Day 3 | Daily Dose of learning
This project is inspired by the ‘100-day project’, a challenge consisting of committing to doing an activity everyday for 100 days.
I have decided to write about one thing I learn everyday for the next 30 days. This can be a skill, a deep concept to elaborate on, or a mere life lesson that made me become aware of something I consider relevant.
The decision is based on the belief that “we are what we repeatedly do”, as Valentin Perez put it.
Writing Effectively | Leadership Lab
If you are writing following rules and striving to 'convey' a message, then you are doing it wrong. If your goal when you are writing is to try to bring up a new idea, then you are doing it wrong. These are some of the ideas presented by prof. Larry McEnerney in this lesson (available on Youtube).
The lesson is mainly pointed at graduate students and focuses on how to write in the academic world. However, I believe it has many interesting points. Here are some concepts I reckon are key take aways from the lesson.
Write for the reader: when writing, you do not want to think about how you can best convey your idea. Rather, understand the type and community of readers that will be exposed to your writing.
Produce something VALUABLE: this is a core concept stressed many times during the lesson by McEnerney. You write (especially in the academic world) to add value. You do not write to please the teachers (like we are trained to do in school generally). Nevertheless, the content must be valuable to the niche readers/researchers who are interested in that, not to everybody.
Writing is not about communicating your ideas, it is about changing readers' ideas. Which goes back to 'write for the reader' and the key idea of value.
Transition words such as but, and, because, unless, nevertheless help improve the organization and clarity of the content produced (content must be organized, clear, persuasive, valuable).
Start writing by stating a problem and then elaborating a valuable solution. Which is different from giving the 'background' and conveying a thesis. No one cares about the background and your internal drive that pushed you to write the piece at hand. Be persuasive, clear, valuable.
Link to video.