what is it and how to use it? Mark Levy’s rules for problem solving, the benefits and harms of the method


Freewriting: what is it and how to use it?

Recent­ly, freewrit­ing has been gain­ing momen­tum - free writ­ing method. It opens up ample oppor­tu­ni­ties for per­son­al devel­op­ment and for the imple­men­ta­tion of dai­ly activ­i­ties. This arti­cle will tell you what is behind this for­eign word and how to use this method.

What it is?

If you did not miss Eng­lish lessons at school, then you imme­di­ate­ly real­ized that we are talk­ing about free writ­ing texts.

For those who are not famil­iar with the lan­guage of Shake­speare, we explain: “freewrit­ing” is orig­i­nal­ly two Eng­lish words free and writ­ing, in lit­er­al trans­la­tion this phrase means “free writ­ing”.

Freewrit­ing tech­nique is famil­iar, per­haps, to each of us. Who has nev­er drawn in the mar­gins of their text­book or note­book? But such images, even if they do not mean any­thing spe­cif­ic, are ele­ments of freewrit­ing. But if we did it almost uncon­scious­ly, then oth­er peo­ple under­stood what they were doing, paint­ing their own man­u­scripts.

Remem­ber the clas­sics. Both Alexan­der Pushkin and Niko­lai Gogol not only accom­pa­nied their cre­ations with “pic­tures” in the mar­gins, there they expressed their thoughts, that arose dur­ing the writ­ing of a par­tic­u­lar work. Some gen­er­al­ly con­sid­er Niko­lai Vasi­lye­vich and Alexan­der Sergee­vich are the prog­en­i­tors of freewrit­ing.

So what is its mean­ing? The rules are sim­ple, like all inge­nious - take a sheet of paper (cre­ate a new doc­u­ment on the com­put­er), han­dle (pen­cil, key­board) and We start writ­ing what­ev­er comes to mind.


The task is not to deduce smart words in a beau­ti­ful hand­writ­ing with­out error, but to splash out on a piece of paper (com­put­er file) every­thing that has boiled in the soul. At the same time, you should not even think for a sec­ond about observ­ing the rules of the Russ­ian lan­guage and eti­quette, choos­ing words and expres­sions.


For every task you have only 5, max­i­mum — 10 min­utes. And believe me, after this time, not only cre­ative peo­ple will find answers to tor­ment­ing ques­tions. This is a great way to find an inter­est­ing top­ic for a future arti­cle or even a book. But oth­er ques­tions can be solved in exact­ly the same way — busi­ness or per­son­al prob­lems. It’s kind of like brain­storm­ing.

The ben­e­fits of such activ­i­ties far out­weigh the harm.. But there is also a dan­ger. Your stream of thoughts, which you put down on paper with­out hes­i­ta­tion, can not only help you, but also scare you. Espe­cial­ly if you are a thin per­son. So we ask the faint of heart to move away from the screens, for every­one else — to be con­tin­ued.


Goals and rules


You can use this method in a vari­ety of life sit­u­a­tions. If your goal match­es one of the fol­low­ing, then take a pen, paper and go.

So, freewrit­ing is suit­able if you need:

  • gen­er­ate a great idea;
  • iso­late from var­i­ous ideas the most suit­able for solv­ing a par­tic­u­lar prob­lem;
  • find the answer to a ques­tion that has been tor­ment­ing you for a long time;
  • deter­mine future plans;
  • under­stand what is both­er­ing you;
  • clear your head of unnec­es­sary thoughts and emo­tions;
  • make a list of pri­or­i­ty tasks;
  • to sep­a­rate the wheat from the chaff, that is, to under­stand what is real­ly impor­tant to you, and what is sec­ondary or does not mat­ter at all;
  • look at the sit­u­a­tion through the eyes of anoth­er per­son;
  • under­stand why some­thing is not work­ing out for you (lose weight, earn a lot of mon­ey, ful­fill the stan­dard of a mas­ter of sports, start a fam­i­ly);
  • decide on plans for the near (dis­tant) future;
  • well, and the most banal, per­haps — you just need to learn how to write quick­ly.

We have decid­ed on the con­di­tion of the task, now we will pro­ceed to its imple­men­ta­tion. As men­tioned ear­li­er, the main thing is not to think about any­thing.

Don’t stop your stream of con­scious­ness think­ing about what let­ter to write here or where to put a com­ma, this is the top­ic of anoth­er les­son.


Techniques


Amer­i­can Mark Levy claims that it was freewrit­ing that helped him turn from a mediocre book deal­er into the pres­i­dent of a suc­cess­ful com­pa­ny that devel­ops unique mar­ket­ing strate­gies.

book author “Genius to order” they will assure you that it is quite easy to achieve a turnover of one bil­lion dol­lars a year. Just start think­ing and writ­ing freely, and then the way to solve prob­lems will be found by itself.

Freewrit­ing is not just a mod­ern tech­nique for find­ing cre­ative solu­tions, it is a method that allows a per­son to come to an agree­ment with him­self.

To do this, Mark Levy advis­es the fol­low­ing:

  • you need to write quick­ly and at the same time not be inter­rupt­ed;
  • set a clear time frame for the exer­cise;
  • write what­ev­er you think;
  • do not strain and do not demon­strate super­pow­ers — super efforts are not need­ed here, rather the process of fish­ing out the nec­es­sary infor­ma­tion from the far­thest nooks and cran­nies of one­self is more impor­tant;
  • devel­op what you man­aged to get out by con­tin­u­ing to write down your thoughts;
  • change the word­ing of the ques­tion you want to answer, in oth­er words, redi­rect your atten­tion to find the solu­tion you need.

Freewrit­ing spe­cial­ists have divid­ed this method into sev­er­al sub-meth­ods. Thus, by chang­ing the con­di­tions of the task of your freewrit­ing ses­sion, you will soon­er or lat­er achieve your goal. And for this you can use the fol­low­ing meth­ods.


disperse the fog


Need to get rid of unnec­es­sary, some­times intru­sive thoughts. When you write out every­thing that has boiled on paper (thoughts, feel­ings, per­haps even resent­ment), it will become eas­i­er for you to deal with press­ing mat­ters. There­fore, it is rec­om­mend­ed to per­form this exer­cise in the morn­ing, to “clear” your­self of unnec­es­sary thoughts for the whole day.

Phrasebook

In order not to waste time choos­ing words, make up a lit­tle phrase­book for your­self. Enter in it abbre­vi­a­tions of the most fre­quent­ly used words, images of an image or, pos­si­bly, an action.

self-knowledge

Do not ask oth­ers for answers to your ques­tions. Look for them deep with­in your­self. They are def­i­nite­ly there. Can’t find it right away, refor­mu­late the ques­tion. Soon­er or lat­er you will read on a piece of paper the exact word­ing of your next plan of action.

Exercise


Change the ques­tions you ask your­self. Even in one par­tic­u­lar case, there are more of them than it seems at first glance. For exam­ple, the ques­tions “What is going on in my life?” and “How do I feel?” sim­i­lar at first glance. But believe me, when you start answer­ing them with freewrit­ing, you will get com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent answers. From this, new ques­tions will begin to flow, such as “What do I want?” and “What do I need for this?”, “What do I already have for this, and what is miss­ing?” and so on.

Don’t be lazy. And soon­er or lat­er you will def­i­nite­ly get to the bot­tom of it.

If you find it dif­fi­cult to do freewrit­ing in the full sense of the word, or it seems that you sim­ply do not have enough time for this, start with mini-freewrit­ing. Give it only 3–5 min­utes, for exam­ple, dur­ing a break at work.

Make a list of things you have planned for the day. And then dur­ing the day, check the data on your list with what you actu­al­ly man­aged to accom­plish.

Maybe next time, before you start doing some­thing, you still make a rea­son­able idea about what you need for this and whether you need it at all, but with the help of full-fledged freewrit­ing.

Where to begin?


The most impor­tant and com­plex, as in any oth­er mat­ter, - it start. Even if you have noth­ing to say to your white sheet, write it down: “I have noth­ing to write about.” Do this until oth­er thoughts come to you. Change the top­ics you want to dis­cuss with your­self using freewrit­ing. Ask your­self addi­tion­al ques­tions.

Anoth­er ver­sion of this exer­cise is dan­ger­ous to health, but some­times very pro­duc­tive. By the way, the well-known Amer­i­can writer Ernest Hem­ing­way described him in a phrase that lat­er became an apho­rism.

It sounds like this: “Write drunk, edit sober.” Although the method is close not only to the Amer­i­can, but also to the Russ­ian soul, it must be used with great care.

Step-by-step instruction

Find the best freewrit­ing tool for you. Pen, pen­cil, sheet of paper, notepad, note­book, lap­top, tablet and so on — this choice is com­plete­ly yours.

Pre­pare it for work so that it doesn’t turn out at the right moment that the pen­cil is bro­ken, the pen does not write, and the lap­top is not charged. By the way, You can also use a voice recorder. say every­thing that boiled up, and then lis­ten back to what you entrust­ed to your elec­tron­ic friend, some peo­ple actu­al­ly find it eas­i­er to talk than to write.

How­ev­er, dis­play­ing words on paper is still con­sid­ered a more effec­tive exer­cise. Deter­mine the time for your class­es — 5, 10, 15 min­utes. The main thing is that no one and noth­ing inter­feres with you. Turn off your phone, turn off the TV, lock your­self in the bath­room after all. Be alone with your­self and your thoughts.


Write what­ev­er comes to mind. If, nev­er­the­less, you have entered a stu­por, and your thoughts do not want to come out in any way, try to force them to do so. with the help of essay top­ics.

  • Write a short essay on the top­ic: “Once I want­ed to do this, but I didn’t because…”.
  • Give five answers to the ques­tion, what are you espe­cial­ly wor­ried about now?
  • List by points what you dream about (dreamed about before)?
  • Describe in detail how you feel at the doc­tor’s office.
  • List 20 things that are right in front of you right now.
  • Then make a list of the sounds that sur­round you.
  • Briefly describe how you made some impor­tant deci­sion for your­self.
  • Write down 10 rea­sons why you need to learn Eng­lish or anoth­er lan­guage.
  • List 10 things you are ashamed of or could be ashamed of.
  • List 10 things for which you would not be sor­ry to give the last pen­ny.
  • Describe your apart­ment from the point of view of your beloved cat, even if you haven’t got a fur­ry friend yet or don’t plan to in prin­ci­ple.
  • Come up with instruc­tions on how to teach this very cat to dance the waltz.
  • Imag­ine that aliens have land­ed en masse on earth, tell us how your life will change.
  • Write a short but prefer­ably touch­ing sto­ry about an emp­ty refrig­er­a­tor.
  • Remem­ber what has made you angry late­ly and describe your con­di­tion and every­thing that you think about it, start­ing with the words “When the trees were big …”.

Share every­thing with your piece of paper — both joys and sor­rows. Do not be shy about your thoughts and desires (even the most secret and not the most decent), all this will remain between you (the writer and a piece of paper). And then soon the num­ber of pleas­ant min­utes in your life will sig­nif­i­cant­ly exceed the num­ber of sad ones. You will under­stand what you real­ly want, find the answer to the ques­tion of how to achieve it, and final­ly reach the peak of per­fec­tion. And where it is locat­ed and how it looks, it’s up to you.


And one more piece of advice — nev­er fool your­self. Not only while freewrit­ing. It is in prin­ci­ple ben­e­fi­cial for life and health.


Take for your­self the mot­to of the words of the author of the cult book “The Alchemist” Paulo Coel­ho: “If you want to be suc­cess­ful, you must respect one rule: nev­er lie to your­self”. And, in the end, paper, as you know, will endure every­thing.


Leave a Reply