I learned an important idea from professional speaker Alan Goff. This idea is that writing produces results. Alan Goff outlined this idea as follows:

• Writing causes thinking.
• Thinking creates an image.
• Images create emotions.
• Emotions create actions.
• Actions produce results.

This is a powerful message. What it means to me is that you can explore your thoughts by writing them out on paper. By writing down your thoughts, it helps you picture them in your mind. Picturing things in your mind can help you to imagine yourself in future situations, which can motivate you. This can lead you to take action to achieve your goal or to bring your idea to fruition. And when you take action, you produce results.

So how can you produce results via writing? One way is to write down your goals. Don’t just keep them in your head. Write them down and think them through. And be sure you do more than just record what your goals are. Also write about why you have those goals and ideas for how to achieve them. This can lead to actions and motivation to help you achieve those goals.

Another way to produce results via writing is to keep a regular journal and write about what you learned and experienced during the day. At the end of the day, record in your journal what you learned during the day and what you will do differently based on what you learned. If you learned something particularly interesting, explore it via writing and thinking.

Another great way to use writing to produce results is to capture your ideas and inspirations in writing. I do this whenever I have an idea for a software application I want to create. I write out my app idea, including all of the features that I can imagine creating for this app. Then I later act on what I wrote by creating the app and using my notes to recall everything I want the app to do.

Writing can also produce results as a team. For example, I once worked with a team of fellow Toastmasters to create a promotional booth training program. One of the things we did was to have a group brainstorming session. My friend Marc had mind mapping software on his computer, and he took notes using this software while our team brainstormed ideas for what to include in our training program.

Conclusion

What I have learned is that writing does produce results. It helps you think things through. It can help you to capture your goals and aspirations and to clearly articulate them. Thinking through your goals can lead to action plans, and acting on those plans can bring you closer to achieving your goals.

Writing can also help you to capture your ideas and inspirations. You can explore them via writing, and you can later implement those ideas after your have fully explored them.

I encourage you to start exploring your thoughts via writing. Whether it is writing for yourself or writing for others, such as a blog article like this one, you can create results through writing.