Honey, you’re not listening
ADDvanced Listening & Languaging

© Madelyn Griffith-Haynie, CTP, CMC, ACT, MCC, SCAC
from the Memory & Coaching Skills Series

Spacing out – when attention wanders

We’ve all had times when our mind goes off on a short walk-about as someone seems to go on and on and on.

But that’s not the only arena where attention wanders off on its own.

Have you ever gone into another room only to wonder what you went there to do?

I’ll bet you have little to no awareness of where your attention went during your short trip to the other room, but if you’re like me (or most of my clients and students), you’ve sometimes wondered if doorways are embedded with some kind of Star Trekkian technology that wipes our minds clean on pass-through.

Awareness is a factor of ATTENTION

Has your mate ever said “Honey, I TOLD…

Start a Blog – A blog can be a great way to get your feet in the door far as reaching out to an audience is concerned. The frequency to which you can publish articles on the blog can help people to become familiar with you and your writing style. I think blogs are especially important for people who aren’t necessarily known for writing (a doctor or construction worker) but they’ve decided to write a book. Starting a blog first can introduce them to the writing community (whichever community that is) and get people familiar with them as a writer. It’s one thing to enjoy doing something but it’s an entirely different thing to translate that into a language that others will understand. The immediate feedback from the blog can help writers to access not just where they are with their writing (if they can engage a group of people…

The poet in his ivory tower
Has not the power
To change
This deranged
Place
Where the lunatic’s face
Flushed with belief
Brings the world to grief.

Those who think themselves sane
Cudgel their brain
And impose dreams
(which they call schemes)
For the improvement of man.

When dreams fail
The believers wail
“We will get it right next time”.
Or, for shame
They blame
The poor
Gardener who asks nothing more
Than to be left alone to cultivate his garden.

The poet begs pardon
To be excused,
With an amused smile,
For there can be no denial
That time spent in rhyme
Keeps him safe from humanity’s grime.

by Brendan Brown on Global English Editing Site:

William Strunk Jr. phrased it best in the must-have book for writers of all levels, Elements of Style:

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”

There’s a tendency to fill writing with needless words; this can bog a reader down in details, distracting from your message. Mastering the art of decluttering words frees you to effectively capture readers’ attention, sparking intrigue and affirming expertise in what you are writing about.

Here are some must-have tips to help you do just that…

Source: GlobalEnglishEditing