4 Easy Steps to Learning how to draw

TLDR:

  • Learn to handle your Tool of Choice
  • Seeing and Drawing Relations and Proportions
  • Learn what to Leave out
  • Compose a Scene

Currently I am practicing to draw with a pen on paper, more specifically I am working on the technique of five minute sketches to be able to draw street scenes that I observe quickly into a sketchbook, striving not necessarily for absolute realism, but for something that is recognizable and interesting.

As a tool, I am mostly using a gel pen, which is easy to handle, does not need as much pressure as a regular pen, and can mostly bring one single level of darkness and thickness to the paper.

In some way a gel pen for drawing is a very “digital” tool, it knows exactly two states: Black or not black. Unlike a pencil, it is not possible to draw shades of gray by pressing harder or gentler onto the paper.

In a way, it removes one complexity for me, as I no longer need to decide if I want to have a stroke light or dark, the decision is reduced to “stroke” or “no stroke”.

Because there are already many complexities involved.

Taking the drawing process apart, there are several different skills involved, that fortunately can be practiced individually.

The first step is simple learning to handle your tool. If you have practiced very little drawing, or come from a background where most of your drawing needs are about drawing boxes and connecting them, you will likely find it quite hard to get the pen to draw on paper what you had imagined in your head.

I used to work around that problem, usually by drawing a line, looking at it, and drawing another line, that seemed closer to what I imagined and then repeat that process, until the stroke was approaching what I had in mind. Of course this led to messy results, where I would start with a light stroke, and pressing increasingly harder, as I approached my ideal line.

First, learn to be able to place a single stroke at exactly the place you imagined it at the first place.

And for this you can do little practices. Like filling a part of the paper with something like parallel lines. In the beginning, if you do it quickly, sometimes your lines might cross each other by accident, some lines might start further left or right than the others, the distance between the lines might vary, they might be wobbly rather than straight, and so on and so forth.

That is one area to practice.

Another one that I like to do is to draw simple circles, small ones and bigger ones, and here I try to get them really into circle shapes, and especially try to match the beginning with the end of the circle, without leaving a gap or overdrawing. Ideally you would be unable to distinguish the beginning and end from any other part of the circle. A gel pen can be quite unforgiving in this area. If you press too hard while putting the pen on the paper, or when taking it away, you might leave an ugly speck.

The goal with all those exercises is to practice the handling of the tool, to train the muscle memory to observe your intentions and to be able to start a line where you intend to start it, and end it where you intend to end it, and to be able to keep the stroke going where you want it to go instead of diverting from the path. And with closing to circle to hit a spot and connect two lines where you want them to connect.

It is a basic skill upon which you can base your further study.

And fortunately it is an easy practice, that does not require to much thought or concentration. You can doodle during meetings, on the train, while eating, etc. etc.

It is a bit like being a warrior or sword fighter. You need to become familiar with your tool of choice, you need to keep it on you all the time, handle it all the time, have it lie next to you when you sleep, in case you wake up in bed and need jot down a few ideas. It needs to become a new body part for you.

If you are on a train that is wobbling and shaking see it as an additional handicap or challenge to overcame and keep your straight line.

No matter what tool you chose, if you go for the gel-pen, as I did, or if you prefer the pencil, the next skill you need to master is shading, that is getting different gray levels out your tools.

In the case of gel-pen, that does not allow greater or smaller pressure for controlling the shade, you need to resort to other tricks, like drawing lines in varying distance to make it look like different shades from the distance, or making crosses, etc.

There are many ways to practice different ways of drawing patterns and shading, I usually try to shade close to a line, without over spilling on the other side of the line.

After having honed some basic skill to be able to handle the pen and draw, the next, learn to see relations and proportions and be able to bring them to the paper. When sketching faces it is quite vital to get the proportions right, and when I started out with sketching, it might happen quite often that I started with drawing an ear and then the head, and suddenly I would have a tiny head with a giant ear on my paper.

The most basic proportion to start with, when sketching faces is usually the eye ear line that can be imagined across the head, and quite surprisingly it is about in the middle of the head.

As I sometimes find it quite hard to estimate proportions when looking at the real scene as a beginner, I found it a bit easier to start with photos which are already in the 2d space, and start practicing estimating proportions from there.

You could also take your fingers to measure a proportion with a pinch grip or a small ruler.

There is also the way to draw a grid over a photo, and transfer the image using a grip. Also a great exercise, although I would put this exercise more into the “handling the pen” category, rather than into the “estimating proportions”, because for me it feels quite unnatural to try to mentally overlay a grid over a real scene. While it comes easier to me to see proportions in the relationship between objects and features in the scene.

So one thing is to see proportions and another thing is to be able to put them ob paper. So this I guess needs practice, but I guess one starting point could be to try to draw two or more lines on a paper, one twice as long as the other and one three times as long as the other, etc. Or to place objects in a specific distance of each other.

The next exercise would be to learn what to draw, and what to leave out. Here I found it quite interesting to look at comics, or graphic novels, and try to imitate how faces and characters are often draw with few and simple strokes in a comic.

When sketching from photos or real life, in the beginning it is often quite hard to distinguish what details are defining for the overall appearance of an objects, and what details can be left out or are even distracting.

Comics help to see that, and as a practice, I like to draw over photos from magazines, like the free ones, you get on trains or in the mail.

What to leave out is especially important when drawing with a tool like a gel pen, where you cannot get very small and light strokes, and where a too small detail would look out of place.

Often, it is not even necessary to draw a thin line, it might be enough to draw the beginning and the end of an edge, and the imagination of the observer will fill in the rest.

The next step in the skill ladder is the ability to compose a scene. To decide what to draw from the higher level view. While the part before was about what to draw in terms of details, the next thing is to learn what to draw in terms of the overall scene.

And to be able to see that, I find it quite useful, to get into the habit if taking a good photograph every now and then. Apart from looking at scenic sketches and good photography of course. Taking good photographs of people and scenes comes down to two basic factors, and that is the framing and the composition of foreground and background. And for the framing it comes down to a similar thing as before, the question of what to leave out. Learning to let go, and be bold in keeping objects and details out of the frame.

When I was much younger, I often imagined photography to be about capturing everything of am interesting scene, rather than creating a good picture, independent of what the whole scene was about. So I when taking a photo of friends, I would try to capture all of said friends from head to toe, and keep everything in the frame, rather then selecting or curating the contents of the picture. Later I learned that capturing just a face and a bit of the torso of a person, while the person was engaged in something interesting would produce a much more satisfying picture.

In addition to the focus on something specific, like a face, it would also be important where to place that detail in the frame. According to the golden rule you would place the focus point not in the middle of the frame, but rather divide the frame into thirds and put the focus point into one of the dividers of the thirds.

Selecting a focus point would also mean making a decision of what should be in the foreground.

And that would make the second factor to take into account, selecting a background for your focus point. As a naive photographer, I would always be so interested in the object I was about to picture that I did not pay much attention to the surroundings of said object. So today I usually also take that into account. If I find that background of my object of interest is boring, I usually move around it in a circle, trying to find a more satisfying composition, while keeping the focus the same.

And usually I would also try to emphasize the focus, be trying to keep the sharpness of the picture there. A simple trick to do that with a zoom lens, is to zoom in as much as possible, as this will usually make the field of focus more shallow, so you would find it more easy to give a slight blur to the background.

Learning to frame a picture and select a composition is probably not of so much use to a beginner, who will be happy to get a sketch of a face, but it will make it easier when moving on to creating whole scenes, because extracting to interesting parts of a scene means less work sketching out the details and everything.

And it also shows that sometimes a detail is much more interesting than trying to cram everything into a picture. And dividing background from foreground and putting things in a blur also highlights where in a picture less detail might be necessary.

Living more comfortable by going through discomfort

Lately I made in interesting Observation on myself. And that is, I would take an action that felt uncomfortable to create a situation for me, that is actually more pleasent. Not sure if that makes sense, but I will go through my experiences.

Today I took a trip by train to visit my siblings. It was going to be quite a long journey, so I was about to stop at a supermarket to get some food that I could have for dinner which i would have on the train.

So there was a normal german Supermarket, that would have carried everything that I would usually buy for a small meal on the train. And that would probably be a sandwich and a softdrink.

That was the comfortable option, it was a big brand name supermarket, I shopped there already plenty of times, I would know what I was about to buy, and I would be on Auto-Pilot going through the motions, and buy at a big name brand.

However, around the corner, just a two minute walk away, I knew that there is also a Turkish supermarket, locally run probably, that I would usually hesitate to frequent, as the products sold there would be totally different than anything that I would expect from a supermarket. So, I would not know what to buy, and where to find it. It would be a more uncomfortable choice.

Never the less, I believe it took me a minute or two to ponder that question, I went for the uncomfortable option, and entered the Turkish supermarket.

In the end I bought some healthy salad from the salad selection, and some sweets from a to me unknown brand.

I am not sure if in this case I got something better tasting than I would have gotten at the other supermarket, but for sure what I saw was more interesting, as this supermarket had quite a large selection of salads, and even a real butchers shop inside the market, while the big brand name supermarket these days, only carries prepackaged meat.

What I did however, is that I primed myself to make the more interesting if uncomfortable choice, when faced with two options. And it took me some effort, there was a slight tingling in me to go for the easier option, that I had to overcome.

But the story did not stop there. I did buy the salad, but walking into the train station, I noticed that I did not bring any eating tool to consume said salad. I needed to get a fork or spoon, or anything. So simple walked into one of the bakeries that are at the train station, and took a plastic fork, that was provided there. And usually I would feel quite uncomfortable to get a fork from a place without buying there, but given that I was already primed to do uncomfortable things I took the fork. Would have been even more uncomfortable having to eat the salad without a fork. Basically a small transgression of my existing social code.

On I went to the train, and looking at my ticket, I noticed that I had a reserved seat on the train. I did not remember that, because I booked the ticket some time in advance. So I went to my seat, and in this type of train, there are different types of seat arrangements, it is either two seats next to each other behind another row of seats, similar like sitting in an airplane. Alternatively there are two seats that face another row of two seats and in between there is a small table. These tables are usually more spacious and comfortable, as in the seat rows, you usually only get a flimsy fold down table, like in an airplane. So I noticed I had reserved the wrong seat. But as luck comes, just the next row as a “good” row. So even though the train appeared to fill up quickly, and these “good” seats were marked “reserved”, I took my chances to sit there. Sometimes People do not show up, even though a seat is marked reserved.

To spare you the suspense, in the end, the seat I choose stayed free, and now I am sitting in the comfortable space, rather than in the cramped position I had reserved. And here is where it seems to get uncomfortable for many people. Everybody who has a reserved seat usually is quite happy to get there, especially if the train seems to become full. For me, I had all the options, a reserved seat, should I need one, but the chance for a better one, should it stay free. What I had to endure though was the possibility of two uncomfortable conversations. The first one would have been when the person on whose seat I sat would have shown up. And the second one when I would have to ask the person sitting on my reserved seat to get up. Luckily, that scenario never happened, so in the end I got the better deal, without any real risk at all.

But it does not stop there, quite often you can get a better deal, just by suggesting an alternative to the established procedure.

Recently I had to go on a company business trip, which I usually try to avoid as business trips are often quite a hassle, and feel not very comfortable to me.

However, this time I decided to make some small changes to the usual business trip arrangements, all without any consequences, but with immense increase in comfort for me.

The default magic rule for company travel seems to be the following, that is what you get when you ask the responsible person in the company to arrange for the travel. A trip by plane, a taxi from to airport to a regular business hotel in the vicinity of the customer location. Taxi trips to and from the customer and the hotel if necessary and that is it.

To me that sounds usually like a complete horror-trip. Usually customer companies are in the very far outskirts of the city center, where land is cheap, and entertainment, as well as public transport is sparse.

That means that when the work of the day is done, you get into your taxi to the hotel and that is it. If you want to do any activities after that, you either have to pay for a taxi on your own dime, or take the bus, which in that area usually means a 30 minutes walk from the hotel to next bus station. And the same way back, after a few drinks. Good luck, finding yourself in a sleepy small town, with your phone battery empty trying to navigate to your hotel, when the last bus from town dropped you off at different bus stop.

And usually these types of hotels for business travelers are the most boring places ever, all other customers come in to sleep, or watch TV, exhausted from their day at work. Everything is usually nice, clean and orderly, but the audience is usually not anything close to what you’d call a party crowd.

Having found myself in this rather unpleasant situation several times again and again, I decided to take matters into my own hands and adjust the situation in a slight manner.

I gave precise instructions to the travel agent making the arrangements, and I was curious how it would play out. Again, no risk at all on my side, the worst that could have happened is that the company denied my wishes, citing some “travel policy”.

So I choose a specific Hostel right in the city center, that accordingly to the internet reviews, photos and location looked, like an interesting place to stay. And for the most part the diametral opposite of what I would expect from a standard business hotel. I even asked them to book a single bed in the dorm. But here the company took it on them to actually book me a single room in my preferred hostel. I did not complain.

Of course the hostel was quite a trip away from the customer, so I would not have taken a taxi for the trip. Again, taking taxis is not my preferred way of taking a car, I like to drive myself, so I asked the agent to book a rental car instead. My wish was fulfilled, again, I did not expect it, but it would not hurt to ask, and see, it payed off.

I do not even own a car myself, living in the city with every imaginable type of public transport is in walkable distance. However, I am signed up to every available “car-sharing” company that is available, (basically a rental car that can be booked by the minute with a mobile app, spread around the city) And that is usually what I use instead of a taxi. As I said, I prefer to drive myself, and I do it quite often.

Conveniently enough, the hostel even offered an option to book a parking space in the city center, an option which I requested and got approved. Not getting a parking space near my hostel could have spoiled the deal, but even that I could get covered.

The next inconvenience that I usually endured was air travel. I am not a big fan of air travel, especially if it is short distances. In this case it was something like a one hour flight. That sounds quite easy, but this is only the time, the plane is in the air. Add to that one hour of getting to the airport, one hour of waiting at the airport, while enduring the hassle of security checks, one hour of flight, another hour fiddling around at the destination airport waiting for luggage, searching the taxi strip, and then another hour plus minus for the trip from the airport to whatever the final destination is. All together that is about five hours, the same time, it takes for the train.

Except that it is quick for me to get to the main station, I get in my seat, the train has power outlets and WiFi, and I can get a solid 5 hours of work done, without interruptions. Finally. No waiting, no back and forth, no security checks, no getting on the plane, off the plane, waiting for luggage, etc. etc.

So I asked to get a ticket for a specific train at a specific time, that was the most comfortable to me, and got it approved, and booked. Great success.

In the end the business trip went as well as I expected, I could even visit a friend, on my trip from the customer to my hostel, I had a nice drink with a colleague in the local pub after work, and could easily walk over to my hostel after a few drinks.

And I got all that just by making the very slight uncomfortable choice of not going with the accepted standard of plane+taxi+hotel, and instead suggested my own most preferred options. And all of those choices were not in any way more expensive, than the default. They were just adjusted to my personal preferences.

Non existing risk for me, but great win.

A new way of thinking and risk assessment

If you haven’t started reading the ribbonfarm blog I strongly urge you to consider reading it, because I find it to be on of the most pleasurable blogs right now. Venkats writing is very precise, and he manages to explain even very difficult concepts clearly and easily understandable.

But he is not the only lonely writer to be working on these ideas. There seems to be quite a trend of going into systems thinking and finding ways to incorporate risk and probability into every day decision making.

"The Black Swan" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb started that discussion in popular literature, followed by "Antifragile", by the same author.

But also "The World Until Yesterday" by Jared Diamond devotes a chapter to discuss the topic of risk assesment. And then most recently, Scott Adams published his book: "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big", which goes on to discuss the idea of systems thinking on a more practical level.

And to be frank, I feel that I can apply this kind of thinking at a lot of situations. It is as if everywhere I look systems thinking could improve something or indeed does improve things for me already.

Have fun,
Richard

Going Nude: Learning Skills that require no Tools and Equipment

Currently I am quite obsessed about the idea of doing things “nude”, that is not necessarily without clothes, but rather without much preparation and equipment. That might range from entertaining a crowd with just being yourself and showing a few tricks. Just look at Bobby McFerrin at TED for an example.

He has fun, involves the audience, and everyone feels the magic. But it does not stop there, your body is a powerful tool, but being surrounded by equipment and machinery, diminishes our perception of what is possible without crutches and prosthetics.

There are many sports and forms of entertainment, that require equipment like skiing, biking, golfing, etc. but have you experienced the pure joy of just running through the woods, jumping broken trees and grown out roots, smelling the nature, feeling your feet adjusting to the ups and downs of the ground? Yeah, that might require running shoes, but there is even a growing movement of barefoot running proponents. And as a middle ground, there are lightweight shoes like Vibram Five Fingers and Nike Frees.

Or enjoying activities with other people, that do not require gadgets or consumption. Feel the pure and raw energy of human bodys crushing together in some martial arts lessons. I’ve taken up dancing recently, and alas, physical interaction with a person does posses quite a different quality than holding the handles of your bike or pounding away on the lifeless plastic of your computer-keyboard. The mechanical interface to satisfactorily satisfy the precise quality of the human ability to perceive tactile information is still to come. Learning a skill that involves physical interaction, is like learning a new language. A language to often neglected I believe, when interacting with people not yet trained in a language of physical expression, their movements being imprecise, uncontrolled hard and inhuman. Like the’ve become the plump machines themselves that were supposed to make our lives more pleasurable.

Physical movement can be a language, there are even deaf people that “think” in gestures.

And stying with language learning, of course this is another skill that requires no tools. Books maybe, to get you started, but once acquired, the skill is yours, embedded in your soul, ready to be applied.

Being the Movie Buff that I am, I rewatched one of the “Jason Bourne” movies yesterday with a friend, and it always fascinates me how Jason Bourne is able to “act” nude in almost every situation. Just imagine yourself, drifting on the ocean, no money, no tools no equipment, yet being able to deal with everything that comes thrown towards you. Being able to speak every language, being able to fight, improvise, understand technology, etc.

btw. technological understanding is an important nude skill in itself. Being able to use found equipment, computers that you’ve never used before, can alleviate the need to carry your own familiar technology with you all the time. And also, technology is built by humans, so by understanding technology you understand humans, and vice versa ideally. 😉

And the last, and eventually most important nude skills is that of being able to build tools. 😉 And here I am mostly thinking about the entrepreneur. Imagine yourself stranded in a foreign country, no identity, no money, no job, nothing. How long will it take you to indulge into the local economy, build networks, found organizations, provide value to the community and work your way to a joyful existence?

Knowledge is the new capital, and I have good news, there is plenty and its free for everyone. I’ve learned more from the internet and from interaction than I ever could from a university.

Have fun,
Cheers
-Richard

The Power of Franchising – Create a Handbook for your Life

Early this year, I got my copy of “The E-Myth revisited”, and I was truly amazed about the knowledge in there, however, I tend to try to apply any existing knowledge to new problems, so I am right now creating a Franschise Prototype, but not a business, but rather my personal organization at home, how and I why I do stuff, what I own, and why I need it, etc.

If you’ve not read Michael Gerbers book, “The E-Myth revisited”, it is about creating a business, that is driven by excellent rules, designed to scale the business rather then centering your business around yourself and your ability to “run things”. Creating a Franchise starts out with building a Franchise-Prototype, which is the first implementation of your business, where you experiment and test, whether certain processes work, and it serves as a blueprint for your “Franchise-Manual”, a COMPLETE Handbook, about how your business works, from start to finish, written in a way such that your business can be easily and successfully replicated, with the aim of either expanding your business to other areas, or selling your business to people such that they can successfully run it.

So I realized, that my personal life, how I organize my place, the stuff I buy, what I do, is some kind of support system for me. To enable me to all the fun things that I am interested in. And because I want to have as much time for fun things as possible, I prefer to run things at home as smoothly, efficiently and effortlessly as possible. Interestingly enough, those are also the goals for a franchise, and therefore a franchise prototype.

Therefore I’ve kick started this year, by creating a handbook, a little guide, about how I expect my life to work, and about how I go about repetitive tasks in my life.

I started out with my list of resolutions for 2010, what went wrong last year, and what actions am I going to take to improve this year. And of course other goals that I want to achieve this year. I’ve also added actions about those goals.

This served as the skeleton for my handbook. I then added notes that I already made about some tasks that I only do every now and then, because one forgets specific details inbetween.

So, now for the PRACTICAL example, what do I have in my handbook for 2010?

First of all, it is just a folder full of handwritten notes, and I use post-its to mark the sections. I have the following sections:

  • Body
  • Girls
  • Money
  • Making a video
  • Giving a talk
  • Going on a journey
  • Organizing an event
  • Maintaining a server
  • Yearly Review

In the Body section I have notes about how I want to improve/maintain myself physically this year. For me this means powerlifting, occasional rock climbing and taking dancing lessons.

As a side note, in my personal training and workout guidelines, I have a printed copy of those two blog entries from the fourhourworkweek.com/blog

As well as a copy from a page of a book, that outlines some basic dancing moves.

In the Girls section I just have a gentle reminder to regularly review additional reading material to improve my gentlemanly skills, but also to put that knowledge into practice by actually talking girls on dates.

Additionally, I have a reminder to keep my crib clean, you never know what happens.

In the Money Section I remind myself, to schedule ample amounts of time for my consulting business, to write valuable blog content and scripts for instructive video blogs. I also remind myself to regularly review my budget, and watch my accounts, as well as putting a decent amount in my savings account each month. I am doing mostly freelance work, so I cannot automate this just yet.

Also I remind myself to focus on reading about business development, with a special focus on online businesses and communities.

As an appendix to this section, I also have my complete budget for 2010 in there, that outlines all fixed recurring and monthly or quarterly payments, so that I can plan things.

You have a budget right?

In the following sections, namely Making a video, Giving a talk, Going on a journey, Organizing an event and Maintaining a server, I have all the notes that I keep on such tasks, because I do not do these things regular enough, to make them habits, so I always have to review what went wrong the last time, so I can improve upon this for the next event/video, whatever.

And finally in the last section the Yearly Review section, I keep some notes about tasks that I only do once per year, like checking whether my passport is still valid, reviewing my financial situation, what went wrong last year, and how to improve next year, etc.

All this gives me a general outline for the coming year, so that I can continuously focus on what I actually want to do, and also advice on specific tasks and situations.

Do you have a personal handbook for 2010? Or any ideas about what should go into such a handbook?

Tell me in the comments!

Have fun,

Cheers

-Richard

Lifestyle Design – Why you absolutely need to write well

You think you want to design your own lifestyle, you have read “The 4-Hour Workweek” and want to get started right away? Outsourcing your work, selling online, living free and happy ever after?

Now here is some advice, learn how to write. No really, learn how to write well, you are going to need it. No matter what you are going to do, you will need it.

Outsourcing

When you are thinking about outsourcing, you definitely have to learn how to write. And ideally you need to be able to describe more or less complex tasks in precise and short language, such that any mere mortal can understand them.

Outsourcing is about getting someone else to do your work, and most often your work requires some specific knowledge, about your customers maybe, maybe about how your business works, your industry, etc.

And what if you loose an outsourcer, and need to hire a new one, who is not familiar with your business. Of course you want to get them up to speed as fast as possible. What could probably be more convenient than having a complete and easy to read manual about your business to give to your new employee.

And writing well does not only mean that you can produce endless sermons of boring blabla. You want your people to actually do work, and not read your newest and greatest 1000 page novel, right. Therefore writing well also means writing short, yet not missing out on important details.

btw. if this did not convince you, read “The E-Myth Revisited” by Michael Gerber, I’m sure he will teach you. And you will gain valueable insights into how business actually works.

Also, non-routine tasks, like stuff that only needs to be done once per month/year, needs to be documented well, or else you or your outsourcers, will likely forget specific details, and you are therefore bound to reinvent the wheel time and time again, which of course is inefficient and causes unnecessary extra-work.

Selling

This of course depends on your niche and industry, but lets assume that you are selling online, or that you plan to sell online. Have you ever though about how your sales pitch is going to be delivered to your potential customers, I hope you have. While video is taking one, most of the information on the Internet is still consumed via reading. And this means for you that you need to write to deliver your marketing message. Of course, you could also outsource copywriting, but this takes as back to point number one, who’s gonna write the instructions for your copywriters?

Maybe you come from a background in Sales, Tim Ferris did work in Sales once, as he says in his book. Then you are maybe more familiar with selling on the phone, or in face to face meetings. You likely know about many of the dynamics that take place in a negotiation situation, and you might be even comfortable and successful doing so. Again, you could outsource sales too, but you’re most likely better of, of you have an Internet strategy as well. I hope you do.

Selling on the Internet is actually not really different from selling via phone and in person. But it is important that you deliver your pitch well, and that means that you need to write well. Also, you might need to write phone scripts for your outsourcers, which again means writing. But just think about the potential, once written, your pitch can be delivered again and again and again. Welcome to the benefits of the net.

Product Creation

So, you think you want to create a product as your muse. An information product maybe, as recommended in the 4HWW? Like DVDs, or an eBook? Well, you see for the eBook you are going to need to write again. And it’d better be good, so that people blog and write about you and help you promote your product. That means writing well. Like writing instructions for your outsources, creating an information product likely contains instructions, self-improvement advice, whatever. If your instructions and your writing are clear and easy to follow, people will have a better time, implementing your ideas, and will likely tell their friends about you.

I recommend 4HWW to all my friends, so I guess it works for Tim.

Oh, and btw. if you think you can just do a DVD and avoid this practice, think again, I’ve found that making videos is much easier if you sketch out a simple structure of your product before starting the shooting. Writing helps you clear your mind and organize your ideas, this will likely show in your video as well. But maybe you are a natural, or you fix it all in the editing room, who knows.

Teaching

Is teaching a part of Lifestyle Design? I certainly think it is. What if you are able to make it, and have the most awsome fun in your whole life, but you have no one to share your joy with? Because all your friends are still dully working away their hours all week long, instead of playing outside with you? Then you need to be able to teach them, to have the real fun. Or you try something really cool, that you want to tell the world about?

Being able to teach well is just most important, no matter what you practice, as soon as you are becoming really good, you start to socialize with the top dogs, you will exchange ideas and new approaches etc. Then you will need to teach your commonity about your latest exploits. And I have found, that it is not only of benefit to deliver a classroom lecture well, or maybe lead a practical course, but rather for effective teaching written course ware is essential as well. I for one really thrive when I have well written instructions to accompany an interesting course.

Also, remember “becoming an Expert” instructions in Tims Book, they require you to give lectures to interested audiences, which means you need to teach. And to write.

So, I hope I could convince you why this is such an essential skill in Lifestyle Design. This is a motivational piece, and I hope I got you out of the chair and into your, well…. writers chair. 😉

btw. This was only about WHY you need to learn writing, I am not going to tell you HOW to learn writing, but I’ll give you a hint: (practice helps) 😉

Have fun,
Cheers
-Richard