NO, I’m not 53 yet—I’m just filling out my 53rd sketchbook.

I sketch every day, taking notes on things I hear, watch, or read. I believe that combining note-taking with sketching helps me retain what truly interests me.

How it started — when a notebook becomes a sketchbook

I began intentionally using a sketchbook for both notes and drawings in my first year of university. At the time, that kind of approach wasn’t very common. My initial goal was simple: to keep all my thoughts about architecture and project ideas in one place.

Up to that point, my notebooks looked like anyone else’s—pages of handwriting with the occasional random scribble in the margins. I didn’t take sketching seriously at all. Then one day, a professor suggested we complement our notes with sketches whenever possible, as it would help us understand things better. To me, that felt like permission to go all in.

From that moment on, sketching became an integral part of how I think and learn. Those small drawings significantly improved my ability to process and remember information.

As a kid, I used to spend hours flipping through illustrated encyclopedias, fascinated by how images and text worked together. My sketchbooks became a natural extension of that idea. I started building my own personal archive of information, ideas, concepts, and experiments—all in one place. In a way, I was creating something I had always wanted: a personal encyclopedia, compact enough to carry everywhere.

Over the past 25 years, these sketchbooks have captured everything—trivia, thoughts, concepts, drawings, and plenty of mistakes along the way.
Today, I can flip back 10 or 15 years in an instant. I can revisit forgotten ideas, track my progress, re-evaluate old work, and even reinterpret it with new knowledge. It’s an ongoing dialogue with my past self.

My sketchbooks are my own illustrated Britannica—53 volumes and counting.