Advance Your Message
True authority – whether in public policy, business, Christian leadership, or wherever - benefits others. Real authority serves. It lifts. It frees.
A good author uses authority in a beneficial way. She originates something. He creates something. A genuine author moves in authority for the service and benefit of others.
Clutter is a merciless killer.
More often than not, writers, like other creatives, tend to be disorganized. We’re surrounded by too much clutter.
Are you writing or do you want to? Do a 360 and take a look around. See what I mean?
“Three Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein
Our mistake is that we accept it: “It’s my inner artist that makes me this way.”
It really is a form of the “RESISTANCE” that Steven Pressfield has dealt with. It’s self-sabotage. Good writing is resisted. But if we’re authentic, we’ll acknowledge that most of our resistance is self-activated.
Mess is a stress-inducer. And stress is a creativity killer.
This issue is so common with writers, a number of good voices have dealt with it. Here’s helpful perspective from Jeff Goins.
Limit your distractions. Turn off email, phone, and social media tools. Force yourself to focus on one thing at a time.
Regain control of your inbox. Clean up your email, getting it down to a manageable amount (zero, if you can).
Clean up your desk. Throw away stuff you haven’t used in months.
Throw away magazines and newspapers you have no intention of reading.
Find a relatively clean space to create. This is different for everyone, but it needs to not stress you out.
Start creating clutter-free messages.
Ignite your momentum. Find any horizontal surface. Hit it hard for 10 or 15 minutes. Clear it, keep it clear, and then move out from that space into your personal environment.
Resolve that the “ground” you take you will not give up.
Kill your mess. Before it kills your art. We can do this!
You may also like Clear Your Workspace to Release Your Creativity
See How to Tackle Your Clutter
photo credit: Douten (Creative Commons)
As authors, it becomes pretty clear that we must have the characteristics and skill set of entrepreneurs. I think it is possible to have a story to tell or something important to say, a passion to communicate it, and an ability to write … and yet we probably need to cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset and viewpoint about our story or message.
“Entrepreneur” comes from the French literally meaning “one who undertakes (a task or enterprise).” In the Latin source word we see the meaning of “to take.” An entrepreneur is one who steps out and steps forward with energy and strategy to seize what they see as an opportunity, risking failure to accomplish something worthwhile.
Let’s say you’re writing a non-fiction book. You have a great message that you feel will help your readers. And you’re in touch with a lot of what you want to say.
You’re feeling somewhat overwhelmed, though. How do you organize it?
I think the following is going to encourage you, giving you a sense of direction and control.
Filing cabinets were invented in 1886 by Henry Brown (impress your friends and peers at the next gathering!). This obviously helped to increase organization and efficiency of information on paper.
We actually still use something of this approach on our desktop or laptop with hierarchies of folders and files. We’ve just digitized everything. So in terms of organization and efficiency, if these are the tools we are using to write our book, we’re still in an “old school” mindset. We have everything separated into categories and probably don’t see the relationships between things.
We think and learn associatively. We learn something new based upon something we already know. There is a flow to our thinking. Our brains think beyond our filing cabinets – whether they are metal or digitized.
Another approach is to use mind maps to graphically show how we are thinking. Mind mapping started in the 1970s. You have a central idea or thesis in the middle. Then you draw topics radiating out from the central idea in specific branches.
For example you could create a basic mind map of a book with the central idea or message in the middle. You can then circle your main message with chapter topics. Then you can develop further chapter sub-topics connected to each chapter.
This helps you to see your thoughts and concepts. It can help with brainstorming and idea generation. You can focus on the big picture, capturing and developing thoughts to support the message.
Mind maps are visual and you can begin to see the connections of meaning between ideas. This is better than an information hierarchy within a metal filing cabinet or the digitized version of folders and files in your software.
The basic mind map described above, though, is still an information hierarchy.
The human mind will never be replicated by technology. But there are now tools to help us organize our thoughts and resources. And the key is to organize and visualize in a way that more closely aligns with how we naturally think.
Instead of organizing and visualizing our thoughts in hierarchies with sub-categories, if we could organize our thoughts in a more connections-based way, it will more closely harmonize with our thinking.
It is more like a webbing of connectivity.
This is what we see in ecosystems, the physical makeup of our bodies, and of course our brains. As we organize and visualize our thought in this way, it will generate more creative thinking than we could have imagined.
A more dynamic mind mapping software will visually/digitally reflect the connections and webbing in our thinking. It provides external support to what is going on in our brains. And it will create connections and pathways to the digital files we use.
It could provide new levels of self-discovery and insight, helping us to get our thought structure in shape. And it’s way more stimulating than digging through file folders, either paper or digital.
Take a look at the free version of Personal Brain. You can use it as a tool for blogging, research, articles, and books as well as for personal organization and task/project management and more. There are other mind mapping software programs too.
Mind mapping which more closely resembles how we actually think is what we want. It can empower us to develop and organize our writing, taking it to a new level.
See ‘From Filing Cabinets to Digital Thought’ by Shelley Hayduk in The Atlantic.