Kia Ora Friend,

A few days ago, I was pleasantly surprised when my close friend and reader of this newsletter messaged me saying they are managing a 90% plant based diet. This is an amazing feat. Thank you for sharing and I want to congratulate you (I hope this is okay). If you are wondering what this is about, this is in relation to last week's newsletter, where we talked about Food Rules by Micheal Pollan.

In this week's edition, we are going to look into unblocking our writing. Travelling back in time again... a few weeks ago, I was talking to a friend about writing and getting ideas out there.

Putting our ideas out there, for strangers to judge, is daunting. There are significant road blocks in the way and they can be boiled down to three key points:

1. Unblocking our mind,

2. Running out of ideas, and

3. Problematic perfectionism

We've touched on this topic recently — about the benefits of writing, but these blocks are worth mentioning again.

Unblocking our mind

We all have the ability to write. It's all in us. We just need to unblock our mind to get thoughts to words.

A simple trick is to look at the mind as two parts: creative and critical. The creative mind is what produces the words from ideas. The critical mind judges the words written. Both sides of the mind have their place, but when they work at the wrong time is when it causes a problem.

In the beginning, we want the creative mind to work — to get the words out. Later, the critical mind comes in to make the words sound better.

The problems comes when the critical mind works in place of the creative. Imagine sitting down and not being able to write a single sentence, because we think everything we say is bad.

The remedy is to think: this is just a draft so what we're going to write is bad and wrong; all we need to do is just put the words on the page. When we start writing, don't worry if the sentence are grammatically incorrect, or if there are spelling mistakes, or if the ideas do not sound 'right'. What matters is getting it out. Leave the editing for later on.

Like everything, this requires practice.

Running out of ideas

When committing to writing once a week, coming up with even on idea is a struggle. The mistake made is sitting in a room early in the morning, expecting the ideas to simply appear. Instead, ideas turn up almost unexpectedly or usually when we are doing a monotonous task.

When we're in the shower, when we're ironing our clothes before work, when you do plain boring tasks, the ideas come.

The mind is great at creating ideas. Unfortunately, the mind is not so great at remembering those ideas. That great idea we thought about last night might be gone when it comes to writing about it the next morning.

For those eureka moments, capture it immediately. We can do this by carrying around a notebook or having a note-taking app on our phones.

When it finally comes time to write, we will have a steady stock of captured ideas — ready to be written.

Problematic perfectionism

Your article has to be just 'good enough'.

Even if someone else has written about your topic before, this doesn't matter. Since there is already Coca-Cola, should Pepsi stop making drinks?

Think you are writing to one person. When Tim Ferris wrote the 4-Hour Work Week, instead of tailoring a book to fit an entire audience, he simply opened up an email draft. In the 'To' box, he put his two close friends and started writing. In reality, writing that pleases everyone is overwhelming. Writing to one or a couple simplifies things.

If we are committed to writing once a week, we can always use the next writing opportunity to get better based on the feedback received from the current.

With small improvements, we may not see change in the short term. But over time, these small increments will compound to huge improvements in our writing.

All we need to do is turn up and publish.

Conclusion

Writing has a number of roadblocks. We can employ some strategies to get over the hurdles of creating written content.

Unblock our minds by focusing on using the creative brain to get the thoughts into words. Then, use our critical mind to rework our written draft.

Carry a notebook or have a note-taking app handy to capture ideas wherever and whenever. This will ensure we do not run out of ideas to write about.

Finally, we can beat perfectionism by thinking 'good enough' and committing to publish once a week.

So, what's stopping you from writing?

I hope you find these tips useful. If you did, please let me know or forward this on to family and friends so they can find it useful too.

Thanks for reading and all the best for the week ahead.

Mā te wā,

Shivan :)

My Favourite Things

1. Podcast The Second Brain Podcast — Released in a seasonal basis, hosts Tiago Forte and David Perrell discuss the concept of the 'Second Brain'. The 'Second Brain' is a trusted location, where we can capture and store ideas for our future selves to refer back. For a creative, the importance of this can be explained by analogy: holding onto ideas in memory is like we are carrying a bags of groceries and trying to cook a meal at the same time. It's not possible. Our mind is good for creation and not for storing ideas. Offloading ideas to our 'Second Brain', leaves our mind free to create. This has been especially useful given the topic of this newsletter, and if we are creating content online.

2. Challenge #66DaysOfData — Introduced by Ken Jee, this challenge involves doing at least 5 minutes of something data related everyday. When I say 'data related', I'm talking about skills related to data science. This can include programming skills involved for wrangling and interpreting data. "The most world's most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data". Follow my progress on Linkedin and Twitter.

3. Podcast Kwik Brain 214: SIX Things to Stop Doing in 2021 — Of the six things Jim Kwik listed for us to stop doing, the one that resonated with me the most was: "stop saying you're busy". Saying we are busy will unconsciously make our mind look for more meaningless work to do. The goal is not to burn out with having so much to do. The goal is to follow life by our values. We end of burning out because we do so little of what makes us feel alive.

Video

Blog Post

How Writing Benefits You, How to Get Started and Keep Going — shivansivakumaran.com Writing is a useful skill. Effective communication requires good writing. This benefits the readers but also benefits the writer in the long term.

Kindle Highlight of the Week

If your reputation can’t absorb a few blows, it wasn’t worth anything in the first place.

Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy