2020 resolution - write!

Your 2020 new year’s resolution – write that book

OK, here we are, already a week into 2020 and no doubt some of your new year’s resolutions have already gone by the board – how’s that daily exercise target going?

Here’s a resolution which could be for sometime during 2020 or maybe even just sometime in the 2020s – writing a book. There, you’ve now got a whole decade to complete it!

Writing a book is not a resolution for the faint-hearted, I get that. It will involve setting aside many hours of thought followed by even more hours of writing. Writing material for a book is not one of those casual tasks you can do with one eye still on your phone or on that Netflix boxset. So how are you going to find the time and the headspace for it? Well, think about the amount of time spent with both eyes on your phone or on Netflix boxsets during the past year. Even roughly tot up how many hours and it will probably be a scary number. If only part of that time was set aside for writing, think what you could achieve over the next few months.

So, that at least is a start at chipping away at the first barrier to writing a book – the time available to do it. The second barrier needs in fact to be broken down before the first one:

What to write a book about?

If you’re sitting there asking yourself that question and nothing obvious comes to mind, then it’s probably time to park this resolution for another year or maybe even for another decade. But if some sort of “I’ve always wanted to write a book about…” thoughts start crowding around in your head, then why not choose now to change from “I’ve always wanted to” to “I will this year”?

Write about change

As we enter this new decade, there is such a feeling of change and disruption in the air, some of it positive, some less so. The climate emergency is now entering all our lives, as daily climate disasters crowd the headlines and the option of not changing anything in our lifestyles and our life choices vanishes. For better or for worse, Brexit is now a done deal and we have to get on with it. The speed with which technology and AI will affect our lives in a way that moves beyond wild sci-fi predictions will become real during the 2020s. On top of these three examples of flux and change, there are dozens more which may affect you and your business in the coming decade.

On that basis, it can be said that there has never been a more interesting time to be alive. You may take an optimistic or a pessimistic view of that, but whatever your outlook, all this disruption will be feeding into the backdrop of your life, your business and the sectors in which you operate.

Does that backdrop of change create in you an urge to comment, to speculate, to use your experience and expertise to chart a way through these uncertain waters? Or maybe to look at aspects of the past to try to find lessons for the future?

Whatever is bubbling away in your mind as a topic, an issue, a cause, a reason for your book, then start some jottings now. Everyone is searching for answers, and maybe right now, in your world, you have found some you’d like to share.

Whatever the imperative to write which is stirring within you, don’t bury it yet again.

Use this milestone of the new decade as the starting gun for that book you’ve always wanted to write.