How I wrote quickly and efficiently and completed a website within 3 days
By Raymond on Feb 28, 2009 in Efficient life
我如何在3天内写完一个网页—怎样提升写作速度和效率
Some friends were marvelous at my speed of writing, that I could finish writing most of the content of the whole webpage within 3 days, in a foreign language. And, writing this website was not my only task. When I tried to write as quickly as possible, I realized some rules that may help us to write biggest number of words in shortest time.
Write a summary first before you write an essay. It is advantageous to spend 5 minutes to put down the main points of the essay you are going to write. This allows you to have a whole view of the essay and organization of different points into logical paragraphs. Just use two to ten words at most to describe the key of a paragraph. In this 5 minutes, let your ideas flow out of your brain naturally. And treasure this 5 minutes, because after you start writing or typing, it is hard for your mind to jump from the writing mode to the constructing mode, and again it takes time to let your mind jump back to the writing mode again. Moreover, chances are there that you suddenly forget an important idea that you are going to talk about when you are writing. It can take minutes or even days to pick your valuable ideas back, if they do not disappear forever.
No “Backspace” or “Delete”! People tend to correct their typing errors immediately, but this severely slow down the typing speed, and more importantly, it terminates the flow of thinking. I understand that the red and green underlines of Microsoft word are extremely attracting and tempting us to correct the word or sentence right away. Try not to do that. If the underlines really attract you, turn off the automatic checking function. Evaluate the times of pressing the key “Backspace” when you type a 1000 words essay – you should use it less than 10 times. With the automatic correcting function, we can actually correct all the errors efficiently in batch after we have finished the whole essay. Interesting, you will also find that you will have less typo errors when you train yourself to use less “Backspace”.
Prevent yourself from using the mouse pointer. Just plug the mouse off if necessary. It is not a good time for you to organize the structure of sentence or even the connections between paragraphs when you are writing. The principle is: let your mind flow naturally. Also, even if you have made a correction on the organization of several paragraphs immediately, it is just a local edition. After you have written the whole essay, you may still have to organize the paragraphs again.
No disturbance. Turn off the TV when you write (just do not start writing if your favorite programme will be broadcast soon). Turn off your mobile phone or turn it to silent (not shaking) mode. Shut the door of the room and hang a notice “DO not disturb” outside the door. All of these help you to focus on your writing. Focus is the key point of efficiency. It just takes considerable time to get back to the “focus mode” once you are dragged away from it. Try to finish your essay at one time. If you are not writing a thesis or encyclopedia, do not divide it into small parts. Hold your breath and write to the end.
If reference or extra data is needed, check for it later. Instead of going online again and search for necessary information instantly, just mark it down in your essay using a bracket. When you disappointingly discover the fact that you cannot find the useful information after an hour, your spirit of writing has already gone.
When you are hesitating whether to write about it or not, just go ahead! Save your time from fruitless hesitation. You can just delete it if you find the paragraph is useless afterwards. Hesitation occurs generally because of the human’s innate hope on perfection. But most of the time, you will find that something flow out naturally from your mind will rarely be totally useless. And actually, the readers will not really mind when some mistakes occasionally appear.
When an idea sparks in your mind, write it down immediately. This is the time when you are more enthusiastic and eager to write, and so you can write even faster during this “high time”.
If your mind is blocked, go to have a walk or shower. Bottleneck occurs when you are stuck in a static point of thinking because you have kept your mind on only one thing for a long time. Pull your mind back a little by doing unrelated things like having s shower, talking with a friend or simply drinking a cup of water will help to remove the blockage.
No dictionary. Dictionary is a great obstacle for you to write fast in a foreign language. Why do people write fastest in their first language? An important factor is that they do not have to check for the translations of words. I understand that it is very important to use precise words in a good essay, but check for all the words you don’t know altogether after you finish it. Moreover, the readers are more forgivable then we imagine. They won’t care too much about the exact wordings when the valuable message is clearly delivered.
Use English to write if you know more than two languages. Unless your target audience do not know how to read English, it is beneficial to write in English because keyboards are now designed for the 26 alphabets.
Save. Save your document frequently when you write, at least once per hour. All of us should have the experience of losing data due to disconnection of internet or cut off of electric supply. If you are writing on a browser for an email or blog, get used to copy your words temporarily by pressing Ctrl-A and Ctrl-C before you submit your messages. If you type in a word document, just press Ctrl-S to save. It takes less than half a second. More conveniently, you can turn on the Auto-Save function in Microsoft Word and let it automatically save your document every 1 minute. Save, then you are safe.
Last bonus:
Separate writing from editing. This is also the main point in this essay. Writing is a process of creating and integrating ideas, while editing is to make your writing more appealing to readers, from structure, organization, use of words, formats and design. Writing is slowed down by editing, and editing is useless until writing is completed. Mix the two processes will slow down both.
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