This is concerned with writing.

We in life have to submit many writings a) out of necessity to get grades b) pass the degree  c) present our work in conferences and seminars d) or to showcase our ideas about various things in our world. These could be assignments, concept papers, scientific papers, thesis & dissertations and even creative writings such as articles and stories.

All of us are capable of doing much better than what we actually do. There are any number of reasons why we generally don’t put our best foot forward. Here are some of them

• Don’t give it sufficient thought
• Don’t do sufficient preliminary work
• Keep it postponing till the end
• Do not discuss with others
• Waste the good mood
• Don’t muster the confidence to nail it
• Never being able to say “I have to”

Don’t give it sufficient thought: this is the greatest malaise of us humans. We don’t want to think about important things. We allow a thousand random thoughts that have no bearing on the important things in life to occupy our minds constantly but refuse think or make deliberate efforts to think hard about the things that matter.

Don’t do sufficient preliminary work: while creative writing may not need a lot of referencing and preliminary work, the other need a lot of it. Thanks to Google, we no longer search seriously for finding useable, authenticated material for referencing. We go to Google, check the most upper most few articles that pop up and be done with it.  This is the biggest mistake we can ever do. There are many other sources and a lot of other information that must be sourced for a nice rounded presentation.

Postponing the work: this is the second most troublesome problem with humans. We do not start working on important things sufficiently early in order to give ourselves elbow room to redo, modify, restart. We constantly get into a do- or- die situation. Then the most vital aspect called TIME is simply not available!

Do not discuss with others: there are two reasons why we do this.  A) we tend to think everyone out there is angling after our ideas and will steal them!  We hate to discuss with others fearing this. This way many interesting insights are missed out. B) we are worried about our own worth and tend to fear sharing it with others for fear of ridicule. This is simply unnecessary. The fact that we do have an idea to work on is in itself a good thing. Who knows, if we put it out for discussion, maybe it will not only be appreciated but spruced up by others contributions!

Waste the good mood: don’t you all agree that once in a while we get into a terrific mood to attend to the task, but get distracted due to a variety of reasons? For me this is the most sacrilegious thing we can do, because a good mood is critical for fantastic output of work. Never waste that mood.   Simply lock yourself up and go for it. 

Don’t muster the confidence to nail it: another mistake we often do is thinking it will be a tentative piece of work, will need many more attempts before it can be finalized, will need further refinement….so on and so forth. This attitude will make us keep on working on it for ages without finalising it. It’s important to stop at a stage and say to yourself ‘this is final…I have nailed it’.

Never having the courage to say “I HAVE TO”: the constant niggling feeling that maybe it need not be done, it cannot be done, it’s not important enough to be done spoils many a great piece of work. We must say to ourselves that it must be done and I have to do it.  Nothing can get done without that sense of being sure.

Unless we take a serious view we will never produce THE WRITEUP but will have to be satisfied with A WRITE UP.