The Power of Writing

Writing things down does not only ‘download’ or should I say ‘unload’ your seemingly disparate thoughts into perspective but it also clarifies your thoughts — most importantly — to yourself; thus structured and logical analysis can be thoroughly performed in a relatively easier way to that idea inside your head.

A visual person might argue on this point and tries to prove that ‘images’ brings better perspective. Well, let’s not debate about that — at least for now.

Texts also capture your thoughts instantanously. You never know when you can get distracted and lose your train of thought while you are trying to solve great problems; or when a ‘light bulb’ moment strikes you.

So, my two cents at the end of this 3rd week of October 2012 is that I need to write things down more frequently to be more productive as well as creative.

On Habit

Everybody is talking about habit these days.

At work, my team and I are coordinating an initiative to formulate the ideal habit at branch level of our organization.

Personally, I have been trying to build a daily habit of writing a blog per day as well as other habits:  waking up early, writing to do list, exercise, drinking enough water, spending quality time with family etc.

As any readers might observe, my attempt to build daily writing habit had seen some of its successful streaks as well as its ‘dry spell’.

Creating good habit is not as easy as it might seem. Once you lose the momentum, the inertia is really taking over and even taking stronghold inside yourself and beating the deep-seated passion. Sounds like a hyperbolic sentence? Well, I simply cannot describe – in better way – what sort of forces that can defeat such great passion.

The more interesting question would be: what brought me to re-live the ‘writing’ habit again?

As I have written in my previous blog, ‘the universe’ has its way of reminding you to stay ‘on course’.

This morning, during our regular weekly meeting, we talked about our ‘working behavior’ and how that will shape us in 10 years time.

I thought to myself: “Hey, I started this blog in November last year — it will be one year by next month!” I might not be JK Rowling or JRR Tolkien when I turn 43 (now, you can guess my age :)) but I surely have a rich ‘story’ of my personal as well as professional ‘journey’ by then — provided that I continue this ‘writing habit’.

Here’s to writing.

Enjoy your weekend folks!

 

When You Really Want Something (The Universe Will Remind You To Chase It)

I want to write a book. A how-to-book, an e-book.. A book.

Compilation of thoughts and experience that will help others to chase their dreams (or a how-not-to guideline so that the readers can avoid some possible pitfalls).

A few months back, I met a long time friend/ex colleague when I was waiting for my morning train to work.

What do you know?

This guy, who shares the same passion for ‘amassing knowledge’ (read: reading), is also thinking about pouring his thoughts into writing.

So, we embarked in a journey to start to write an e-book — for a start.

The pace of the start was ‘break neck’ — to say the least.

We secured a website, created a twitter account and (of course) a wordpress account as channel to establish our presence to our targeted audience. The thinking goes: by the time we launch / release the e-book, our targeted audience will already be familiar with our work/writing. All those setting-up activities were completed in a single day — during our daily activities: work, family, running race preparation etc. Our day job trains us so well to be an efficient ‘tasker’.

Follow through

This is the hardest part!

We managed to ‘procastinate’ the actual work of writing by focusing first in ‘planning stage’. After all, you cannot simply jump head first to an unknown ‘water’.

This is where my expertise in project management came in handy.

An efficient project manager’s main concern is delivering the goals with the available resources.

Our main resources is simply our ‘free time’. Well, there’s not much ‘free time’ to begin with. So instead we tried to list down the required tasks and activities to write a book: research (primary and secondary), writing first draft, finalizing draft (and many other creative activities in between these main tasks).

How are we doing so far with this project?

Well.. If you look at the GANTT Chart of the project then you will get the impression that it is very much ‘on track’.

I know that we can’t be too ‘ambitious’ in driving this project with the busy schedule.

But, if we are talking about the ‘soul’ of the project then we know that it’s a ‘zombie’.  Soul-less.

—

The universe has a ‘funny’ way of telling you or reminding you of your dreams and ambitions.

During a casual chat with a consultant, I found out that she is going to launch her book.

Huh? Releasing a book? I’d like to do that too.. Launching the e-book.

I also found out that writing a book is not an easy undertaking. It took 2 and a half year for the consultant to (finally) launch the book.

—

A breath of fresh air…

Yes, the casual chat was definitely a breath of fresh air which will ‘jumpstart’ this ‘zombie’ project.