My wife recently defined herself as a songwriter, and once she owned up to it, things started to change. She met one of the main songwriters in our area and started going to local cowriting meetups (where she writes songs with others) as well as songwriter training and networking groups.
At one of the training sessions the presenter said you should do a brain dump, or brainstorm, every morning for about 10 minutes. Just write whatever comes to mind.
If you are an undisciplined person (I think just about everyone is), this can be hard. You’ll do it for a morning or two, and then have a long list of reasons why you don’t do it after that.
I’ve seen my wife try to do this every morning… some mornings seem productive, others seem like a waste of time.
But there is a lot of value in this daily exercise… so much value that I thought I’d share the idea with you. Here’s what I think about this exercise:
- Discipline is never a bad thing. I have a friend who decided to discipline himself to do something for 30 day periods. One month he was a vegetarian. One period he had a goal to walk five miles every day. While he might not have seen complete results of any given activity, he learned a lot about himself. For one thing, he learned he can do “hard” things, because he tried, and did it!
- Writing SKILLS can, and need to be, improved. Some people naturally write well, and they have a gift or talent. The rest of us develop our skills. It’s like building a muscle – you don’t start one day, and the next day you are buff. It’s something that happens over time. Improvement is a slow, gradual process. 10 minutes a day doesn’t seem like much but if you do it consistently your skills with words, sentence structure, grammar, etc. can evolve and improve. I have seen this as a blogger, having blogged almost every work day for the last five years. The early posts were not that good, but they have gotten better over the years. What did I do? I wrote my posts every morning.
- Writing is meditative. When you write what’s on your mind you learn about yourself. You can adjust your thinking, or you can discover issues. It’s almost like having a friend to talk to… sharing your thoughts can be highly beneficial, especially if you are in a lonely job search.
I challenge you to do this every morning for a week (then a month, then a year). Improve your communication skills. Get some of the thoughts and feelings out. Capture ideas on paper so you can act on them, or move on to other things.
If you try something like this I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the unintended benefits you reap 🙂
