What a daily visual journal taught me about myself?

Starting and building a creative practice

I wanted to start a creative practice. I also had no starting point.

One might say, just start drawing anything random. But if you have tried something like this, you know it isn’t easy.

I had started many times, but often faltered after a week or a month. What kept me going, more than anything, was a community of creators following the same practice. They shared not just their creations, but also honest stories of pushing through when life became too busy to create. Many of us exploring our creative side are also juggling jobs, household chores, raising children, caring for ageing parents, or simply trying to keep up with adult life.

I know there are many recorded courses available, but I didn’t want to buy one, maybe complete it, and then forget about it after a few days. I wanted to build a lifelong creative practice to keep my creative energy alive.

So when I saw Adam Ming’s GamePlan, I signed up for a paid membership of The Ten Minute Artist¹. I’ve been following Adam’s journey for a while, and it’s inspiring to see someone build a totally different career as an illustrator after working in the startup domain. I want to know it all from Adam — how he could do it at the age of 40, when most of us are too settled in one career.

What also interested me is how every action in Adam’s GamePlan is designed around being able to do it in ten minutes, which looks doable to me — someone who is also busy building a new career as a visual thinking facilitator, running a live bootcamp, Book to Visuals, with two parallel cohorts every month.

Sometimes, certain channels open up for us when we’re out there looking for them. I feel GamePlan is that channel for me, and many other art enthusiasts who wish to explore their creative potential.

In Adam’s words, the core of the GamePlan is to build a lifelong creative habit that becomes the engine of your creative practice and starts attracting your true fans.

It’s been more than a month of building a lifelong creative habit with Adam’s daily prompts, and I thought it would be interesting to share some of my reflections on building my creative practice so far.

Last month, even before starting GamePlan, we began a daily practice of The Ten Minute Visual Journal Method — a simple method by Adam to help us conquer the blank page and get started with a creative practice. I felt like it was a warm-up exercise. We started with drawing a frame and splitting it into 4 panels, which made it look like a daily life comic 🙂. In each panel, we could draw or write to represent what I did yesterday, what I am working on, what’s coming up, and what is the one thing I am grateful for.

Adam shared daily prompts for the next 4 days to really expand on how these panels could mean more than what they literally convey. For example, he showed us that what we draw in the ‘what’s coming up’ panel isn’t limited to what’s coming up in our real life (maybe an upcoming vacation), but how we imagine it to emerge (maybe a fully sponsored ticket to a creative conference I really want to attend). I could manifest in this panel.

I committed to doing this practice for 30 days.

I thought it would be simple to just fill the ‘yesterday’ panel with what I did the day before. However, I realised that yesterday was blurred for me. A part of me felt how forgetful I was becoming. But another part of me also realised that what I remember is mostly how something or someone made me feel. It felt like stepping back and observing my own life — noticing how some moments stayed with me deeply, while others had simply slipped by. It also gave me the luxury to witness my life from a distance of a day. I surely became more mindful as I engaged in this daily practice.

When I filled my daily page with ‘what I am working on’, I noticed whether the tasks filling my day are really worth doing. If not, what would I ideally like to spend my time working on? It gave me a representation of where I am going.

The beauty of these exercises is that they make noticing easier and offer prompts for reflection.

My ‘what’s coming up’ panel went from showing what I knew was coming up (a meeting, a vacation) to revealing repeating patterns of how I might want my life to emerge. These panels became a mirror to my inner world. In the quietness of the night, where nothing was expected of me, I was slowly building my dream life in my sketchbook. A few things that emerged through this daily practice were completely outside my awareness. Like a small child manifesting some magic in my life, I started demanding it on my pages. I started bringing into my awareness what I truly want from my life.

Interestingly, something I kept drawing in my ‘what’s coming up’ panel was myself evolving as a picture book illustrator. And almost like magic, it is now becoming real.

A friend of mine recently joined my visual thinking bootcamp, Book to Visuals. As part of her assignment, she created a hand-drawn illustrated story for children on bullying. When I saw her work, the idea sparked — what if I digitally illustrated her story and turned it into a small zine?

Around the same time, I came across Release Day² — a community initiative for creators from across the world to commit to working on a personal creative project throughout May and collectively release it on 29th May. I signed up immediately. So this month, I will be trying to digitally illustrate my friend’s story as a small picture book. This will be my very first picture book illustration🙂

The ‘gratitude’ panel is one I am truly grateful for. It made me realise how blessed I am to have a body and mind that support me in doing whatever I plan to do. I became more grateful for simple things in life, as simple as access to clean drinking water and having a bed to lie down on. I found myself becoming more grateful for my family, friends, communities, home, and life in general.

Did I falter anywhere along the way? I did. Somewhere around the 20th day, I felt like stopping. The brain chatter started — “Why are you doing this? You are wasting your time.” My brain also started saying that I was only doing it to show others that I could keep my promise, as my disciplined self didn’t want to fail. But I persisted, because I was witnessing my life being revealed to me on these pages every day — no matter what questions my rational mind kept posing.

It was not simple to sit and do this practice every day with a chattering mind. So I tried to engage my left brain to let my right brain show up as a little child with dreams and an expectation of magic. I changed my panel shapes, used different stroke brushes, and found that even a small change helped me quiet the chatter and keep my creative practice going. On days when it grew beyond my energy to create, I simply held on to the power of community. The ongoing submissions by other people moved me to act.

I had never actively drawn before this. And a part of me was fearful of how bad my drawings might be. Being in a safe community space also changed how I judged my work. It also gave me ways to see how other creators used various visual cues in their panels. I cheated like an artist and improved my drawing skills 🙂

Going through everyone’s sharing helped me build connections with strangers and see their world. I knew who was excited for their upcoming vacation. I knew who enjoyed gardening. Every drawing inspired me to cherish ways of living that could be different from what we are conventionally told to do.

I engage in these reflective exercises mostly at bedtime. There were nights when I had plenty of time, and nights when I was simply too tired to keep it going. I didn’t stop — rather, I made it simpler on those days. I asked myself: can I just draw one thing I remember from yesterday, one thing I am working on, one thing I really want coming up for me, and one thing I feel grateful for?

Flipping through these pages made me realise that any creative practice has the power of self-therapy, provided you continue long enough to discover your inner world.

The more I engage in these creative acts, the more I tell my mind that it’s a safe space to delve into my inner world. And I see this as the first step to designing a life where my inner world and outer world are in sync.

PS: I am taking the liberty to show up pages from my visual diary instead of using specific visuals/illustrations as I normally do :)

Take a Little Pause 🌼

Is there a creative practice you once loved but quietly left behind? What would a small, realistic first step back look like for you?

Feel free to share with me what you have discovered. I am genuinely interested in knowing :)

Learn to Think Visually

Join me in the next cohort of Book to Visuals, a 4-Week Practice Lab where I share my step-by-step process to transform what you read/think into simple hand-drawn visuals. No drawing experience or digital tool needed. You end up creating 15+ visuals from scratch, all by yourself, following the process.

4 live sessions & personalised feedback every week. 85 Euros for a limited time.

40+ people have joined me in the last 4 cohorts. Registration for the upcoming May cohorts ends soon.

People who attended my bootcamp said:

A practical, fast-paced course to go from ‘I can’t draw’ to a visual thinker in 4 weeks.

I went from not being able to draw to being confident in drawing characters and scenes. There were visuals I would not even entertain drawing until I was able to practice, gain feedback and use the momentum to push myself. I was surprised by how easy it is to draw good-looking visuals. You should join this if you want to get your hands dirty and make progress fast rather than just consuming content.

— Jeevan, Product Designer, BTV - April 2026

Visuals by Jeevan, Book to Visuals- April 2026

It was a great experience to learn from Rachna. She is such a good teacher.

I am present to the hard work she has put in curating Book to Visuals. It opened my creativity, and now, for almost every thought, I start thinking about ways to convert it into a visual.

Poonam Meena, IRAS, BTV - April 2026

A small part of the visual story submitted by Poonam as part of the weekly assignments. The one I plan to convert into a zine :)

Ways to support my creative journey 🎨✨

• Register for my 4-week practice lab to learn how to communicate ideas in simple visuals. Next cohort in May!

• License my illustrations – Love any of my illustrations? Use it for your brand.

• Hire me to illustrate for your brand, concept or upcoming book.

Take a Little Pause is an illustrated weekly newsletter for anyone navigating the beautiful messiness of building a creative, calm and intentional life. If you’re on a similar journey, subscribe for free or become a paid supporter to support my writing and help bring my dream of publishing a coffee-table book to life. 💛

1. I signed up for the paid version of The Ten Minute Artist by Adam Ming, which gave me access to GamePlan. The pricing and offering might have changed now.

2. Know more about Release Day: https://creativemornings.com/releaseday