The Visual Thinking Workshop: Master Your Visual PKM
Tired of drowning in walls of text and losing your best ideas?
When you start your thinking process with a visual canvas instead of a rigid bulleted list, something powerful happens.
You filter out the noise.
You turn messy thoughts into clear patterns.
You build spatial memory that makes resurfacing ideas effortless.
What This Is
The Visual Thinking Workshop is my comprehensive program on Visual Personal Knowledge Management.
This is where we build a frictionless visual system for capturing ideas, connecting knowledge, creating outputs, and remembering what matters long after you’ve closed the book.
Excalidraw Mastery focuses on the tool.
The Workshop focuses on the workflow.
Two Ways to Join
1. Self-Paced Course
Perfect for independent learners who want to overcome tool friction and build their visual vocabulary on their own schedule.
You get:
- 71 step-by-step lessons
- 12.5+ hours of video guiding you from mess to clarity
- Fully configured Obsidian demo vault to jumpstart your workflow
- Learn on your own schedule
To learn more explore the Self-Paced Course Outline & Time Investment Overview
As a welcome gift to new students, this price includes a complimentary one-year membership to the Sketch Your Mind Community including community support and powerful resources like Excalidraw Mastery.
2. Cohort Experience
If you want structure, accountability, and the shared experience of learning with others, this is the path.
As alumni often say, the magic of the cohort is seeing how differently other smart people process the exact same information. Over five weeks we take a real book and process it together through visual thinking exercises, live sessions, concept mapping, and final presentations.
The next cohort starts on 16 May. For details visit the Cohort Calendar
All live sessions are mirrored across US+EU and APAC+EU time zones. You can join either or both. Sessions are interactive and hands-on, so attending both offers extra practice, not repetition.
Cohort 16 Book Selection
We will be working with:
The Next Conversation by Jefferson Fisher.
What you say truly has the power to change everything —Jefferson Fisher
Together we will turn the ideas from the book into a visual summary and practical, reusable thinking frameworks.
What You Learn
- Build frictionless visual PKM systems
- Create Visual Zettelkasten notes (Mastering the “Postcard Method”: visual on the front, text and metadata on the back)
- Turn dense books into Book-on-a-Page summaries
- Filter digital noise and structure ideas spatially
- Communicate complex ideas and stories clearly
What You’ll Get
Access to the Self-Paced Course.
Access to Weekly Office Hours. Get direct, hands-on support for both the course content and tools in live Office Hours, designed to help you master visual thinking concepts and tools.
Join us as we read, discuss, and apply the book’s insights to deepen your visual thinking practice.
- Five Live Sessions: These structured sessions guide participants through key visual thinking exercises, including concept maps, concept visuals, story planning for your Book-on-a-Page, creating visual-Zettelkasten cards, and final presentations. Each session adds unique value, moving you from messy idea generation to a finished Book on a Page.
- Exclusive Community Space: Engage in shared learning and discussions within a supportive environment. Benefit from seeing others’ perspectives, sharing “aha” moments, and gaining the social accountability needed to build a lasting visual habit.
- Holistic Visual Thinking Journey: This structured, multi-stage process takes you through the entire visual thinking workflow in a systematic way, ensuring that each session builds upon the last.
Secure your spot in the upcoming cohort and get a bonus year of community membership included. It’s the perfect way to stay connected, keep practicing, and keep growing.
Explore my Work
The Visual Thinking Workshop distills decades of experimentation and building into a practical system. You’ll gain access to the same time-tested frameworks I use daily to cut through information overload and turn complex data into decisive action.
I invite you to explore my work and see these principles in practice.
Here are few recommendations:
- Part 1 Building a Second Brain Book on a Page
- How to Take Smart Notes - Book on a Page
- VISUAL SUMMARY: Feel-Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal - The Periodic Table of Productivity
- Deep Work - Book on a Page
- Book on a Page Summary of Atomic Habits by James Clear
- Digest What You Read: Walkthrough of my process for understanding Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky
- Slow Reading Mastery: How my visual book summary process has evolved
- Two Workflows for Reading, Note-Taking, and Visual Thinking that Are Transforming the Way I Use AI
- Independent Thinking in the Age of AI | PKM Summit 2026
- 4D Visual Thinking: Effective PKM & the Visual Thinking Workshop Journey
Part of a Bigger Ecosystem
The Workshop focuses on the workflow.
Excalidraw Mastery focuses on the tool.
Sketch Your Life focuses on thinking tools.
Final Thought
Most people just hoard text.
Few learn how to visually shape it into clear insights, better decisions, and compelling stories.
That is what this workshop is about.