You can’t manage time
But you can use it wisely
Follow heart’s desire

This week has been a busy one for me. I guess that’s why today’s haiku reflects a little on using your time, wisely.

If you liked today’s haiku why not drop by next Friday for another one, or let the RSS feed bring it to you automatically.

Rewriting usually takes up far more time than I’d like. Even when I plan and outline once I get into drafting the piece often just takes a life of its own. Before I know it I’ve got two or three times as many words as I need, and not always the right ones for the purpose I planned.

That’s why I’m always on the look out for techniques or tools to help make rewriting and editing an easier job. The post How to Rescue a Piece When You Write a Frankenstein recently posted on Write To Done is exactly the kind of help I can use. It starts with some reassuring words that let me know I am not alone:

“Sometimes I write a Frankenstein piece. It looks fine until I notice that arms sprout where the legs should be - and unfortunately I forgot to attach a neck.”

Hey, I can do that, too. But how do I go about rescuing this deformed monster I have created? The solution proposed is…

“… structural editing, or, how to reverse engineer a piece. Structural editing makes sure that all the bones of a piece are in the right place.”

If you want to learn the four steps of structural editing, read the rest of the post over at Write To Done…

I’d love to hear about your rewriting experiences and any good tips you have. Leave a comment below to tell me about them.

"Become the change you seek" - Ghandi

Here is my program for learning how to become the change you are after.

1. Put your goal in the here and now.
2. Think in terms of doing.
3. List the habits you would have.
4. Put the habits into practice.
5. Start small, iterate and increment.

Read on to learn more about the program…

Put Your Goal In The Here And Now

Get started by putting your goal in the here and now. For a long time one of my goals was "I want to be a writer". But one day a year or so ago I You’re a Writer that made me change this to "I am a writer."

From that day on my outlook was changed and I started writing. Just writing down your goal in this form isn’t always going to transform you, though. That’s what the other steps in this article are for. But you’ll already be a long way down the road to success when you change your mind set from a wanna-be to become someone who can, and is.

So, take step one and write down your goal in the present tense as if you had it already. Dave Navarro also has some good tips in his post about thinking from your goals.

Think In Terms Of Doing

Many people describe their goals in terms of being something or someone. This makes the goal harder to realize and limits your thinking. When you think in terms of being you compare yourself to someone else, someone that you’re not. You set up a negative thought process as you think of all the things this imaginary someone has that you don’t.

Think in terms of doing things, instead, and you open up a whole world of possibilities. You can carry on being you, instead of trying to be this one-dimensional creature of your imagination.

Instead of thinking about what you aren’t, focus on what you can do, right now. Do things you enjoy and start enjoying your goal right from the go. If you focus on "be", you can feel frustrated as long as you have not achieved the state of "being" that you dream of.

Continuing the writing goal example, "I am a writer" can be rewritten, "I write." See how easy that goal is to succeed? Could you achieve a goal like that today? I bet you could, but if you’re a real over-achiever (and you wouldn’t be reading this if you weren’t), you’ll want to continue with the next step.

List The Habits You Would Have

Now you know the power of doing, go ahead and detail what you want to do. Ask yourself what someone who succeeds in your goal does, every day. As Aristotle said, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit."

Make a list of the habits of someone who succeeds at your goal. I recommend you list no more than seven. That is more than enough to get you started. If you have no idea what doing your goal entails doing, then it’s time for a little research. Use Google, or ask someone who does it already.

It can also help to refine your goal to make it easier to create a short habits list. "I write" could be specialized to "I write stories", or "I write magazine articles", "I write user guide’s for photocopiers", whatever your pleasure.

Put The Habits Into Practice

Now you know what you should be doing just go and get doing it. Put your habits into action every day. It’s fine to do them badly when you start, you’ll get better as you practice. You should also update and refine your list as you learn what works and what doesn’t work for you at the stage you’re at.

Iterate And Increment

I already said that you don’t have to do your habits well right from the start. It might take you some time to get good at doing them. If you just started your first novel, you can’t hope to write as easily as another who has twenty best-sellers under their belt already. There might even be some habits you don’t even think you can do at the moment.

Don’t let this worry you, just get started on what you can do. Remove the others from the list, or replace them with something else. Practice your basic habits and you can always add the others when you are ready.

You can’t escape the fact that you have to be a beginner before you can become an expert. The important point is that you can enjoy doing what you do just as much when you begin, more even, than an expert.
So, do what you can now. Add steps as you go, keep refining your habits list.

Let’s recap the steps for turning your dreams into reality today.

1. Put your goal in the here and now, make it accessible.
2. Think in terms of doing, rather than being or having.
3. List the habits you would have, when you are successful at doing your thing.
4. Put the habits into practice, without this the rest won’t get you anywhere.
5. Start small, iterate and increment, remember you have to pay your dues.

What dream are you going to make into reality today? Share your thing and success habits in the comments.

Resources

If you enjoyed this post you might like these additional resources.

Men With Pen’s post Would You Become Someone Else To Achieve Your Dreams?

Dave Navarro’s post The Wrong Way To Think About Your Goals (And How To Fix It)

Gratitude, sharing
Make today a better day
Kind deeds pave the way

You can still learn how you could help at the Blog Action Day’s What One Person Can Do page.

If you liked today’s haiku why not drop by next Friday for another one, or let the RSS feed bring it to you automatically.

“I can change the world
With my own two hands
Make a better place
With my own two hands”

Ben Harper, With My Own Two Hands

  Friends, today is Blog Action Day and this year’s theme is poverty. This post is my small contribution and I’d like to share with you the idea that we can all help fight poverty through small and simple efforts. At the end of the post I give you a list of simple actions you could take today.

Poverty, like many other large issues in the world, is often seen as somebody else’s problem. It’s just too big for you and me, right? Wrong. I believe that we can make a difference by each taking a small action, no matter how tiny, to reduce poverty. If you have a hard time believing this, I think that the recent financial crisis is an excellent example that supports this idea.

What is this great financial crisis? Individuals and families, just like you or yours, simply didn’t pay back a loan they’d obtained from a bank. This is a pretty small thing at the individual level. But you have seen just how great an effect that action has when multiplied by many individuals. Many of the world’s mighty financial institutions are brought to their knees.

Do you still think your action is too small to count?

Before I give you some ideas for small actions you could take, I’d like to share one other thought with you. This one is not mine, but was given to us by Deb who eloquently pointed out that poverty is not just about money. Even if you are not in a position to give money you can still act to reduce many other kinds of poverty for free.

Now, here’s a short list of ideas you could implement with minimal time and effort. Feel free to use them or come up with your own. You can also find more suggestions of what one person can do on the Blog Action Day site.

Ideas to Fight Poverty

• Donate a small part of your income to an organization fighting poverty.
  Smile and say “hello” to a stranger, reduce the poverty of kindness in the world.
• Donate a little of your time, just a half a day a month, to help an organization fighting poverty.
• Ask your banker how your savings are used. Do they finance real projects, or the kind of speculation that is behind the current mess? If you don’t like the answer ask your bank to change, or change your bank.
• Take a stand on poverty. For example, write to your local or national representative and ask politely what they are doing about it. Write again next month, and the month after. Show that someone cares about the problem.

What action are you going to take, today, the next day and the day after that to relieve poverty? Help others relieve poverty by leaving your easy to do poverty fighting ideas in the comments.

It might be a hard thing for many writers to accept but readers are mostly not interested in our writing. No, readers are interested in what they can get out of the writing, so make this obvious with a clear message. The better you are at delivering messages clearly the more you will please readers.

This post is going to show three keys to delivering clear messages to your readers:

1. The importance of one single purpose.
2. It all starts with one clear sentence.
3. Tips on creating one clear sentence.

We’re talking about clarity and snappiness here today, so let’s get right to the point…

The Importance of One Single Purpose

The power of a clear purpose for a piece of writing is illustrated by a post from Remarkablogger Michael Martine entitled Seven Steps to More Coherent Blog Posts, More Readers, and More Subscribers. The first step is to “Figure out the one thing you want to accomplish with the post.” As Michael explains:

“The post should be about or should accomplish one thing, and one thing only. Have you ever read (or written) a post that seemed to be about several topics at once? It really ended up not being about much of anything.”

Well, I know I had both read and written pieces like that. At the time I had a few pieces that I was struggling to finish. I couldn’t decide what to leave in and what to take out and this idea of a single accomplishment helped me to clarify and finish them.

But it was another post I happened across the next day that really showed me how to ensure this laser-sharp focus of purpose in my writing going forward.

It All Starts With One Short Sentence

The “one thing” message was reinforced by a post that also showed me a great way to ensure it. The post Obstacles to Clear and Concise Writing described obstacle number two, not being clear about the message, like this:

“Many writers have a general idea of what they want to say, but they don’t crystallize it in one short, snappy sentence. Thus, they start out writing, touching on their topic from different angles, and including every bit of information they think is relevant.

The writing may end up readable and professional sounding, but the readers will come away thinking that, while they understood the gist of the author’s intent, they can’t precisely say what the take-home point was. This is usually because the writer never really knew what it was either.”

I immediately understood how powerful it would be to “crystallize it in one short, snappy sentence“.

I had been writing short paragraphs, three or four sentence, to describe the pieces I planned to write. This left room for too many ideas and angles, and this showed through in the writing I produced from them. So I resolved to edit down my paragraphs to only one short sentence.

Writing a Short, Focused Purpose

For each piece of writing I do now I start with one short, clear sentence stating its purpose. This format leaves no room for confused or multiple ideas, so is an excellent way to judge the clarity of your idea before you write.

But it is not always easy to write one short, clear sentence at the first attempt. This is why I start to edit my piece before I’ve even written it by editing the description.

I write down an initial description of the idea, this might be several sentences. Then I edit it down until only one short, snappy sentence remains.

Here are a few tips on how to do this:

1. Get very clear on one purpose, “learn how to make origami tigers and sign up for my new e-course” is two purposes, not one.

2. Get very specific about the reader and fit the idea to this audience. Here are some easy criteria to narrow your audience: age, experience, skill level, location, job, industry. I’m sure you can think of more in your topic.

3. Focus on only one problem, or one solution. You don’t have to give ten ways to solve a problem in one article.

In all cases you can save the other ideas for other pieces. It’s better to write ten focused articles than one confused one.

Let’s recap on what we’ve discussed.

1. The importance of one single purpose, without it you will lose the reader.
2. It all starts with one clear sentence, without this you might lose yourself.
3. Tips on creating one clear sentence, you don’t have to do it in one go.

Remember, your reader is interested in the message, not your writing. A single, crystal clear sentence describing each piece has helped me to write more clearly. As a bonus the clarity makes writing the piece easier, too.

If you’re serious about clear writing then here’s an exercise you can try now. Review five or ten pieces you wrote recently and write down one single, clear sentence that describes one thing accomplished. How easy is it to do? Can you fit the idea into just one sentence or is it hard? If you have trouble then maybe your message is not as clear as it could be.

Now write and edit down to one sentence the purpose of your next ten pieces before you write them. I’d love to hear about your results. Why not share them by leaving a comment below?

If you liked today’s haiku why not drop by next Friday for another one, or let the RSS feed bring it to you automatically.

How are we connected? Surely not by wires and photons and beams. No, the things that unite us are ideas and feelings and beautiful dreams.

These words here are almost exactly the first I came up with. I rewrote, tweaked and tried other approaches but this one remains my favourite.

Purpose one thing now
Too many ideas obstruct
Confuse you like hell

If you liked today’s haiku why not drop by next Friday for another one? Keep your life simple, let the RSS feed remember it for you automatically.

Here’s what you’ll learn in this post.

1. Why ideas can drown projects.
2. When is an idea valuable?
3. How ideas harm your writing.

Why ideas can drown projects

Surely good ideas are the life blood of a project, especially in creative activities like writing? I thought so, until I realised that my projects were dying from too many ideas, rather than not enough.

When you embark on a new project ideas are usually scrambling over each other for your attention. You might try to manage them by writing them down as a plan, an action list, a vision, whatever.

But in creative projects, or at least that’s what I thought, you must keep searching for and capturing new ideas all the time. They are the substance of your project, so you better make sure you’re noting lots of them down, right?

But the trouble is all these ideas fill your head and don’t leave you time to develop the ideas that inspired your project in the first place. I have since learned that only certain kinds of idea are valuable…

When is an idea valuable?

When is an idea valuable to your writing? The answer is when it is finished.

I created stock piles of post and article ideas, but as long as no one was seeing them what good were they? Sitting on my hard disk they don’t create any value. A finished idea posted to a web site, in a book, or sent to someone is worth hundreds of times more.

Only finished ideas that are out in the field can work for you. They sit there on your blog or web site and attract readers and search engines, they can float around the Internet as part of ezines and interest readers, and they can attract the eyes of the people you want to work with.

And the great thing is that even ideas you don’t find extraordinarily brilliant work for you. There will be plenty of people who find your idea, lots who even like it, or maybe even some who don’t. But whatever the reaction to the idea your name gets known to people and becomes associated with the activity of writing.

How ideas can harm your writing

Too many ideas harm your writing by confusing you and by confusing your readers.

If you are confused by too many ideas you find it hard to finish what you start. Your post or article wanders off in all directions trying to cover all the ideas claiming attention in your head.

I often thought my revision process was what prevented me getting pieces finishing. I researched editing ideas, I set time limits, I limited the number of edits, but I still wasn’t satisfied with the result. But the problem wasn’t my editing, the problem was at the other end of the writing process when I planned posts.

I learned that the most important thing is to get very, very, clear on XXX one thing the piece of writing is to accomplish. With a crystal clear idea of the desired outcome you can decide when you are finished. As long as you are unclear about the goal of the piece, you are unable to determine when you are done.

Now you know the dangers of ideas for your projects. You also know that ideas are most valuable to a writer when they are carried through to completion. You also know how to avoid the confusion ideas can create in your writing by getting clear on your message.

Do you feel like you have too many or too few ideas? Could they be drowning your projects? How do you manage them? I’d love to hear your story in the comments.