This is part three of a three-part series.

7.  Writing Increases Your Attention Span In An - oh, look!  A pigeon!  Ahem.  Seriously, that kind of thing hardly ever happens when writing, even though it seems to happen constantly when speaking or thinking.  Don’t feel ashamed: a) it happens to every one of us, and b) inattention is a highly-reinforced behavior in our culture.  Just think about how many images we are confronted with during one four-minute segment of television advertising.  We get six to ten product advertisements, each one featuring several distinct shots juxtaposed to create a coherent, compelling narrative in thirty seconds.  Those ads stimulate our desire for consumer products, but even more powerful are the cultural messages that accompany the sales pitches.  One of those messages is the implication that faster is better.          

As a result, activities like driving or grocery shopping, once thought to be absorbing in their own right, are now considered prime opportunities for multitasking (talking on the phone, reading, applying makeup, texting).  We’re obsessed with “doing” rather than “being,” but we’re actually getting less done (see this great New York Times article:   Slow Down, Brave Multitasker, and Don’t Read This in Traffic).  I believe that we need to slow down and simplify in order to enrich our lives.  (For more, see David B. Bohl’s Slow Down Fast Today! and Tina Su’s Think Simple Now.) 

The act of writing takes time (especially using the low-tech, pen-and-paper method), and while you’re writing, you are focusing.  Your mind may wander, but if you continue to sit there with the pen in your hand your mind will refocus.  Writing ties you to the present, even for a few moments, just as meditation does.  And in a chronically inattentive culture such as ours, that is no small feat.

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 This post is part two of a three-part series.

While yesterday’s entries focused on what writing well can do for you, you don’t need to be good at writing to benefit from it.  Today’s three reasons explore ways even a poor writer can use writing to meet personal and professional goals.

4.  Writing Can Help You Achieve Your Goals.  A lot of personal development advice out there focuses on setting goals, variously called dreams, resolutions, and habits.  However, in order to set your goals, you must articulate them.

“Articulate” is an interesting word.  It comes from the Latin word articul?re, which means to “divide into joints.”  So the verb form means both “express or speak clearly” and “unite by forming a joint or joints,” according to Princeton University’s WordNet 3.0 (qtd. on Dictionary.com). 

Understood in light of its etymology, articulation is a key part of the goal-setting process.  Writing, in turn, is the key to articulation.  We need to express clearly the life to which we aspire.  We also need to think through the goal’s benefits, quantify our plan of action, and envision the end result. 

We need, in short, to articulate: to divide our goal into natural segments - joints - and to attach those segments - steps toward our goal - to each other in a way that makes sense in our lives.  Writing is the classic vehicle for this kind of intellectual work. 

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This is part one of a three-part series.

As you know, Writing Power’s tagline is “write better, live better.”  Correspondingly, I thought I would take a little time to provide evidence in support of that tagline.  The following are some tangible ways that the time you invest in improving your writing skills will pay off in your life.

1.  Writing Well Can Make You Money.  No, I’m not talking about blogging for cash or making a living as a journalist (although, of course, those can be options for skilled writers).  There is a correlation between written communication skills and income, and it holds true for all knowledge workers, not just those who write for a living.  Whether you work as a web designer, a nonprofit development assistant, an HR manager, a civil engineer or a customer service associate at the DMV, you’ll get ahead faster if you can communicate clearly in writing. 

Surveys of employers consistently show that strong writing skills are at the top of their wish lists.  So, if you want to make more money, start polishing those writing skills.  If you consistently get compliments from colleagues and supervisors about your written work, perhaps it’s time to ask for a raise.

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