It's 6:32 PM right now, as the tag will show. "Ribbon In The Sky" is playing in the background. I'm in some kind of mood, an oddly romantic mood. I say "oddly" because I don't have anyone to romance, on the record. Off the record, and after a beer or so, I'll probably gush like a deep chest wound about someone or other. I hate it when that happens.
What an otherwise useless day! I wrote one sentence of an article I'm working on; as long as I get it (a draft) and the piece about Taylor Swift finished by the end of the week, we'll call it a win. I'm learning the hard way that I have to give projects a pretty wide berth in order to succeed. For my Master of Theological Studies degree, I get all the assignments at one time each month, and they are due at the same time. I realized that I was setting unrealistic goals for completing assignments, in a sense. I'd think, "Oh, I need 6 hours to get that done" when I really needed 24 or more. And I'd start with the assumption that I had lots of time. At the risk of stating the obvious, the task at hand must come first. I daresay that I am a bold, imaginative thinker who thrives on big ideas. But I had a tendency to distraction and for waiting until the lightning struck. This isn't good. Quite frankly, I don't work well under pressure. I can excel as a speaker and a writer (or theologian) based upon two advantages: I will be more aware of the relevant data than most others, (you'd be amazed how many people have influence that actually have no idea what they are talking about) and I'll retain more of that data than others. Preparation and giftedness. But I have to work around my tendency to distraction and digression, which is actually the engine of my creativity. So each task gets its own week in the month. My only rule is that the task gets done in the week. If each day is punctuated with manic bursts of activity sandwiched between periods of what looks like goofing off, that's fine by me.
A friend told me that I have to be myself, that it is unwise to try to change myself or my habits radically (unless they are sinful). But I can make incremental changes that get me where I need to go. I do realize that my goofing off is different from others. It is never mindless; I am usually creating a memory trigger for something important. When I listened to the same two John Mayer albums before an exam, several vital facts were connected to the songs. There are times when it doesn't work; I just have to turn off the tunes and do a thing by brute force. But most often, something in the activity clarifies something I need to recall.
I can remember writing outlines for sermons in homiletics, and no one believed my outlines. I got it down to where I could preach for 20 minutes with 10 words. Whatever you have to do to make yourself the most effective at whatever the thing is, do it. Don't care about what others say or do. It never helped me to spend a great deal of time crafting the written form of what I would say. I had to verbalize it, and do it many times. Then you come to realize that this moment with these people is entirely unique; no other moment is quite the same. All you can ask of yourself is to accomplish a few basic things. Beyond that, you let the moment be. No one else who wasn't there can lay claim to that uniqueness. Part of speaking effectively about anything is to sense the bond with your audience or to create it. Everyone hits a false note or word here and there, but an effective speaker does his best to connect with his hearers. If he does this, the hard things aren't so hard, and everyone goes with you even when they're not sure why or if they should.
Evil people create a bond that is bad for the audience or those around the audience; good people create a beneficial kinship that endures beyond the moment. It could be distracting if one always took the temperature of the audience with a verbal cue, but if you must, then you must. But you must sense what people want and need from you, and do your best to provide it within the skeleton of your basic goals. That's what an outline or a notecard is: a reminder of the purpose for which you have come to speak.
Wow, OK, this started as a confession of personal shortcomings, and it turned into a manifesto on how to move people. Alright. Anyway.
What an otherwise useless day! I wrote one sentence of an article I'm working on; as long as I get it (a draft) and the piece about Taylor Swift finished by the end of the week, we'll call it a win. I'm learning the hard way that I have to give projects a pretty wide berth in order to succeed. For my Master of Theological Studies degree, I get all the assignments at one time each month, and they are due at the same time. I realized that I was setting unrealistic goals for completing assignments, in a sense. I'd think, "Oh, I need 6 hours to get that done" when I really needed 24 or more. And I'd start with the assumption that I had lots of time. At the risk of stating the obvious, the task at hand must come first. I daresay that I am a bold, imaginative thinker who thrives on big ideas. But I had a tendency to distraction and for waiting until the lightning struck. This isn't good. Quite frankly, I don't work well under pressure. I can excel as a speaker and a writer (or theologian) based upon two advantages: I will be more aware of the relevant data than most others, (you'd be amazed how many people have influence that actually have no idea what they are talking about) and I'll retain more of that data than others. Preparation and giftedness. But I have to work around my tendency to distraction and digression, which is actually the engine of my creativity. So each task gets its own week in the month. My only rule is that the task gets done in the week. If each day is punctuated with manic bursts of activity sandwiched between periods of what looks like goofing off, that's fine by me.
A friend told me that I have to be myself, that it is unwise to try to change myself or my habits radically (unless they are sinful). But I can make incremental changes that get me where I need to go. I do realize that my goofing off is different from others. It is never mindless; I am usually creating a memory trigger for something important. When I listened to the same two John Mayer albums before an exam, several vital facts were connected to the songs. There are times when it doesn't work; I just have to turn off the tunes and do a thing by brute force. But most often, something in the activity clarifies something I need to recall.
I can remember writing outlines for sermons in homiletics, and no one believed my outlines. I got it down to where I could preach for 20 minutes with 10 words. Whatever you have to do to make yourself the most effective at whatever the thing is, do it. Don't care about what others say or do. It never helped me to spend a great deal of time crafting the written form of what I would say. I had to verbalize it, and do it many times. Then you come to realize that this moment with these people is entirely unique; no other moment is quite the same. All you can ask of yourself is to accomplish a few basic things. Beyond that, you let the moment be. No one else who wasn't there can lay claim to that uniqueness. Part of speaking effectively about anything is to sense the bond with your audience or to create it. Everyone hits a false note or word here and there, but an effective speaker does his best to connect with his hearers. If he does this, the hard things aren't so hard, and everyone goes with you even when they're not sure why or if they should.
Evil people create a bond that is bad for the audience or those around the audience; good people create a beneficial kinship that endures beyond the moment. It could be distracting if one always took the temperature of the audience with a verbal cue, but if you must, then you must. But you must sense what people want and need from you, and do your best to provide it within the skeleton of your basic goals. That's what an outline or a notecard is: a reminder of the purpose for which you have come to speak.
Wow, OK, this started as a confession of personal shortcomings, and it turned into a manifesto on how to move people. Alright. Anyway.
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