How to Write a Lot !

5 minute read - Book Review of "How to Write a Lot"

[Image Source : https://www.amazon.in/How-Write-Lot-Practical-Productive-ebook/dp/B001Y35G60 ]

In general writing productivity and particular academic productivity boils down to simply how much one can write & publish. The book “Write a Lot” by Paul Silvia addresses this issue and gives practical solutions. Book is prescriptive and is a quick read. I could complete it in one sitting on the weekend. Few nuggets from the book: 

·  It quoted William Zinsser, “If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do.”  Author provides ways to simplify it. He points that finding a block of time or waiting for inspiration is a catastrophic. Also he shuns the idea about writers block, particularly for academic writers. Writer’s block hits only those who believe in it.

·  First advice he gives is to make a schedule, allot a time and stick to it. Daily two hours or so. One must protect this writing slot ruthlessly. Build and get into the habit of writing. This is single most important take away from the book.

·   He suggests writing first and revising later. But just produce something in the allocated slot.

·  Author gives the example of, Trollope – who despite full time job at post office published 63 books. That’s stunningly productive. Trollope’s writing schedule included 3 hours of writing every day before breakfast. He wrote average 250 words in 15 minutes.  

·  Second advice author gives is about goal setting. Goals for every month and then goals for the particular day. He suggests writing the goal down. Stick to them and emphasizes monitoring. He also advises rewarding oneself after goal achievement. Full cycle of goal setting theory included.

·  Third advice author gives on agraphia (inability to write) is to form a support group. A small group of academic only (He advises separate group for doctoral scholars). Group should meet once a week and focus on writings of each one. He advises to confront anyone who is lacking in writing or goal completion. And provides some tactics to bring him in the habit of writing (first advice). This is a kind of constructive social pressure to maintain the habit.

· He demonstrates how single habit of regular writing can bring good balance in work and life.

·  Book also gives a list of reference books on style, grammar, punctuation and motivation.

·  There are dedicated chapters on style, journal article and book writing. But I didn’t find them much in sync with the book topic. May be just filler.

·  I read that the new edition of the book is published in September, 2018 -with added chapter. The one I read is an older edition.

Paul Silvia himself writes a lot, daily from 08:45 to 10:00 AM in mortifying location. Being a social psychology faculty, he has beautifully blended the scientific principles of habits, motivation, and way to maintain them in this behavioural prescription for poor writers. I am also getting in the habit of daily writing, but couldn’t form the support group yet.  

Finally the book is persuasive, quick and essential read for anyone who wishes to be a productive writer. I am looking forward to read another book from him on writing – it is specific on research or journal writing in psychology.

On being a teacher ...

I attended  Gurucharan Das's  "India grows at night" book release function by BDB Book club.

I liked his style and picked up his "Difficulty of being good" for reading.

It is lucid and brilliantly written book. It uses Mahabharat - its characters, and the various dilemma they face in dealing with the ethical questions. Most appealing aspect of the book is the way author brings his learning from the stories to the ethical dilemmas that we face in our day to day life. Most importantly - why be good ?

To make his point across , he narrated the story of primary school teacher , published in "Times of India" in 2005. In his own words ,

..  a man who has bicycled 32 kilometers each day for the past twenty years without missing a single day of school. Because of his commitment, as well his ability to inspire students, a surprising number of his former students went on to become hugely famous.  When asked about the roots of his motivation, he answered, 'Teaching is my dharma,'..

I could not locate the original story online. But it is riveting. I can sense from my own experience and can see around that the teachers who do their work as "dharma" or "swabhaava" - are touching the life of their students.

Question that is more pertinent is - can this "calling/swabhaava" be nurtured in first place ? if yes , "how can we nurture this".  It is more riveting - when the same book points to the 2004 research of Michael Kremer of Harvard university along with world bank members that ,

One in four teachers in our government primary schools is absent and one in four, although present, is not teaching. Thus one in two teachers out of roughly 1.5 million primary school teachers is not doing his/her job.

If we repeat this for graduate and post-graduate teachers ,will the results really change to opposite side of spectrum ? Hence nurturing the calling for teachers - will be important question !.

(Image source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gurcharan_Das_%28as_on_26-Sep-2012%29.jpg )

Perils of higher Education !

Unemployment vs. Education level. (Ref-1)

The times of India article mentions , "Higher your education, harder it is getting a job" .

So true .

The data in the article is converted in the bar-chart for the want of better presentation.

So probably we have one more reason for not going for higher education, and the figures are startling in rural regions. This is unlike the other countries where higher education normally fetches the better opportunities.

This is like a high-light on the recent news article that says - seats for engineering and MBA schools are vacant - as there are more number of students than seats.

Points to really ponder for stakeholders in higher education. 

Ref-1 : Data is picked up from the times of India article : http://ow.ly/ckFfY

Unanticipated Consequence of Productivity tools !

PCMag has interesting article on productivity.  Opening of the article has interesting comment.

Has anyone noticed that the computer revolution has turned its focus from improving productivity to wasting time on trivia?

Isn't it what is termed as unanticipated consequences ? .

For instance :

• Email's were suppose to save our time. It consumes so much time, that Intel had toyed up with  no email days .  French firm Atos  has even extreme stance of "Zero email" .
• Message overloads from desktop notifier, email, smart phones is triggering attention deficit trait.
• Some time back , IIT's had instituted restrictions on internet uses as they found that it hampers the student performance.

As Tablets , i-pad are scheduled to enter classrooms, they will support teaching and learning ,but also will have different kind of challenges for teaching fraternity.  So if you have encountered any of them so far, do post in comments....

How to decide whether the job is great ?

I wanted to enter academics, and that is the reason I applied for research program at XLRI. The interview committee tried to probe, why I want to switch to teaching community from a comparatively high-income career. I think my answers convinced them.

But the question still keeps lingering in my mind. And often, I hit new theories , that convinces me again and again - that yes it is one of the best choice I made for myself.

You have the best job in the world, if you have inner inspiration to do it. And this inner inspiration, a mental state to a specific job is the result of three critical states. First, is the job purposeful, meaningful, second, whether the job gives you sense of ownership, and lastly do you see the effects or results of job.

A model in Organization behavior gives you five hints to look at the job aspects, and conveys whether the job has these three critical states so as to make it intrinsically motivating (ref. 1).

First is variety of skills, abilities that job activities demand. It is rightly said that teaching is one forth preparation and three forth theater. There is so much variety in teaching. Presentation, effective speaking, persuasion, motivating, and coaching, mentoring, thinking about innovative and new ideas to make lively classes the list is endless. No wonder they call teaching as a performing art.

Second is task identity, whether the task is whole identifiable. In majority of cases faculties are fully responsible for course design, choosing textbooks, delivering and even assessing the courses.

Third is task significance, how much impact it is making in the life of others. Teachers are always regarded high in Indian society. If we consider typical MBA curriculum, learning “people skills” are of paramount importance to any manager, whether his specialty is materials or finance. So no wonder Organizational behavior (area of my specialization) is one of the most important subjects for all MBA’s.

Forth is autonomy, the extent to which one can decide routine details like scheduling, process etc. Now within one’s own class, teacher has full autonomy about what sequence of topics to follow, how much time to allocate to individual concepts and use of variety of pedagogical tools to teach them.Thus giving him the sense of ownership of the class.

Fifth and last is feedback on his/her performance. Though there are formal channels available to students to give feedback. Faculty gets this feedback instantly. As soon as he is half-way through the class, he can figure out, where the students are with respective to the topic he is teaching. Whether he is convincing or confusing?

So next time you are thinking of any job , check where it stands with respective to these five parameters.

- Image source : http://vafamilyconnections.com/images/good%20job.jpg

- 1 : Theory refereed here is : Hackman and Oldham's Job characteristic Model.