Every doodle or scribble represents the solution to a confusing thought, but it is a temporary stepping stone as they make their way forward.

In mere days, entire journals will only hold the final inventions, only the conclusions will be clear.

The colorful pathway leading up to them, will lose almost all meaning, and simply become curious content art.

Don’t just use a pencil, and never, ever, ever, use a marker board, because there all your content and thought art ends.

Doodle Diagrams are the wild wild west of diagramming, they are lovely and beautiful, and always a work of inspired genius.

Mind Maps and Concept Maps by contrast, are very strict, very confining.

Mind Maps are an especially powerful tool, but before you have your categories and structure, you need doodle diagrams.

One magnificent use is for learning programming, and I recommend JavaScript and Svelte.

To give an example from real life, I am considering programming a tiny LMMS clone.

Which is an open Source Program for music composition, I am especially interested in the Song Editor.

It looks like a grid, but it is a number of track that go from lest to right, and can accept a horizontally resizable draggable rectangle.

These rectangles mark an area on the track, where some beat pattern, or melody is to be played.

It is a timeline, of audio events.

But when you look at the LMMS screenshot it looks confusing and scary, intimidating and hard to program.

With the help of doodle diagrams I broke it down to just two things, the time track, and the rectangle.

This is a wonderful project for learning Web Audio, and especially Svelte and JavaScript.

Finally, as with all beautiful ideas, inner peace, serenity are a must, if you are stressed out and overworked, always forced to move faster.

It won’t work, your thoughts will be too scattered.

But there is something, if you are overworked, fell used, or mistreated, if you are always stressing out.

Use the incomprehensible art of doodle diagramming, to make your way towards your own company, however tiny.

A healthy person would never inflict stress on someone, when stress makes its way into your work, assume that it is being used to control you.

Simply gather up all the markers you want, find a stack of notebooks, and begin crafting your way out of your job, towards something that is worthy of you.

Preferably a series of independent side projects, that will help you get a startup going much sooner.

We are each a brilliant creator, each a genius inventor, but we face ineffective education so unintegrated, that even doodle diagrams can’t make sense of it.

Fake education does not grant you ideas that you can string together, into a useful coherent hole, that will make positive impact on your life.

If your education does not make sense, begin searching the internet for JavaScript programming tutorials.

And if your employer ever mistreats you, stop diagramming their programs, and start diagramming your own companies.

And as you quit, consider leaving them, a little... doodle.