Inspired by artist and author Austin Kleon’s Prompts for the New Year substack post last week, I tried out the More/Less journaling prompt by illustrator Julia Rothman.
The idea is simple, as Austin says on his post:
On one side of the page/notebook, write MORE and on the other side write LESS, then draw what you want more or less of in your life.
You can see what Austin drew on his if you’re a paid subscriber to his newsletter (which I wholeheartedly recommend) but here’s mine, scribbled on my Kindle scribe:
Interesting that time seems to feature so heavily on my ‘more’ page: Giving projects (and me in general) more time to breathe, more time to read, more family time etc etc.
The one thing that came out of this was something I added right at the last minute in the bottom right corner of the ‘more’ page – a pencil! Doing these pages reminded me how much I enjoy doodling. I used to draw all the time when I was a kid, cartoons mainly, inspired by my love of British weekly humour comics such as the Beano, Nutty, Buster and so on. I don’t doodle enough this days, and certainly don’t usually share my efforts when I do, mainly because I worry that they’re, well, that they’re a bit rubbish. That’s where one of Austin’s books come in, Show Your Work, which is all about putting your stuff out there, even if it’s a work in progress. Even thought I’ve taken a step back from social media (I recently deleted over 75,900 tweets that I made between 2009 and last year, which was strangely therapeutic) maybe I’ll pop some of my scribbles here and over on my instagram account if anyone’s interested (and maybe even if they’re not!)
What would you include on your ‘LESS’ and ‘MORE’ pages? Perhaps you might be inspired to draw your own. Please feel free to share with me if you do!
Your artwork’s definitely not rubbish. I especially like the stressed guy and crab. On my less page I’d put less collecting, less spending and less sweets. On my more page I’d put more exercise and more effort into completing my goals.
Those are good goals!