Building your own panel of advisors is a simple technique to expand your perspectives and guide yourself through tough decisions. Think of people whose judgement and values you respect, add them to your mental panel, and when faced with a dilemma, ask, "What would you do?"

While a real panel of advisors is invaluable, an imaginary panel has advantages: it's not limited to people you can call, and it requires no one else's time.

Your panel can include your mum, Uncle Jim, your best friend, or your high school science teacher. But why stop there? You could invite Taylor Swift, Marcus Aurelius, Eleanor Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, or the Buddha—famous figures whose qualities and wisdom inspire you.

Diversity is key to your panel's success, as it brings a broader range of perspectives. Uncle Jim would likely approach a problem very differently from the Buddha, and you can access both viewpoints simply by considering how each might respond.

It's curious how we can get more diverse perspectives by ourselves simply by adopting the view or mindset of someone else (as we understand them). In this way, it's rather like De Bono's 6 Thinking Hats technique. And it reminds me of my favourite research results where people generated more ideas when prompted to ideate as if they were a creative person.

Benjamin Franklin regularly sought to emulate his role models, as in his 13th virtue: "Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates." Similarly, Napoleon Hill described meeting with "Invisible Counselors" in Think and Grow Rich to gain insights from imagined mentors. I can't remember where I first came across this strategy but I love to put it into action.

Related Ideas to Building Your Own Panel of Advisors

Build Your Panel of Advisors to Ask for Advice

Eat the Frog is a memorable, if rather gross, metaphor that means choosing the most important thing you must do today and doing that first.

It derives from a variant of a quote that Mark Twain never said, "If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first."

Another way to think about it is that if you first Eat the Frog, everything else will be easier for the rest of the day. And won't that feel nice?

The Eat the Frog time management technique was popularised in Brian Tracy's productivity book Eat That Frog! Get More of the Important Things Done - Today!

Many tools in Tracy's book are based on the general premise that there will always be more to do than you can do. So, find the things that will have the most impact and do those first. The others will drift on by.

I once saw someone ask for advice on getting motivated to clean the house. One person answered: "Write a book."

Sometimes, our most significant and impactful goals are those on which we so readily procrastinate. Often, these will be in the important, not urgent, bucket.

You have a lot of things that need to be done or that you want to do

One of the nice things about eating the frog first thing is that getting it done feels really good. It helps build momentum for the rest of the day with a nice endorphin rush of ticking off something significant.

Decide on your Most Important Task (MIT) to tackle, ideally the night before. If it's too big and you can't finish it in one sitting, divide it into manageable chunks. Then start on the first chunk and leave everything else.

And sometimes the hardest thing to do is to start. So consider doing just 5 minutes. Once you've started, very often, keeping going becomes easy.

Questions that come up regularly in Tracy's book "Eat That Frog", including that for the Eating the Frog principle, are variations of:

What is the most important thing you could be doing?

If you weren't already doing this, would you start doing this?

What skills will take you furthest in your career?

What are you able to do best that others can't?

It all looks pretty straightforward when I read questions like these. But I have found that answering them is usually much harder.

Our goals are often interrelated. For example, earning more may require you to increase your skills first. And getting clear on what your most important goals are first is a prerequisite and also not always straightforward.

Then, what activities are the most important or will have the most impact can be unclear. And, sometimes, small actions such as an unexpected event or connection may have out-sized benefits. Or neglecting a seemingly minor task could lead to losing a significant client. But does it still make sense to try to work on the most important task first thing in the morning? Yes.

Like a child leaving a brussell sprout at the side of the plate to get cold while they eat the roast, it's easy to leave our most impactful and daunting tasks until after the easier stuff is done. But it doesn't usually help to wait.

As the saying goes, if you have to eat a live frog, it doesn't pay to look at it for long.

Face it, you'll never get caught up, so perhaps think about Oliver Burkeman's Rivers not Buckets

Don't make important decisions on an empty stomach

Eat the Frog is a fantastic example of putting the principles of making your idea Sticky into action

Another quote "from" Mark Twain appears in Big Ideas Little Pictures: "Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment."

The always excellent Quote Investigator describes the source of the Eat the Frog family of quotes from the French writer Nicolas Chamfort, who said, more or less, that eating a toad first thing would help steel you against the rest of the day as nothing worse will happen to you.

Eat the frog

If you're a parent or buy presents for kids, perhaps Christmas brings mixed feelings. While we love spending time with family, playing together, and taking a break, Christmas gift-giving easily brings some stress and anxiety (one of the reasons that Thanksgiving is so good).

This list from Pragmatic Parent is a potential antidote to the consumerism that can overtake at Christmas. The idea is to give one gift to each child in five categories: Want, Read, Wear, Need, and Do.

No one wants a Dudley Dursley on his birthday, "Thirty-six. That's two less than last year!"

But at the same time, as a parent, you may have nostalgia for your Christmas or holidays as a child and want to create the same for your children.

Paul Graham wrote in an essay Life is Short:

"Having kids showed me how to convert a continuous quantity, time, into discrete quantities. You only get 52 weekends with your 2-year-old. If Christmas-as-magic lasts from, say, ages 3 to 10, you only get to watch your child experience it 8 times. And while it's impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something."

So, while, as parents, you may be working to make it memorable, at the same time, some things can easily get out of kilter. Here are some thoughts that cross our minds:

It's easy to think that we're buying more and bigger gifts each year. And we want to ensure this year's presents are as good as last year's to avoid disappointment. It's easy to look at a pile of assembled presents and think, "We never had this much as kids!". And sometimes, the big ticket item we bought at great expense didn't provide nearly as much joy as racing around the house with family at Christmas. We wonder if it was really needed after all.

It's easy for Christmas gift-giving to seem out of control.

The 5 Gift Guide: Want, Read, Wear, Need, Do

Years ago, I learned about this list from Corinne at Pragmatic Parent, which tries to redress some of the balance at Christmas—keeping Christmas wonder while also keeping it sane.

The idea is to get one gift in each of the 5 categories: Want, Read, Wear, Need, Do.

Something I want can still be the classic Christmas big ticket item that you dream about getting as a kid. This could be a big toy, Lego set, video game, or new bike...

Something I need could support a hobby, some sports equipment, a musical instrument, maybe headphones. Or it could be something they need for school—a smart set of pens or pencils or pencil case, perhaps.

Something to wear is an opportunity to get something that makes them feel good daily.

Something to read might be a book, magazine, comic, or subscription.

Something to do could be a game, tickets to a film, a day out or visiting somewhere new.

In a later iteration of the list, Corinne added a 6th item, "Something for my family", for an activity everyone can do together.

The 5-Gift Rule for Christmas is a potential way to reduce some of the consumerism associated with Christmas and adopt a more minimalist approach.

It promotes useful gifts that won't gather dust after the excitement of the holidays has passed.

It encourages gratitude for what we receive and minimises pining for what we don't.

It also suggests gifts that create experiences for the receiver and the family—one of the best ways to spend our money.

Full disclosure: Though we think about the list, we've yet to adopt it wholesale. But it's a handy framework for considering different types of gifts that your children may value. It reminds us to focus on more meaningful and thoughtful gifts and experiences with less accompanying stuff.

If money doesn't make you happy, you're not spending it right

The 5 Gift Guide for Christmas

This post is sketch 900 of Sketchplanations, according to my numbering. To mark that, I've been reflecting and wanted to share what I've learned from over a decade of this project.

It's my longest post, but I created a version you can listen to, or even watch 🙈, if you prefer. And if you don't want to listen, watch or read a long article, I hope you can just enjoy the sketch of Brenda Ueland's lovely wisdom.

Listen/watch reflections on a decade of Sketchplanations on YouTube

After the first year of one-a-day, I've done one sketch a week, 52 a year, for over a decade without missing. I've tried to stick to James Clear's "Never miss twice" rule by first not missing once.

With a few years of experience in creating and sharing under my belt, I wanted to share some thoughts about this project, about sharing your work, and about creative freedom.

I watched a talk by Jack Conte a few weeks ago. Jack is the founder of Patreon but was first—and still is—a passionate, talented musician full of energy and drive. The whole talk is interesting—he called it the Death of the Follower. But what drove me to create this was some of what he said towards the end, kind of his "advice to creatives."

I want to talk about two things: The why and what of creating, and second, what sort of project a creative project should be.

I've been lucky in so many ways with this project:

It was accidental, so I wasn't staking my future or my ego on it.

It was a side project—until this year—so I wasn't staking my paycheck and whether we could pay the mortgage and support our family on it.

And I stumbled on a simple formula that's given me great permission, licence, and scope to explore everything that interests me.

Without getting too grandiose about it, my conjured up tag line of "explaining the world one sketch at a time" is a huge mission, one that never really ends. But it also allows me to cover whatever aspects of our fascinating world that I want, in the way that I want.

Cartoonists also have a tremendous scope to create, but they usually have to make people laugh. Fortunately for me, I don't have to do that each time. I can cover serious things, or sensitive things, or fun things, or complex things in whichever way I want.

I'm also lucky that my drawings don't have to be good. Sometimes, I look back on older ones and cringe, but usually, I don't cringe at what I'm sharing, only my drawing of it.

Just a year or so into this project, when I complained to a good friend about not being the best artist, he simply replied, "Yes, but it's the content." It really stuck with me, and it's grown on me over time. The drawings may not be as slick as other artists. Still, the content and topics I tackle are hopefully valuable, or at least interesting, in themselves. So people, I think, forgive me when I don't get it quite right and it's a bit cheesy, or my people are a bit janky.

Part of the luck in my formula is that it's become a unique collection in style and approach. The more I've created, the more unique it becomes.

I am regularly asked how I choose and find topics to include. I only recently found the answer that really nails it.

On my website, I've joked, "Sooner or later, everything I know will be on Sketchplanations." And in some ways, that's true—at least for the useful stuff I know.

At first, sketches were a combination of serendipity in what happened to me that was interesting this week and a process of trawling through my experience and memory for the things I've found interesting and helpful over the years. And they were also what I found myself using or thinking about regularly.

Over the years, I've trained myself constantly to be on the lookout for topics. Sometimes I see, or read, or remember something that I instantly know I'll sketch at some point. I add it to my list, and those that I'm excited about and have the clearest view on are those I tackle the next week.

But that doesn't really address the question of what makes it into the list and what doesn't. What ties these together? The answer I found most profoundly hit when I read a wonderfully opinionated book, "If you Want to Write," by Brenda Ueland. Brenda says: 

And what is the purpose of existence… but to discover truth and beauty and…share it with others.

And it was suddenly clear to me. What makes it into the list is when I've found something that to me was a truth, an insight, an aha, a new piece of knowledge, something beautiful or fascinating that I realised. I had to feel I'd discovered something. Sketchplanations has given me the wonderful vehicle to act on the impulse to share it with so many others.

I usually consider myself knowledgeable about most sketches but an expert in few. But like the age-old realisation that the teacher learns more than the students, I can tell you that there's nothing like spending a day or more a week diving into a topic, thinking how to visualise it, spending several hours sketching it and then writing about it to cement them in my own brain. I'm no doubt the one who's benefited the most from this project.

It's not too long in a conversation with me before I might struggle not to interrupt with a "There's a sketch for that."

And this diverse collection of 900 sketches therefore, in many ways, reflects everything I find interesting and helpful or beautiful in the world, and so is a reflection of me. In that sense it's really rather personal.

Which brings me to the second aspect of what I want to share here.

I'm very lucky that many people provide suggestions for sketches they'd like to see. I've worked in design and user experience for many years. Having direct feedback of what your audience would like to see is extremely valuable. I've tackled some of them, but too few.

I find that I'm not a very good judge of sketches that will turn out to be popular—at least in the short run.

I send out new sketches each week in my newsletter. It's funny that even though I send out 10s of 1,000s of emails each month there's relatively little feedback of what people think about each new sketch.

I started posting sketches on social channels many years ago to allow more people to discover them and make it easier for people to share them.

And I post sketches on my website, so that people can find them in the future and get the answers they want when they're searching for something or looking for something to use in their own projects.

Posting on social media is interesting as, with likes, comments, shares and follower numbers I seemed to have much more feedback about whether what I did was interesting to people or not. Certainly as compared to the newsletter where there's no lightweight, low commitment way, save writing me a direct email, to let me know if it was helpful. I love receiving them by the way.

Once you start getting feedback on what seems to be popular however, you have a double-edged sword. For example, what if there's some truth or beauty that I want to share that is unlikely to be popular? Or what if there are things that will be popular that I don't find to be a truth or beauty that speaks to me or makes me want to share it.

If I was a business I think the answer is fairly clear—you create the content that your audience wants to see so people come to your site and buy your wares.

But what if a project reflects you personally? And what if it's an amateur project, created for the love of it rather than the $ of it?

I have tackled some sketches of topics that people asked for and that sometimes people have paid me for. What I found is that very quickly it begins to feel like a job. It's fine to do, but they're not always something that excites me.

For me, who fortunately for so long wasn't depending on it for my primary income, I found it very quickly took the joy out of the task. Why would I use my spare time—and often time from my family—to execute something that I wasn't excited about and didn't find joy in and didn't find a little spark or fire in sharing with others?

Don't get me wrong. Reaching more people with my work is great. I came round to marketing when I kept hearing "Wow, I just discovered your site. I love it!" 7 years after I'd been working on it. These people could have been following from the beginning if I'd just reached them earlier.

That was part of the impetus to create a physical book and hopefully reach a new set of people in a different way. This same feeling also drives me to work on making the website better—as the saying goes: "Business without marketing is like winking at a girl in the dark." What's the point of having good content if people can't find it? It seems a shame.

Well, one way I could reach more people, I think of, as "feeding the machine."

What I should do is find topics that have high search volume, topics that are topical or current, topics that draw a lot of engagement, topics that may be easy to grasp or share with others, and I should and do those. I should check search queries, watch what others are doing, and look for the content I post that creates the most interactions and create more content to match.

Simple messages without nuance or complexity are easy to share and take in and hit repost. But I can't bring myself to do it.

The things I keep wanting to share are my version of what Brenda called the "purpose of existence"—discovering truth and beauty and sharing it with others.

So I've resisted too much of feeding the machine. I'm sure it's cost me. I'm sure there are a million ways I could grow my followers faster, get more subscribers, get more content engagement, exploit new channels, write traffic heavy content. But I don't want to do those if it means I can't share the truths and beauty that I find valuable.

So, at sketch 900, I'm sharing these reflections as the struggles of a creator trying to understand the point and value of their project.

And to say that I plan to keep this project idiosyncratic, unexpected, and personal. Or, in some ways, a reflection of me. This will at least keep it unique.

I know that you won't find it all speaks to you—you're not me after all. But for the times when I do get it right, when you can see the truth or beauty that I'm trying to share, even if it's just you and me who appreciate it, I hope that will keep it worth it.

Jack Conte talks passionately and knowledgeably about the importance of building deep connections with small numbers of true fans. He built Patreon, through which I've benefited so much. And a deep personal thank you to everyone who is now supporting and has supported me in the past. And I've decided I'd rather, slowly, create a deeper, more personal connection with the people, perhaps like you, who have enjoyed my project, by sharing the truth or beauty that I want to share than to feed the machine and create what the machine says is needed.

Selfishly, I hope that this will also keep it interesting for me even if it may not do the rounds of the internet as well.

Thanks everyone who's visited, enjoyed, talked about, listened to the podcast or shared my work over the years. So many of you have been generous in sharing and singing the praises of this little project.

There is of course still so much more to explain about this world. Maybe 900 is a lot of topics sketched—or maybe, I'm just getting started.

Thanks for being part of the journey. See you at 1,000.

If you made it this far, it'd be amazing if you considered helping to get to 1,000 by supporting me at any amount on Patreon 🙏

Discovering Truth and Beauty and Sharing it with others

Naismith's Rule provides a quick estimate for hiking time in the mountains, intended for "easy expeditions." It suggests:

+1 hour for every 2,000 ft (600m) of ascent

For example, suppose your hike covers 6 miles with 2,000 ft of ascent. In that case, Naismith's Rule suggests allowing 3 hours total—2 hours for distance and 1 hour for elevation.

(Here's a metric sketch of Naismith's Rule)

William Naismith was a Scottish Mountaineer born in 1856. He spent years trekking in the Highlands and was, to be fair, probably made of nails. In the Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal in 1893, he wrote:

"...a simple formula, that may be found useful in estimating what time men in fair condition should allow for easy expeditions, namely, an hour for every three miles on the map, with an additional hour for every 2,000 feet of ascent."

The Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal, Vol. II, September 1892, No.3, p.136 (pdf)

A figure I learned that's stuck with me is that a brisk walk is around 4 mph. But that's actually pretty fast and wouldn't apply on a mountain trail and certainly not hiking up a mountain. So I've run into the challenge myself when planning a trip in the mountains of how to guess how long a hike will likely take.

From a recent hike—where I made sure to run through the full kitchen table survival skills and 10 essentials before leaving—limited daylight was a safety consideration. So knowing how long the hike might take was really important. Incidentally, there's a rule of thumb, literally, for estimating remaining daylight.

Lots of people have put Naismith's Rule to the test, including me, and though it's a slightly optimistic metric, it's a starting point. On my recent hike, we were slightly over, but not by much.

To adjust for your circumstances, add time for:

Tricky or technical terrain and trail condition

Not being "in fair [physical] condition" in the view of a rugged mountaineer from Scotland in the 1890s

Photography, bird watching, animal spotting

The size of your group—I have heard the rule of thumb to add 15 mins for each person in your group

Presumably, if the hike was really long, you'd slow down

So, there are many reasons why Naismith's Rule may be on the light side. But it's a decent place to start from.

Killian Jornet Laughs in the Face of Naismith's Rule

Someone for whom Naismith's Rule definitely doesn't apply is the incredible Killian Jornet, whom I watched in the beautiful documentary Déjame Vivir on Netflix. Footage of him running along knife-edge ridges at the top of the Alps is breathtaking. In 2024, he hiked all 82 peaks above 4,000m in the Alps in 19 days without using motorized vehicles between them 🤯.

I was told about the term lock-miles, a kind of Naismith's Rule but for canal journeys rather than hikes. To estimate the journey time, you'd first calculate the lock-miles with the idea that it takes as long to travel through a lock as it does to travel a mile.

A journey of 10 miles with 5 locks would be 15 lock-miles. For experienced boaters, a typical speed might be 3 lock-miles an hour, so the journey of 15 lock-miles would take 5 hours.

Let me know if you give Naismith's Rule a try!

Prefer metric? So do I. Here's a metric Naismith's rule (with the approximate rounding)

Kaffikok — the time you can travel before needing another cup of coffee

I made some prints and products with and without the text in case, like me, you like a peaceful mountain ridge without any rules

Naismith's Rule for mountain hiking time

The Paradise Paradox is the tempting but misguided belief that moving to a "paradise" will magically make everything better. It's the idea that a change of scene to somewhere beautiful or exciting will somehow sweep away all our problems. And while a fresh setting can give us a lift, the reality is often more complicated: paradise, as wonderful as it might be, won't always solve the everyday challenges we bring along with us.

Moving to your paradise might feel incredible, and it's a life-changer for some people, but it's easy to idealize paradise, imagining it as a place where worries simply disappear. Yet even the most stunning places could start to feel ordinary, and your conceptualised paradise may have its own challenges.

For instance, perhaps your paradise is a beautiful, distant, exotic land. Such a paradise, however, has the drawback of no longer being distant or exotic once you arrive and the day-to-day takes over. Someone living in a fast-paced metropolis might dream of calm and quiet, while someone surrounded by calm and quiet may dream of the rush and excitement of the big city.

Alastair Humphreys, who introduced me to the Paradise Paradox in his book Local, gave a great example in our podcast about Microadventures. In an interview on an American podcast, the interviewers couldn't imagine exploring Kansas to be exciting—it was known or even home to them. But to Alastair, a visit to Kansas would be an adventure, full of new things to see and do. It's a reminder that our ideas of paradise are often fueled by novelty—and novelty, by nature, doesn't last forever.

Expectations, the day-to-day, and Adaptability

Some of the Paradise Paradox may be explained by how easy it is to build up expectations. If we imagine paradise as the ultimate fix, it could lead to disappointment if it doesn't live up to the dream. As for vorfreude—the joy of anticipation—the build-up can sometimes overshadow the reality.

Then there's the simple truth that day-to-day life in paradise isn't a vacation. A tropical beach holiday lets you unwind and enjoy the scenery without a care. But living there might mean dealing with rainy seasons, work deadlines, or just regular old laundry.

Humans are also remarkably adaptable. We're good at adjusting to new surroundings, which means something initially remarkable may soon become the new normal. It's a bit like the grass-is-greener mentality we see in many areas of life. If you're a consultant, you might long for the stability of an in-house role, while in-house folks might crave the variety of consulting.

In some cases, the Paradise Paradox takes on a more serious tone. The documentary film The Paradise Paradox, executive produced by Olympic ski racer Bode Miller and filmmaker Brett Rapkin, explores how people drawn to the beauty and tranquility of US mountain towns sometimes face mental health struggles. These picturesque communities, though visually idyllic, have experienced higher-than-average rates of suicide, highlighting the challenges of living in remote, isolated settings.

Strategies to Minimize the Pull of the Paradise Paradox

To reduce the effect of the Paradise Paradox, it helps to focus on what brings fulfillment in any setting, allowing us to appreciate where we are without feeling the constant pull of an imagined paradise. Here are a few ways to lessen the allure:

Practicing gratitude allows us to recognize the value of what we already have. Focusing on the positives around us may make us less inclined to search elsewhere for happiness, realizing that contentment often lies closer than we think.

2. Prioritizing Experiences Over Material Goods

Research consistently shows that experiences bring longer-lasting happiness than possessions. Prioritizing meaningful activities and memories can bring joy and satisfaction, outlasting the initial thrill of accumulating more.

A minimalist approach can help reduce the constant desire for more—whether it's things, places, or achievements. Simplifying our lives can allow us to focus on what truly matters and bring a greater sense of peace.

Focusing on personal growth, nurturing relationships, and contributing to our communities can offer a lasting sense of fulfillment that doesn't depend on our surroundings. Meaningful goals and connections often provide the depth of happiness that location alone can't bring.

Paradise can certainly refresh us, but true and lasting happiness is often about embracing where we already are and what we already have.

Since writing this I keep seeing related quotes:

The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.

“We tend to attribute happiness to our circumstances (what happens to us) but studies suggest our happiness is really dependent on what we pay attention to.”

— Cal Newport, Deep Work (via Mind Over Tech)

"Happiness isn't getting what you want, it's wanting what you got."

The paradise paradox

Isometric projection is a simple way to draw 3D shapes. The meaning of isometric is "equal measure," from the Greek words iso- for equal and metric for measure. So, in an isometric drawing, all three axes, x, y, and z, are scaled equally, giving a clear, undistorted view of an object in three dimensions.

Except that isometric drawings can look a little odd and oversimplified. This is because of the lack of perspective, a visual distortion of 3D shapes we experience in the real world. In a perspective drawing, parallel lines converge in the distance towards a vanishing point, but in an isometric drawing, parallel lines stay parallel, and sizes don't get smaller in the distance.

The lack of perspective in an isometric view can make it look artificial, but it always looks clear.

I learned isometric drawing when studying engineering. Armed with a stack of isometric paper with a printed isometric grid, we had to reel off exercises involving drawing isometric views of 3D objects. And isometric projection is really handy for this. It can take a long time to build the skills to sketch a realistic 3D-looking object, perspective and all, but with isometric paper, you can quite quickly produce something that communicates to you or others what's in your head or on the workbench.

Isometric projection is handy for boxy shapes—I chose an approximation of the Bauhaus Dessau building by Walter Gropius to show it. If you need curves and angles, just like with perspective drawings, it can help to draw more boxes around these areas and use them to align your curves and meeting points for your lines.

Isometric views and their variations have had somewhat of a resurgence of late in video and board games. It turns out they're pretty helpful in map-based or city-building games such as Zynga's Farmville, Civilisation, or Sim City as the isometric view allows all parts of a scene to be viewed equally—in the distance or up close—while still seeing every detail in, say, a building, wherever it is.

If you want to try some isometric drawings, making your own isometric grid paper is easy. Just draw equally-spaced vertical stripes and then a criss-cross of lines in both directions at 30 degrees from the horizontal. This gives a host of equilateral triangles and an easy base to start drawing your 3D objects. Or just download some templates online. You'll find that building up more complex shapes out of cubes is dead simple if you keep to the lines on the isometric grid.

Just as in the drawing here, sometimes shapes drawn in isometric view lend themselves to curious optical effects. The lack of perspective can make the difference between heights and depths ambiguous. So, you can't always tell if two surfaces are at very different heights or if one is in the distance. The brilliant puzzle game Monument Valley uses this quirk of isometric projection to create mind-bending puzzles that are well worth a try. For instance, rotating a high surface can suddenly make a platform that extends far into the distance 🤯.

Isometric-like projection can also help make impossible shapes, such as the Impossible Staircase, or Penrose stairs. Another type of projection, anamorphosis, creates a drawing that only looks correct from a particular viewpoint. Anamorphosis leads to some remarkable street art.

2.5D objects, including an old video of me drawing a sketchplanation

The Impossible Staircase, or Penrose stairs

When drawn nice and faint, the isometric grid is an example of a ghost grid

Isometric projection is quite the opposite of "draw what you see, not what you think." Foreshortening can be hard to get the hang of.

Isometric projection

The fight-or-flight response is our body's automatic and ancient response to perceived threats or danger. This innate physiological response in animals and humans prepares us to either confront a threat (fight) or flee from it (flight). This mechanism, often referred to as entering fight-or-flight mode, likely played a critical role in our survival.

At the annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards, I saw an astonishing photo of a tiger surprising workers in a field (Tiger Run by Nejib Ahmed). Everyone is in flight mode except one man, much braver than me, who perhaps through instinct has stood to fight, staring down the approaching tiger with a long stick. The photo is captivating in its drama and struck me as a perfect fight-or-flight example in action. Thankfully, no one—including the tiger—was hurt in this instance.

The adrenalin that can flood our bodies during such moments may sometimes give us strength to do what we didn't expect, surprising ourselves with what we are capable of—Nicola Morgan, when discussing the amazing teenage brain, gives an example of her leaping a 5ft fence and looking back with amazement. Sudden strength or speed like this is a well-known fight-or-flight symptom.

The fight-or-flight response is linked to theories about how different parts of the brain developed during our evolution. Modern research has corrected some aspects of this idea, but the basic concept remains.

The most primitive parts of the brain—those we may share with, say, dinosaurs—are responsible for automatic behaviours like protecting territory, aggression, fear and fending off danger. This is often referred to as the reptilian brain or lizard brain. These brain areas are key to our survival instincts and play a critical role in activating fight-or-flight mode.

Years of evolution since then have given us brain structures like the limbic system, which is responsible for our emotions and social behaviours. The amygdala, part of the limbic system, is especially important in triggering fear and the fight-or-flight response.

Later, the neocortex evolved, enabling humans to assess threats rationally, solve problems, and make decisions—giving us more control over how we respond to fear or anxiety.

The response, also illustrated by the snake rearing up in the sketch, is a fallback to our oldest instincts from the oldest parts of our brain when faced with a threat, so the theory goes.

Fight-or-flight psychology, coined by physiologist Walter Cannon in 1915, is only part of a broader spectrum of acute stress responses. A more accurate sequence we experience may be freeze, flight, fight, or fright.

Freeze: Our immediate reaction to danger might be to "stop, look, listen," remaining hyper-vigilant while we assess the threat, and perhaps hope by not moving, the dinosaur won't spot us.

Flight: We may flee the situation to safety.

Fight: If escape isn't possible, we might fight back, as shown by the brave individual in the tiger photo.

Fright: This might include panic and immobility, playing dead in case a predator decides we're not worth eating after all.

As you see, the updated list continues with excellent alliteration, which no doubt helped make the idea sticky in the first place (other proposals add fawn, faint, flock and more).

While the tiger scenario shows our ancient brain instincts at work, most modern-day situations don't involve life-or-death threats. However, we may still enter fight-or-flight mode during stressful, anxiety-inducing moments, such as public speaking, a challenging work interaction, or a difficult conversation.

In these cases, our age-old reactions may not serve us well. The same ancient brain that would help us survive a predator may now cause us to avoid daunting tasks. Whether it's a work presentation, a cold sales call, or confronting a personal issue, we may feel the urge to retreat from the action and get a snack from the kitchen instead.

When our ancient instincts—so finely tuned for survival—are no longer serving us in modern situations, it's helpful to pause and let our higher-order thinking take the lead. Techniques like box breathing or meditation help calm the body and mind, allowing us to move beyond fear and resistance. By doing so, we can overcome the automatic urge to "fight or flight," or even freeze or fright, and instead respond with clarity, control, and confidence.

See Big Ideas Little Pictures for Melissa Dahl's Awkwardness Vortex and the technique of reframing anxiety as excitement

Fight or Flight

Leading from Any Chair is the idea that we all have the opportunity to influence the action even when we're not standing at the front. It's a principle for effective leadership and teaching yourself and others to lead.

In their inspiring book, The Art of Possibility, Benjamin and Rosamund Zander relate a story from renowned violist Eugene Lehner, who played in the Kolish Quartet and Boston Symphony Orchestra. One day, in an interpretation class led by Zander with Lehner as a guest coach, Ben Zander asked him, "How can you bear to play day after day in an orchestra led by conductors, many of whom must know so much less than you?"

Lehner said he was playing in a rehearsal in his first year in the orchestra when the conductor, Koussevitsky, struggled to lead the orchestra as he wanted through a tricky Bach piece. A friend of Koussevitsky and fellow conductor, Nadia Boulanger, was sitting in on the session. Koussevitsky stopped and asked if Nadia would conduct the passage so he could hear what it sounded like from the back of the hall. Nadia conducted the passage without a hitch, and the rehearsal continued. But the episode left Lehner ever wondering and waiting for the moment when a conductor might say to him, "Lehner, you come up here and conduct. I want to go to the back of the hall and hear how it sounds."

"It's now 43 years since that happened," said Lehner, "and it is less and less likely that I will be asked. However, in the meantime, I haven't had a single dull moment in a rehearsal as I sit wondering, 'What would I say to the orchestra, should I suddenly be called upon to lead?'"

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