All of us should dig down and take a hard, nonjudgmental look at what makes us tick. No use beating yourself up over your “flaws”. Turn them into positives.

Tapping into your personal motivators is one of the best ways to get something accomplished.

You must be reading our minds. Everything you said in this latest post SCREAMS Credibility … as usual.

Sid

Great insights.

I just realized that everything must start the mind first before its physical appearance.

This aspect of visualizing success is critical.

If you can’t see your copy being a winner in your mind then it is unlikely it will.

You simply can’t get what you don’t believe in.

Thanks for reminding us this Clayton.

James Abugah

In 1989, I took on a project of maintaining, updating, and improving the reference manual for my employer’s version of the Unix computer operating system. The last edition I worked on in 1992, after expanding and improving it into what I think was the best manual of its kind in the industry, it was a 3000-page, 3-volume tome.

But I never looked at it as a 3000-page manual. It was a collection of 1453 little manuals of 1 to 30 pages or so, each. And I wrote a computer program that pulled each of those files from a source-code-control repository and built the entire printed and online versions in a few minutes, including typesetting files.

Producing 3000 pages of camera-ready art took less than 4 hours. The job took 30 hours per week without breaking a sweat. But when the job was relocated in the company, it took 10 engineers to replace me because they didn’t use the
principles you lay out in your excellent treatise.

I used the same tactics in building online help systems for nearly 7 years. Top quality content with high usability. I could keep up with 22 staff engineers writing the software, working less than an average of 4 hours per day. But when I left, it took 3 full-time people to do the same job.

As I was reading your narrative, I found myself looking back at those years and discovering anew — you hit it dead-on. Those are principles that actually ***WORK***.

And anyone can do it. The secret is in how you think.

When asked how I could do so much, I always said, “The key to personal productivity is aggressive personal laziness. Allow me to explain: Never do anything the hard way if you can find an easier way to do it *better*.”

They still didn’t get it.

Another productivity no-brainer: If you don’t touch type at least 50 words per minute, take some time and LEARN. I clocked myself a few days ago at 77. Jack (John) Forde says he can hit over 90. It’s one of the biggest productivity enhancers I know of.

When I’m acutally writing, I probably run closer to 60-65 wpm. And I do a bit of editing as I go (fixing typos). I don’t use Word and I don’t use spell-check. I use the Unix “Vi” (actually the newer “vim” editor) that is available for PCs. I wrote most of “The Ultimate Guide TO The Vi and Ex Text Editors” manual still available on Amazon. Vim’s a real barn burner if you want just straight text without the garbage of Word, et al. Again, it’s about productivity.

I use it to write CSS and XHTML web pages from scratch.

And everything else I write when I can.

I use Ubuntu Linux, but Vim is available for PC Windows, and I presume also Apple/Mac.

Clarke

Excellent Tips to streamline my day…

Especially like the flow thing!

Here’s a question for you, while I have the “top of the comments” slot: How do you know when you’re done researching and ready to write?

I ask because it’s a question I get all the time, and I can only reply with something vague about a gut feeling that the “pig of proof” is choking at the trough.

Even then, I end up throwing away at least as many pages of proof as I keep in the final draft, simply because what goes in feels stronger or more original than what I dump.

But high risk is always there of falling in love with all the stats, the studies, the charts, and the rest… until you’ve over-provided. I’d love to find some more tangible way to describe the saturation point for others who ask me.

And maybe, occasionally, to remind myself that I’ve already reached it.

John F.

Your clarity of expression coupled with those
little nuggets of humor are truly delightful.

Do you know… if you carry on like this, you
could be on TV… Hmmm! Please stick with the
day job.

A million thanks.

Geoff

Pam