Posts tagged books books

Welcome to a five minute presentation by LearningCreators.  This is the first of three presentations on this topic.  So what’s the topic?

It’s probably the most common problem my customers complain of … Finding the time to write.

Everyone has a slightly different cut on the problem … “I don’t have the time to write because I work all day” or “I have to get my kids to school and soccer and football and … ” or maybe it’s a matter of “I don’t want to start because I’m not sure people will want to read it”.

But there’s one common theme throughout this …

Excuses!

And that tells me there’s a problem.

You see there’s a problem with problem solving. And providing excuses is a symptom of that problem.

In order to solve any problem, you need to be solving the real problem. You need to solve the problem that’s underlying the stated problem.  You need to drive down to the core of the issue.

In North America especially, we have a tendency to state problems in terms of one particular solution.  And we have a tendency to focus on symptoms and panaceas rather than looking at actual causes and actual solutions.  But that doesn’t help to cure problems. In fact, it leaves us chasing solutions to one symptom after another.

And that means if you look around you’ll find all kinds of “solutions” to the time problem. Everyone has a solution to finding the time to write.

For some gurus it’s “Figure out why you want to do this and that’ll carry you through”.  All you need is to do is build up your desire.

And then there’s the new agey gurus “Visualize the result if you do it and magic will happen.” They believe that if you dream it hard enough the universe will just magically make it happen.

And then there’s always the disciplinarian in the bunch who says, “Shut up, sit down, write. And stop cryin’ about it.” They don’t exactly give you a lot of latitude in fixing the problem. But that’s okay ’cause they don’t exactly give you a solution either.

The problem with all those solutions is they don’t seem to work.

You try one solution after another and they just don’t sustain you. You still haven’t got the time to write.

So you go on and you try someone else who says basically the same thing in different words, and guess what. It still doesn’t work.

So you start thinking it’s your fault… or you give up entirely. Well, guess what?

It isn’t your fault.

You have a problem and no one has bothered to help you solve it. You need to know the real problem if you’re going to solve the problem. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

So what’s the real problem?

It’s simple.

You want to write a book or create a course or whatever … but … it never seems to happen.

Well duh … I know it sounds really silly and simplistic. That’s because it is.

No one said the problem had to be hard. It just has to be the real problem and not a symptom or a solution.

The problem isn’t that you don’t have the time. The problem is that you want to write a book or create a course and it isn’t happening.  You can’t seem to build the energy to start and finish it.

One potential solution is that you need to find the time. But it’s only one solution. And that means that even if you find the time you’ll may never actually finish your book. Why? Because you’ve fixed the symptom not the problem.

We need to get further in behind the problem . We need to explore the situation a little deeper.

It turns out that how much writing you do is a combination of five elements.

• Your desire to write
• The amount of time you spend
• How hard it is to write
• How quickly you can start
• How effective you are at writing

You can combine the last three together to make things a little bit easier to understand and work with.

We call the result the Work Equation.

The amount of work you get done is proportional to

• The effort involved in writing
• Your desire to write

And

• How much time you have to write

If you aren’t writing, you’ve allowed one of the elements to overload the function. Something — we don’t know what — is out of step with the rest of the function. The result is that you aren’t getting anything done.  And you aren’t going to get anything done until you get all the elements into alignment.

So what’s the solution?

Well that’s the topic of our next 5 minute presentation.  I hope you’ll join us again in for the next presentation. I hope you’ve found this presentation has helped you get a better handle on your own problems finding the time to write. And that you’ll join us for the rest of the presentations.

Next Session – Due Thursday!