Those of us who set out to write a good book are on a journey of discovery.
In addition to fretting out plot and character, theme and setting, we also need to plumb our own characters.
That’s because writing is a demanding craft that requires focus and persistence over a long period of time. Poor work (and life) habits erode and undermine our ability to write.
In the podcast below, Dr. Art Markman, professor of psychology and marketing at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of Smart Change, shares insights from cognitive science that anyone can use to identify and modify counter-productive habits.
What I like about Dr. Markman’s approach is that he nicely tells us to stop guilt tripping and beating up on ourselves for our past stumbles, mistakes and failures. Instead, we need to be kind to ourselves, and to realize that failure is part of the process of achieving success.
Success, he says, is achievable when we take a practical and analytic approach to what is holding us back and make those small but necessary tweaks to our behaviors that will make all the difference.
“A tremendous amount of your ability to get something done involves learning how to do it. We talk about talent and skill … and the relative contributions of your endowment, who you are, on your ability to succeed at things … but you can be better than almost anyone you know at almost anything if you really work at it. Where talent comes in is … if your goal is to be absolutely the best in the world at it. Frankly there are very few situations in most people’s lives where they can only succeed by being ‘the best in the world at it,’ rather than just really, really darn good.” – Dr. Art Markman
