I start writing this post as a tweetstorm, but it became too long to be a useful tweetstorm, so I decided to change it a bit and publish it as a blog post.

Yesterday I finished my journey over the self-help drawing book - "You Can Draw in 30 Days"  by Mark Kistler. I spend a month of daily drawing and learn a ton from it. I will split my learnings into four chapters.

Learnings

Chapter 1: Drawing

I learn to draw with a pencil.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for an easy way to learn drawing. I could not imagine I can depict all these incredible things, but it was possible and doable. Now I know a lot about shadows, perspective, positioning, and much other cool stuff.

I don't love drawing.

It is a harsh finding inside myself, but I do not have any special warm feeling about drawing. Before I started, I dream about being an artist, but I found out that it was not that interesting for me.

I see a word in another way.

I have got an incredible skill – I can break objects I see into smaller geometric pieces, and I see how I can draw them — superpower feeling.

Chapter 2: Social media

To be accountable, I had to post my updates every day. I decided that it is a good time to do some SMM experiments with content I publish to see how it would affect my tweets engagement rate.

Tweets with images generate much higher engagement.

For some reason, people are more likely to react and engage with content having images. I think it is related to the fact that it is cognitively and more natural to respond to picture rather than text. Note for future self: If you want to get people to click/act on your tweet - add some pictures.

Tweets with emojis also generate much higher engagement.

Funny but fact, putting more emojis into the tweets causes more engagement, so pure textual tweets could be "promoted" with emojis.

Friday is the least likable day.

Not sure if it is applicable for an overall audience, but my tweets get the least attention on Fridays.

Chapter 3: Personal growth

Cumulative/compound progress causes extreme results.

Usually, when we talk about compound interest, we mean money in a bank or financial markets, but I found out that the same principle is quite applicable for personal grows as well. I spend ~30-60min on daily bases drawing simple things, and in the end, results were astonishing. I could not imagine myself being able to depict such things. Little improvement every day creates a massive leap in a month or year timeframe.

Consistency is the key to achievement.

It is quite an obvious one, but I have to repeat it once again. A consistent contribution to some skill/task is significant to make it great.

There is no right way to get to something without long term commitment.

I found that without a long term plan and roadmap, it is tough to motivate myself to keep moving. I had 30 days roadmap, and it let me stick with it. I was close to giving up in the middle of the book, but roadmap presence helps me stick to it and finish.

Chapter 4: Other

People's engagements are beneficial and motivating.

Being accountable and get likes and engaged comments from time to time are useful and allow me to move forward even if it was a horrible day that sucks any king of motivation out of me.

Not all self-help book same good, some are exceptionally good

There are plenty of self-help books, but only rare of them are useful because they tell you not only what to do but how to do it as well. This book is an excellent example of where both parts are covered. The author substantially covered what do part and exceptionally thoroughly document how exactly I should do it, I am quite sure otherwise it would not be possible to teach an adult to draw.

How to teach adults.

The book teaches you to draw, even though it is very hard. Mark Kistler found a way how to increase complexity in small chanks and encourage adults to draw gradually, so they do it without fear and self-doubts. I believe a similar approach should be used in almost any other self-help book otherwise that just piles of dead trees.

Next steps

I found this experience very liberating and empowering for future achievements; I believe it could be used to get better self-understanding and became a more versatile personality. There are a plethora of things I'd love to do and learn. Most likely, I will not enjoy many of them, but you never know before you try. I plan to keep challenging myself and deliver new skills and potentially find something that excites me.