Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Processing Exercise Week: Your Tapes

Writing for 15 minutes three times in a day should not be hard, right? In fact, it is not hard, unless there are factors that make it hard aside from the task (dah!). Too often, scholars attribute their difficulties to factors that are really not the most central to their success or lack therefore of in writing and producing. This is part of why I wanted you to try the exercises this week, to help you begin to explore the real reasons why you are not writing and producing as much as you wish. If the problem was time, then you should have been able to fit in some of the these exercises, as they really demanded very little time commitments. Some, I know, did demand a good deal.

Yet, time is rarely the factor. I know many of you believe it is; I piss of a good deal of people when I suggest that is not the true issue.

Yet, I was just in a video chat with a coaching client who wrote 500 words during a twenty minute block of our session. Yes, there are not finished words. Yes, she will need to engage in analytical writing, administrative writing, and finally editing to make it "work." It was productive though, and she did far more than she believed she could.

If you really want to thrive as a scholar, you need to start paying attention to your "tapes"; the cognitive message that interfere with your thriving. If you are starting to identify them, great. If not, go through this blogs' July and August posts, as you will identify many, and start learning strategies for conquering them. You can't merely label them as writer's block; this is too inelegant a concept and not really helpful.

You've got work to do on changing your tapes, your programming. If you don't do this work, you may be at risk of not having the kind of career you deserve to have.

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