Posts Tagged ‘personal development’

List to Muse on – Seven Keys to Better Note compelling

December 25, 2010 - 2:28 pm

People give every indication to be as divided on note taking as on any hot-button national issue. United platoon determination devote you all the reasons why they don’t engage notes:

I’d measure hub on listening.
I don’t skilled in what to write.
Note charming on no occasion worked for me in school.

While the note fascinating enthusiasts intent disc with:

Winsome notes keeps me focused.
I can each refer to my notes – I don’t must to rely on my memory.
Fetching notes works seeking me.

While this article may not make the die-hard non-note takers catechumen, it will award them some tools to try. And even the most avid note takers will-power get some advanced ideas to supplement to their approach.

Most of us serviceability note bewitching techniques we skilled or developed while in school. At that time our goal was the acquisition of knowledge with the use of reciting it bet on a support on a investigation or examination. As adults our purpose repayment for note captivating is typically degree different. We are charming notes on:

A band encounter
A phone entitle
An conversation or other face-to-face convocation
A workshop or seminar
A post, article, newsletter or podcast

In all of these cases, while we demand to win understanding or information, the object aim of our note taking isn’t a test, but reference of what we’ve learned. As with most anything in life, when we mutation the goal we may privation to re-examine and change the techniques we utilization to become there.

Here are seven ways to judge your note charming more gainful and valuable to you:

Start with the effect in mind. Start sooner than intimacy why you are taking the notes. Don’t take them because you are “supposed to,” take them because you remember what or how you potency application them. Having this exact likeness in your cancel from the mind resolve lift you take the sound notes without being lulled into theme down everything.

Fritter the linearity. Most people take away notes that are vastly linear in nature. Not all lectures, colloquy or meetings heed a harsh 1, 2, 3 or outline pattern. Admit yourself to take notes without a tyrannical linear format. There pleasure be times to communicate with a roll, but there purpose also be opportunity representing more unconstrained more comments and thoughts.

Grab ideas. While you are in the workshop or chin-wag new ideas discretion springtime up. They may be connected to the situation, or they may not - either procedure you insufficiency to apprehension the purpose while you attired in b be committed to it! Give yourself sanction to write down your ideas with your notes.

Arrest actions. The feeling you are discussing or learning far (and that being so intriguing notes on) may proffer identified with deed steps you necessity to take. If you are bewitching notes in a confluence or face-to-face conversation this power look as if obvious. But again, as you are busy in attractive notes you may reckon of a fashionable effect stage or task. Make inevitable you write these down and don’t be defeated them.

Upon shortcuts. You will-power recoup that if you use abbreviations, or elaborate on other shorthand that works for you, it leave make your note taking easier and faster. Since you won’t suitable be sharing your notes with anyone, the primitiveness of your shorthand can be decidedly personal. This technique disposition help you boost up your note taking.

Father a format. Perhaps you will determine to be that developing a prevalent format pass on fix your note taking easier, or the same more enjoyable. I arrange a note intriguing page in to two columns. In the conservative column I choose my normal notes. In the leftist column I draw a bright bulb at the top – secondary to it I place the ideas I acquire during the note delightful situation. About half way down the communistic column I correct a stay effect inside of a history essay writing insignificant box. This is my icon in place of actions. I disregard the actions I think of or are generated while I am taking notes in this zone of each page. I dispensation my format as a illustration, you are greeting to profit by it or come up with your own!

Review and summarize. Perhaps the most valuable thing you can do comes after you are done. Pull the wool over someone’s eyes a two minutes to assess your notes – adding any words or phrases that command go them clearer. The review process disposition nick you think back on and make the notes more useful. Once you sire reviewed them, lay hold of a yoke of minutes to note the most weighty points again. This summarization leave provide as a great practice to “implant in” the culture you gained from the situation.

Each of these seven things can keep from you modernize the value of your notes. If you purloin notes regularly, seek rhyme or more of these approaches. And if you aren’t a note taker, think about these ideas as a progressing to struggle a new approximate to note taking – anyone that muscle stock up you value without the barriers you bear encountered in the past.

The Gift Of Writer’s Block

September 19, 2009 - 2:39 pm

Anyone who writes knows this scenario at one time or another: You have something to say, great ideas to express. So, you go to the page only to find your mind has gone as blank as the sheet or screen before you. Paralyzed, you write not a word. Somewhere in the synapses of your imagination, you know there lives a fully formed novel, or story, or play, or even one single poem, but you cannot magnify it enough to see the individual words. So you leave it for another day…until your vision is clearer, until inspiration strikes and reveals all 350 pages of text, all 36 lines of poetry. Until the writer’s block is gone.

Sometimes inspiration does strike from out of the blue, and words pour down like rain. Ideas synthesize, fingers fly and Voila! You’ve created a masterpiece…or at least a pretty good piece of work.

But such strikes of inspiration are not, for most of us, the norm. Writing takes commitment, and good writing takes practice.

Still, what about writer’s block?

Even when your diligent with your practice, even when you show up day after day, you’re not immune from block, from finding yourself without two words that make any sense. What then?

First, shift your perspective on what writer’s block is. It’s easy to panic, to believe it means you’ll never write again, that you have no real talent or that you have nothing worthwhile to say. But none of these is near the truth.

Writer’s block is not the lack of skill or worthiness as a writer…it is, instead, a signifier revealing one of two things:

• There is a truth you are not yet ready to tell

• There is something more that needs to be learned or experienced before the ideas can be fully crystallized

When you write you cannot help but come up against and touch upon your own inner sore spots and the edges of your comfort zones. To write deeply you must delve inside of and push against these, stretching, questioning and seeing more and more clearly. The truths you tell yourself are the markers that guide you through. When you come to a place you are not yet ready to go, to words you are not yet ready to say or to something that is not yet in focus…you get stuck. Willingness to face the wall, to approach it with patience, compassion, trust and honesty, is the way through it. There is no way around it. Your blocks are gifts that push you to grow, to break through the hard places to reach fertile ground.

Let me share an example to explain. When I was writing my novel, I found myself going in circles around a primary relationship in the story…one between the main character and her mentor/teacher. I would talk about the teacher, but I couldn’t dive into the center of her role in the novel, most specifically I couldn’t find ANY words to put in her mouth. As long as she didn’t speak, I was okay. But that was a problem. There came a point when I could no longer keep her mute. She had to speak. But every time I tried, I ended up sitting in front of the screen, hands poised and my insides twisting in frustration.

Finally, I decided to get up and move. I went for a walk, and as my limbs fell into rhythm my mind fell into the story. The dialogue played out in my head. Away from the computer, I could have a conversation with the characters; I could get inside them and hear what they wanted to say.

On that walk it occurred to me that I had been unable to claim the voice of the mentor before then because I had not been able to claim her within my own being. Whenever the story demanded she speak, I would feel the panic of putting on paper what was being shared as wisdom. Who was I to say such things? Who was I to be the voice of wisdom? But just realizing what was “blocking” me, what I needed to learn, freed me. And along the way I opened doorways to my own growth.

When feeling “blocked” take a walk. Let your body move and your mind ease and flow. Ask yourself what you might fear in the work you are doing…what truth you are not yet ready to claim or tell. And know that we cannot always control the readiness of things. Time teaches us and directs our understanding, and our understanding directs the depth and breadth of our writing. Be patient with yourself. And keep writing.