Last week’s post about The Key to Writing Faster provoked a lot of feedback. In fact, Jeffrey Wyant, serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Coast to Coast Fulfillment, Inc. in West Greenwich, Rhode Island submitted a great guest post that I wanted to share with you.
Guest post: JEFFREY WYANT -- Writing is all
about putting one’s thinking and imagination down in a form that can be passed
on to other people over time. Without writing, we’d still be living in caves. You
need the thought first, but the exercise of writing your thoughts down forces you
to develop the thought first and then work out the details so others can understand.
As the old saying goes: “Your thoughts are only as
good as your ability to express them.” Here are two more corollaries
to that rule:
- If you want to learn
something, teach something.
- If you want to know about
a subject, write a book about it.
Following these corollaries forces you to clarify your thoughts,
to fill in the blanks and to communicate what you know in a form that can be
absorbed and acted upon by others.
Einstein’s greatest achievements did not occur in physical
laboratories, but in laboratories of the mind. Did you know his renowned theory
of relatively came from a “thought experiment,” (a what-if scenario) he conducted
in his mind? Then Einstein had to write it down in order to remember it
and to enable others to reflect and act upon it.
Many Eureka moments happen when previously-muddled,
but nagging, thoughts coalesce into a new idea, a cogent breakthrough. Some of
us experience these moments in the shower. Biochemist Kary Mullins got
the idea for the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) while driving through a
California forest at late at night. As soon as he could, Mullins wrote down
what came to him during that late-night drive so he could test and refine his
theory.
Mullins’ “ideation” process led to a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for what became a
crucial part of the method enabling the development of the Covid-19 vaccines
and many other DNA/RNA-based medical treatments. But none of that would have
happened if Mullins didn’t take the time to write down his initial thoughts.
Writer Gabriel García Márquez was struggling for years to convey
what he regarded as powerful psychological and philosophical truths in a nascent
novel. As with Mullins, inspiration took place in the car for Marquez while he
was driving his family to a vacation destination. During the long drive, Marquez
finally figured out in his mind how to portray the fictional town of Macondo
and the multi-generational lives of the Buendía family. He immediately
cancelled the vacation, returned home, and wrote “One Hundred Years of
Solitude,” which has sold over 50 million copies in 46 languages. Márquez won
the Nobel Prize in literature 1982 But that never would have happened if he
hadn’t freed up his mind on a long drive and immediately written down his early
thoughts!
Writing as a tool for innovation
I’m not worried about winning Nobel Prizes, but I can’t tell
you how empowering it is to get all the random thoughts in my brain, written
down and loosely organized and codified. Somehow writing things down make them
real. I have taken some writing classes to improve the process, but the big
lesson I keep getting is JUST KEEP WRITING…Write…anything. The
eye-hand-mind coordination itself helps develop more neural pathways, which
become stronger, faster and more resilient over time. Over time, you learn
to string the disparate “monkey-mind” thoughts together into a compelling story.
I spend a lot of time in entrepreneurial circles. It’s often
said that that business plans are simply dreams put forth for others to
read and buy into. One of Elon Musk’s dreams is to colonize Mars. His company, SpaceX,
is the path to that dream. But to go on that path Musk had to learn to read
Russian books and papers on rockets. Then he had to articulate in writing how
his dream could become a reality.
We all have dreams and great ideas. But the only way to make those dreams and
ideas actionable for others is to capture them in writing and then describe for
others to take to make them a reality.
Conclusion
I am a firm believer in practice, practice, practice — which
is why I am writing this to you. It’s good practice for me, but I hope it
contains some nuggets that can add a bright spot to your day.
What’s your take? Jeff and I’d like to hear from you.
#practicemanagement,
#betterwriting, #ElonMusk, #SpaceX, #innovation
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