Why Write Down Your Ideas?



Learn Management Articles on management-info.biz. Why Write Down Your Ideas? article will help answer your questions on Management Articles.We at management-info.biz specialize in Management Articles. Management Articles at management-info.biz provides the most up to date news and articles. If you have questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

Whether you're a manager, professional, or entrepreneur you need to think ahead. When you do it in a formal sense, it's called it planning, when you do it informally it's something like speculating.

Whether you're planning or speculating, the exercise represents just the tip of the iceberg. For the plans or scenarios to amount to something, they have to be implemented. In turn, that usually involves other people.

Which takes us to the subject of communication: How do you convert those ideas in your head into instructions or position papers or even real plans?

I recommend writing, as in the sense of spending at least a few minutes to put the ideas to paper. Several benefits come out of the writing process:

First, you'll force yourself to clarify what you're doing and what you want others to do. As long as an idea remains in our heads, it's not made accountable, so to speak. We don't subject our ideas to rigorous scrutiny when they're just thoughts.

But, when we write out an idea, the strengths and weaknesses show up rather quickly; we force ourselves to look at the idea more critically. When I wrote the publishing plan for Abbott's Communication Letter, for example, the writing process uncovered many key issues.

But, writing it down assumes even greater importance when we need to communicate with others. Since most thoughts for the future are inherently complex or uncertain, a written version of your plan enables you to explain much more.

As you've probably noticed, you can't really deal with much complexity verbally, unless you're making a speech or presentation. In face-to-face communication, for example, a train of thought often gets derailed by questions or interjections by the other person.

A written plan also communicates to others a broader scope than a verbal plan. After all, when you're writing, you can bring in the past, cover the present, and look into the future. Or, you can illustrate your points with more detail than you can in a verbal report.

So, let's subject this article to the writing test, to see if hangs together.

First, the article opened with the idea of looking or thinking ahead, and I assumed -- note, I assumed -- that this thinking implied future action.

Second, you'll see the idea that to take action, or to get others to take action on our behalf, we need to be clear about the 'what' and the 'why' before we start. Of course, not every action needs this kind of launch; perhaps I should have said 'For important projects....'

Third, I suggested the way to get this clarity is to write it out, but in retrospect, perhaps that simply reflects my bias toward writing. Perhaps you manage well simply by thinking, and don't need to write.

Fourth, I next listed a couple of benefits that flow from writing, and looking back I see a that I had bigger projects in mind when I wrote it.

So, all in all, subjecting this article (at least the first part of it) to the writing process did have the desired effect, and I discovered a couple of assumptions that I wasn't conscious of while writing. And, if I was writing a plan, especially a plan for a big project, those would be worthwhile discoveries.

In summary, the act and process of writing down an idea will help you implement the idea, because it will help uncover some of the assumptions and expectations underlying your idea.


Stand-Up Comedy Secrets! - Next Generation System For Quickly Developing Funny Stand-up Comedy Material. Eliminate Writers Block & Get The Big Laughs!
Practical Report Writing. - Write greats reports with this report writing kit.


Article Index: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81


More Articles:


1. How to find and realise your life purpose
Do you have a life purpose? Are you aware of your goals and dreams and do you know how to achieve them?A life purpose is like a light that helps you to focus your energy towards a distant goal and to overcome hindrances and blockages on the way.A life purpose may be like a key word that runs like a red thread through many of your experiences.In my seminars I found out, that many people could put their life under such a motto. For some is it love, for other trust, justice, hope, fairness, opennes…

2. Great Groups! - Getting a Group to Think Like a Genius By Kevin Eikenberry
Great Groups! - Getting a Group to Think Like a Genius Wouldn’t it be great to have an Edison or Einstein, or Mozart at your next meeting?  If you had a genius at your meeting, do you think you might come up with better results?  Let me be the first to tell you that those people won’t be at your next meeting.  But there are some things you can do as a facilitator - some techniques and tactics that you can use with the group that will help them work better.  In this article you will learn some…

3. Business Innovation – the Value of Structure By Kal Bishop
Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.There are other useful definitions in this field, for example, creativity can be defined as consisting of a number of ideas, a number of diverse ideas and a number of novel ideas.There are distinct processes that enhance problem identification and idea generation and, similarly, distinct processes that enhance idea selection, development …

4. Small Business Checking Accounts By Lance Winslow
ACCOUNTING AND BILLINGCHECK BOOKSWe recommend that you maintain a business checking account in addition to a small business credit card merchant account so that you can take credit cards from purchasers. This way you will know exactly how much is going into your merchant account and how much of your volume percentage is being done through credit card usage. You should shoot for 50-60% credit card sales and debit cards. If you are an owner/operator, you may not be as concerned with this numb…