Category: The Writing Process
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IESE Instagram Live: How Writing Helps your Career
This is the recording of a session I did yesterday with IESE Business School on the topic of writing as a tool to help your career. In this context, writing is not so much about writing for magazines or in a blog… but writing to set goals, to stay focussed, to identify what is important,…
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Use your Brain for Thinking, not for Remembering
Write stuff down. I say it over and over again. I repeat myself. My blog is an extension of my habit of writing down ideas. A short pencil is longer than the longest memory. “Writing is among the greatest inventions in human history, perhaps the greatest invention, since it made history possible. Yet it is…
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How to Improve your Clarity of Thought
“A problem well stated is a problem half solved” Charles Kettering The most read post ever on this blog is Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”. It shares the story of how Jeff Bezos banned powerpoint from management meetings at Amazon. His reason: “powerpoint is easy for the presenter and hard for the listener”. At Amazon,…
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How to write a book in spite of yourself
“It’s extremely difficult to do something big. I think setting out to do something small is easier and more likely to work.” Seth Godin If you are reading this, I will assume that you writing a book or are thinking about writing a book. What is holding you back? What obstacle sits between you and…
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22 Excuses that I use to not Do Important Work
Here are a few of the excuses I tell myself in order to procrastinate: They won’t let me I am too young I am too old I am only one person I don’t know enough I am not a guru This could be embarrassing This will be embarrassing This is too touchy-feely I won’t get…
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David Ogilvy: 10 tips on Writing Well
On September 7th, 1982, Ogilvy sent the following internal memo to all agency employees, titled “How to Write”: The better you write, the higher you go in Ogilvy & Mather. People who think well, write well. Woolly minded people write woolly memos, woolly letters and woolly speeches. Good writing is not a natural gift. You…
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Jim Collins on the Writing Process
My favourite business books include Jim Collin’s “Good to Great“. It is easy to read, simple but clear about the hard decisions that differentiate the great companies from the mediocre. His new book, “Great by Choice” is out now. Jim Collins is renowned as someone who has intense discipline in his life. I loved when…
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Chronic Partial Attention
In a recent article Tom Friedman of the New York Times ponders whether we have evolved from the Iron Age to the Industrial Age to the Information Age to the Age of Interruption, in which the “malady of modernity” is that we are now all afflicted with chronic multi-tasking and chronic partial attention induced by cell phones, email, the internet, handhelds,…
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13 ideas if you are thinking about blogging
Blog about what you are learning about, not what you are an expert in I think you should be blogging. I know you have something to say. Start Blogging Now! 13 “get-your-blog-going” thoughts from a conversation with Benedict on the road between Lausanne and Vevey this morning: Write about what you are learning about, not…
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6 Ways to get your Email Ignored
In 2010, 294 billion emails were sent per day for a total of 90 trillion in the full year. 1.9 billion users sent an email during 2010. The average business user in a 1,000 user organisation receives 110 emails per day (of which 13 are spam) and sends 36 emails. (source Radicati Group Email Statistics…