Prompts

I have nearly 2,000 items on my Kindle. Over a thousand articles, web pages and wiki pages I've sent to myself, but there's also hundreds of Kindle books and even more samples.

Writing to learn

I wake up and I generally read a little, but mostly right. I often write for 2 hours/day (usually 5am - 7am).

While most of my writing appears to be freeform, I tend to mostly use prompts. Often the prompts will be insights I wrote down just before I went to bed.

For example, last night I wrote:

"Living is easy, but to live to your full potential, you must make an effort. Thrive on effort because the more effort you make, the easier life gets."

This is a great addition the piece I wrote on effort previously.

What are some prompts used by ultra successful people?

Benjamin Franklin

“What good shall I do this day?” to: “What good have I done today?”

Steve Jobs

“If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do?”

Oprah

Five things for which she’s thankful for (counts her blessings)

Reid Hoffman (Billionaire)

Before bed, he asks himself questions to help work on problems while he sleeps.

Josh Waitzkin (world champion martial artist)

“My journaling system is based around studying complexity. Reducing the complexity down to what is the most important question. Sleeping on it, and then waking up in the morning first thing and pre-input brainstorming on it. So I’m feeding my unconscious material to work on, releasing it completely, and then opening my mind and riffing on it.”

Peter Drucker

When he made a decision, he wrote down what he expected to happen. Months later, he would compare the actual results with his expectations. Putting your decisions in AuthorDock, in the form of milestones will help you see the path your decisions took you.

Leonardo da Vinci, the definition of creativity wrote thousands of pages: sketches musings on his art, inventions, observations, and ideas.

Albert Einstein wrote more than 80,000 pages of notes in his lifetime. I can't imagine the impact he would have had with his words if he had been using PubWriter.

President John Adams filled the pages of over 50 journals.

Writing to Learn

Learn by doing.

How are you augmenting reality?

That's my prompt today.

Metacognitive thinking is awareness of our own thoughts.

Ever notice that after writing about your thoughts, plans, and experiences, you feel clearer and more focused? This called “writing to learn.”

Writing brings order and meaning to our experiences and becomes a potent tool for knowledge and discovery. augments our ability to think about complex topics that have dozens of interrelated parts, while our brain, by itself, can only manage three in any given moment. A review of hundreds of studies on writing to learn showed that it also helps with what’s called metacognitive thinking, which is our awareness of our own thoughts. Metacognition is a key element in performance.

Bibliography

5 Ways We Can Learn About Note-Taking from da Vinci

Why Successful People Spend 10 Hours A Week On “Compound Time”

John Adams Diaries