12 of 58 for 58: Write Early and Often

I think a lot about writing. More specifically, I ponder how I can help my students feel more comfortable when they write. I consider comfort as key to practice and, ultimately, skill improvement. I've been through several periods in my career when I agonized about writing. Therefore, this challenge lies near and dear to my heart.

We start by lowering the stakes. We write early in the day as part of a regular morning ritual. Thereafter, we write whenever we can. We take notes at meetings, based on what we read, watch, or listen to, and what we observe throughout the day. As a result, we write a lot. We fill notebooks, hard drives, and cloud storage with pages of our insight.

No doubt a lot of what we produce will never see the light of day outside of our private world. And we'll consider some portion of this work mediocre at best, unreadable at worst. If we're lucky, we'll share pieces of this work with others. 

Regardless, writing early and often allows us to get comfortable with writing. Sometimes we absolutely must write something, and there's a lot riding on it. In these instances, we can do so with confidence, skill, and perhaps even a modicum of flare thanks to regular practice.