FOT Forum
FOT Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: JustNicole on February 09, 2011, 10:51:49 PM
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Tom wrote these down on his Twitter account today. Posting them here for posterity:
"Here's some advice for everybody trying to Get Things Done creatively. If you do these two things you'll tilt the odds your way BIG TIME:
1) DO THE WORK. Can you look yourself in the mirror at the end of the day and say that you did the best you could?
2) BE THE BEST POSSIBLE VERSION OF YOURSELF. Don't shortchange yourself or pull your punches b/c of some internal negative voice!
And one more: 3) WRITE DOWN WHAT YOU NEED TO DO. It helps. Do those three things and you'll be more alright than not.
And that concludes my advice. I am not Tony Robbins and I am not Kyle Cease because I am both of normal height and I am funny. And I only said those things because someone writes me LITERALLY EVERY DAY for advice on how to get things done. And that's all *I* do!"
@scharpling
2/9/11
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I deal with people at uni at the moment who should really take this advice to heart.
Currently everybody is writing their bachelor thesis and one dude really only does a half a page a day of 30-40 required. He just does not want to do the work.
Not totally unrelated, here are some pictures i made for my bachelor thesis:
(http://img17.imagevenue.com/loc51/th_33845_advertisingParabola_122_51lo.jpg) (http://img17.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=33845_advertisingParabola_122_51lo.jpg) (http://img280.imagevenue.com/loc156/th_33846_gewinnunterschied_122_156lo.jpg) (http://img280.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=33846_gewinnunterschied_122_156lo.jpg) (http://img269.imagevenue.com/loc591/th_33847_Parabola_122_591lo.jpg) (http://img269.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=33847_Parabola_122_591lo.jpg)
(http://img134.imagevenue.com/loc226/th_33848_separating_eq_122_226lo.jpg) (http://img134.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=33848_separating_eq_122_226lo.jpg)
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If you just wrote half a page a day of anything, though, you'd have a nice short book every year.
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Yeah, 30-40 pages a day?!
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I like this site, http://dailyroutines.typepad.com/, (http://dailyroutines.typepad.com/,) because it talks about how the most prolific writers just wrote a little bit each day (Wodehouse, Flaubert).
That's been my resolution for this year, although instead of comic novels I have to write whitepapers on usage-based broadband pricing.
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Yeah, 30-40 pages a day?!
I suspect a total of thirty or forty need to be written, which, at half a page a day, would take two to three months, not a problem if one started early enough, but most students in my experience are champion procrastinators.
A half-page per day is a perfectly reasonable output for a writer of books, by the way.
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You're probably right, it just sounded like the required amount of pages produced per day was 30-40. Which obviously would be insane unless we're talking about The Stephen King University of Maine or something.
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When he posted that advice, I immediately thought of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way (http://www.amazon.com/Artists-Way-Spiritual-Creativity-Workbook/dp/0874776945), which is a fantastic tool in helping to unblock/ discover your creativity.
Personally, I believe in the 'One Hour/ One Year rule'. If you have a goal, and you spend one hour a day (undisturbed - no tv/ radio/ net) working towards realizing that goal, in a year's time you will have achieved it or made major steps towards achieving it.
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KtB, re: The Artist's Way, I totally agree.
effect: What is your thesis on?
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I deal with people at uni at the moment who should really take this advice to heart.
Currently everybody is writing their bachelor thesis and one dude really only does a half a page a day of 30-40 required. He just does not want to do the work.
Not totally unrelated, here are some pictures i made for my bachelor thesis:
(http://img17.imagevenue.com/loc51/th_33845_advertisingParabola_122_51lo.jpg) (http://img17.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=33845_advertisingParabola_122_51lo.jpg) (http://img280.imagevenue.com/loc156/th_33846_gewinnunterschied_122_156lo.jpg) (http://img280.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=33846_gewinnunterschied_122_156lo.jpg) (http://img269.imagevenue.com/loc591/th_33847_Parabola_122_591lo.jpg) (http://img269.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=33847_Parabola_122_591lo.jpg)
(http://img134.imagevenue.com/loc226/th_33848_separating_eq_122_226lo.jpg) (http://img134.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=33848_separating_eq_122_226lo.jpg)
I am smitten
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Stephen King in "On Writing" talks about how he has a 10 page per day goal. He also talks about how he was so f'd up in the 80s he doesn't remember writing Cujo.
I'd love a self-help/writers guide book by Scharpling.
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(This is kind of off-topic, but when I hear people talking up The Artist's Way, I always make a point of recommending a lesser-known book that I much prefer: Fearless Creating by Eric Maisel. For my taste, Cameron's book is too desperately spiritual and recovery-groupy; the exercises aren't consistently well-designed, and she seems to assume that the one and only block creative people suffer from is the memory of being criticized, if not abused, in childhood. I find Maisel both more psychologically acute and more practical. Another very practical-minded book about achieving things is The Magic Lamp: Goal Setting for People Who Hate Setting Goals by Keith Ellis.)
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Yeah, 30-40 pages a day?!
Maybe these are 'Ghostface Killah Book' pages.
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When speaking of these 'page(s) a day goals', are we factoring in time spent later on re-writing and editing, or are we just saying I look down at the end of the day and there's a half page worth of text added to what I had yesterday?
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Also, do blogs and Twitter count as writing?
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1. I am terribly sorry to have been so inaccurate: 30-40 in total in a time frame of a good two months
2. My thesis is about high and declining prices signalling objective product quality: This is the paper i was discussing and augmenting: ftp://ftp.cba.uri.edu/Classes/DellaBitta/PRICE%20SEMINAR%20-%20BUS%20610/ARTICLES%20V1/HIGH%20&%20DECLINING%20PRICES%20SIGNAL%20QUALITY.pdf
3.I knew you would like it Dave!
:D
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Safari can’t find the server.
Safari can’t open the page “http://ftp://ftp.cba.uri.edu/Classes/DellaBitta/PRICE%20SEMINAR%20-%20BUS%20610/ARTICLES%20V1/HIGH%20&%20DECLINING%20PRICES%20SIGNAL%20QUALITY.pdf” because Safari can’t find the server “ftp”.
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remove the "http://"
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.5 pages per * 60 days = 30 pages.
your colleague may have a future in project management.
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.5 pages per * 60 days = 30 pages.
your colleague may have a future in project management.
i have a slightly different equation
2 weeks= understanding the stuff
2 weeks = acquiring all necessary quotations/ doing your own model/ acquiring everything needed for the writing process
2 weeks = writing it all down
2 weeks = frantically editing and proofing the document
just in time to hand it in
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In the interest of dispersing Tom's advice so he doesn't have to give it to millions of people that bother him individually, he once gave me a very good one. When I told him I tried to set an entire day a week aside to write, he suggested that instead I set aside 15 minutes a day. If you're on a role, keep writing. If not, don't. Works better than torturing yourself all day if it ain't happening.
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There's some crazy college class I read about years ago, which I think was in the 1950s. Maybe the University of Chicago or something. Anyway, you had to write massive amounts all the time, as a kind of endurance test. Something like 50 to 100 pages per week. Anyone know what I'm talking about?
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You're probably right, it just sounded like the required amount of pages produced per day was 30-40. Which obviously would be insane unless we're talking about The Stephen King University of Maine or something.
Sir, my eldest sister is a graduate of that fine institution, where she and I briefly had a radio show. How dare you!
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Stephen King in "On Writing" talks about how he has a 10 page per day goal. He also talks about how he was so f'd up in the 80s he doesn't remember writing Cujo.
It isn't hard to produce ten pages a day if you never edit yourself. Time was, I longed to get my hands on Stephen King's manuscripts, 'cause I knew I'd be able to trim any one of 'em in half.
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Post #3 for good measure:
.5 pages per * 60 days = 30 pages.
your colleague may have a future in project management.
i have a slightly different equation
2 weeks= understanding the stuff
2 weeks = acquiring all necessary quotations/ doing your own model/ acquiring everything needed for the writing process
2 weeks = writing it all down
2 weeks = frantically editing and proofing the document
just in time to hand it in
Here's how I wrote the long paper I had to produce for an independent study in French lit that I took on in my last year of college to avoid taking a class:
1. No work for three months, bar weekly sessions I spent chatting with my advisor.
2. Two Saturday afternoons in the library, during which I skimmed books on and by the poets about I was writing (Jules Laforgue and Henri Michaux) and jotted down quotations that caught my eye.
3. One weekend writing the paper (in French) one day and typing (no computers in them thar days) a fair copy the next.
4. One hour on Monday inserting accents and turning in forty-page paper.
I was a very lazy student.
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Also, do blogs and Twitter count as writing?
They better