Refresher Content Writers

OUTLINE
§  Part 1: Time Management & Productivity
§  Part 2: Creative & Critical Thinking
§  Part 3: Best Practices

“"Time is a created thing. To say "I don't
have time" is to say "I don't want to."
- Lao Tzu
Time Management & Productivity

“I have to stay late at the office all the time to meet my quota”
“I try to write as fast as I can but there is too much distractions at work!”
“I have so much to do, yet so little time!”
“I can’t keep my attention on one thing for long enough”
“There’s always something urgent preventing me from doing any meaningful work!”

1-3-5 RULE
§  The 1-3-5 Rule is the next step from the “To-Do” List
§  Cooperate with procrastination: Admit that some tasks are much more pressing
than others.
§  Assume that on any given day you can accomplish one (1) big mission, (3) three
medium tasks, and five (5) small things
§  Focus strongly on getting your “1-3-5” done as best you can.
§  As your workday concludes, make the next day's 1-3-5.

1-3-5 RULE

URGENT/ IMPORTANT GRID
•  Managing time effectively, and achieving the things that you want to achieve,
means spending your time on things that are important and not just urgent.
•  Important activities have an outcome that leads to the achievement of your goals,
whether these are professional or personal.
•  Urgent activities demand immediate attention, and are often associated with the
achievement of someone else's needs or goals.
•  The Urgent/Important Grid helps you identify between important and urgent things;
it helps you think about your Priorities.

URGENT/ IMPORTANT GRID

POMODORO TECHNIQUE
•  A simple technique that involves breaking down activities into 25-minutes “focused
work” with breaks in-between.
•  Improves your concentration to accomplish tasks.
•  Boost motivation to achieve your goals.
•  Relieves anxiety / stress related to deadlines.
•  Track your activities to be able to refine your workflow and productivity.

POMODORO TECHNIQUE
1. Choose a task to be accomplished
2. Set the Pomodoro to 25 minutes
(the Pomodoro is the timer)
3. Work on the task until the
Pomodoro rings, then put a check
on your list.
4. Take a short break (5 minutes is
OK)
5. Every 4 Pomodoros take a longer
break

IF-THEN PLANNING
1. Always Have a Plan B
2. If X happens, then I will do Y.
3. IF-Then Planning enables you to
seize the critical moment, even
when you are busy doing other
things.
4. Lessen stress and frustrations
caused by unexpected or undesired
outcomes.

RECOMMENDED READING
§  1-3-5 Rule
http://www.thedailymuse.com/career/a-better-to-do-list-
the-1-3-5-rule/
http://1-3-5.com/
§  The Urgent/Important Grid
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newHTE_91.htm
§  The Pomodoro Technique - eBook
http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/book/
§  How To Use If-Then Planning to Achieve Any Goal
http://99u.com/articles/7248/how-to-use-if-then-planning-
to-achieve-any-goal
§  What Successful People Do With The First Hour of
Their Work Day
http://www.fastcompany.com/3000619/what-successful-
people-do-first-hour-their-work-day

“Quality is never an accident; it is
always the result of high intention,
sincere effort, intelligent direction,
And skillful execution; it represents
the wise choice out of many
alternatives
- William A. Foster
Creative & Critical Thinking

“My content keeps getting returned!”
“I can’t seem to nail the right topic for an article”
“It’s so hard to write about the same thing day in and day out”
“How do I come up with better titles / topics / articles?”

CRITICAL THINKING
•  Critical thinking means taking control of your conscious
thought processes.
•  If you don’t take control of those processes, you risk
being controlled by the ideas of others.
•  The essence of critical thinking is thinking beyond the
obvious.
•  To engage in CRITICAL THINKING, you become fully
aware of an idea or an action, reflect on it, and
ultimately react to it.

4 STEPS IN THE CRITICAL THINKING PROCESS
1.  Summarize. Extract and restate the material’s main message or central point. Use
only what you see or have researched. Add nothing.
2.  Analyze. Examine the material by breaking it into its component parts. By seeing
each part of the whole as a distinct unit, you discover how the parts interrelate.
3.  Synthesize. Pull together what you’ve summarized and analyzed by connecting it to
your own experiences. Create something new by combining old knowledge and
experiences with newly-gained insights.
4.  Evaluate. Judge the quality of the material now that you’ve become informed
through the activities of SUMMARY, ANALYSIS, and SYNTHESIS.

THE READING PROCESS
Reading is an active process—a dynamic, meaning-making interaction between the
page and your brain. Understanding the reading process helps people become
critical thinkers.
Steps in the reading process:
1.  Reading for literal meaning: Read “on the lines” to see what’s stated.
2.  Reading to draw inferences: Read “between the lines” to see what’s not stated
but implied.
3.  Reading to evaluate: Read “beyond the lines” to form your own opinion about
the researched material.

WAYS TO IMPROVE READING COMPREHENSION
1.  Make associations. Link new material to what you already know, especially
when you’re reading about an unfamiliar subject.
2.  Make it easy for you to focus .If your mind wanders, be fiercely determined to
concentrate.
3.  Allot the time you need. To comprehend new material, you must allow sufficient
time to read, reflect, reread, and study..
4.  Master the vocabulary. If you don’t understand the key terms in your reading,
you can’t fully understand the concepts. As you encounter new words, first try
to figure out their meanings from context clues

RECOMMENDED READING
§  Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing
http://www.interlink.edu/claroline/uncg/claroline/backends/
download.php?
url=L0NyaXRpY2FsX1RoaW5raW5nX1JlYWRpbmdfYW5kX1dya
XRpbmcucGRm&cidReset=true&cidReq=RW3_005
§  Guidelines for Critical Thinking and Writing
http://public.wsu.edu/~kimander/criticalthinking.htm
§  Critical Thinking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking
§  Perfectionism (Overcoming All-or-Nothing
Thinking)
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/perfectionism.htm

TIPS ON CREATIVE WRITING
Tips on Creative writing from some of the best authors of our time

Neil Gaiman
(Author: Coraline, The Graveyard Book and The Sandman series)
“Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.”
“Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will
have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like
chasing the horizon. Keep moving.”

Zadie Smith
(Author: White Teeth)
“Don’t romanticise your “vocation.” You can either write good sentences or you
can’t. There is no “writer's lifestyle.” All that matters is what you leave on the page.”
“Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even
the people who are most important to you.”
“Don’t confuse honours with achievement.”

Andrew Motion
(Knight and Post of Poet Laureate of the UK )
“Write for tomorrow, not for today.”

Joyce Carol Oates
(Author: “Them”, National Book Awardee, Three-Time Pulitzer Price
Nominee)
“The first sentence can be written only after the last sentence has been written.
FIRST DRAFTS ARE HELL. FINAL DRAFTS, PARADISE.”

P.D James
(famous for the creation of Scotland Yard’s Detective Inspector
Adam Dalgliesh)
“Increase your word power. Words are the raw material of our craft. The
greater your vocabulary the more effective your writing. We who write in
English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in
the world. Respect it.”
“Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you
think will sell.”

Elmore Leonard
(Author: Glitz, Get Shorty, Maximum Bob, and Rum Punch)
“Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.”

George Orwell
(Author: 1984, Animal Farm, and Down and Out in Paris and
London)
“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at
least four questions, thus:
What am I trying to say?
What words will express it?
What image or idiom will make it clearer?
Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?”

George Orwell (continued)
(Author: 1984, Animal Farm, and Down and Out in Paris and
London)
“Never use a long word where a short one will do.”
“If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.”
“Never use the passive where you can use the active.”
“Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you
can think of an everyday English equivalent.”

Annie Proulx
(Author: The Shipping News, Pulitzer, National Book Award)
“Rewrite and edit until you achieve the most felicitous phrase/
sentence/paragraph/page/story/chapter.”

Kurt Vonnegut
(Author: Cat’s Cradle, Breakfast Of Champions, and
Slaughterhouse Five)
“Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not
feel the time was wasted.”

Tracy Kidder
(Pulitzer Awardee, ‘Among Schoolchildren’ and ‘The Soul of a New
Machine’)
“To write is to talk to strangers. You have to inspire confidence, to seem
and to be trustworthy.”
“The reader wants to see you not trying to impress, but trying to get
somewhere.”
“Try to attune yourself to the sound of your own writing. If you can't
imagine yourself saying something aloud, then you probably shouldn't
write it.”

Tracy Kidder (continued)
(Pulitzer Awardee, ‘Among Schoolchildren’ and ‘The Soul of a New
Machine’)
“The best work is done when one's eye is simply on the work, not on its
consequence, or on oneself. It is something done for its own sake. It is,
in Lewis Hyde's term, a gift.”
“Be willing to surprise yourself.”

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence,
then, is not an act, but a habit.
- Aristotle
Best Practices of Effective Writers

7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE WRITERS
1. Separate the writing and the editing processes
2. Editing is a job for later
3. Focus on the interesting
4. Tap into the power of metaphor
5. Do adequate research
6. Learn from the writing of others
7. Write in small bursts
8. Read their work out loud

THE KAIZEN PRINCIPLE
kai·zen
/ˈkīzən/
Noun
A Japanese business philosophy of
continuous improvement of working
practices, personal efficiency, etc. The
Japanese-Kanji- word "kaizen” means
"good change”.

KAIZEN IN A NUTSHELL
§  Philosophy of Continuous Improvement
§  Small and Achievable Goals
§  Focus on improving one skill / thing at a time
§  Eliminate overly hard work ("muri")
§  Spot and eliminate wastes in Productivity
§  Make the most-efficient use of time and
energy.

5S OF KAIZEN
§  SEIRI - Sort, Clear Out (Declutter)
§  SEITON - Set Things in Order (get
organized)
§  SEISO – Cleanliness (increase self-
awareness)
§  SIEKETSU – Standardize (maintain
performance)
§  SHITSUKU - Self Discipline (self
motivation)

RECOMMENDED READING
§  10 Tricks for Getting Inspired to Write
http://www.copyblogger.com/tricks-for-writing-inspiration/
§  The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Writers
http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/
The_7_habits_of_highly_effective_writers__12614.aspx
§  Develop Effective Writing Habits
http://writingcommons.org/process/develop-effective-writing-
habits
§  Kaizen: A Japanese Way to Approach Best
Practices
http://www.makemillionsmakechange.com/the-book/best-
practices-as-weapons/kaizen-a-japanese-way-to-approach-best-
practices/

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