How am I qualified to do this? 

I've been a coach for more than eighteen years, and I've coached 6000+ writers. And I'm a writer, myself. So, I know the path you're walking. I use some behavioral continuums and success metrics to give you a starting vocabulary to discuss and evaluate how your brain works.

This isn't meant to be prescriptive. It's meant to be descriptive.

It's meant to help you understand what's going on upstairs and then help you apply sound theory on environments, productivity, and adult behavioral change, in order to discover and execute the best system for your life.

To align you so you can go off like a rocket ship.

The way I commonly explain the “brain wiring” concept is this: each of us is a different kind of tool. We might, for instance, be a hammer. Or we might be a screwdriver. Both tools have the capacity to pound a nail into a wall, but one is made for it and one is not. Hammering with a screwdriver is a waste of time and energy. Best get yourself a hammer.

That’s what this class is all about. Are you a hammer? Are you a screwdriver? Are you a stand mixer? Are you a Vitamix? Do you know what makes you tick and how your brain is designed (almost like a machine or a tool) to function at its best? 

We want to discover how you are wired. How your brain is different from, say, your writing partner’s brain. Or a writer you idolize. Or the teacher of a particular writing craft/business/strategy course. Or your spouse or partner. Also, we want to know how it might be the same. That way, you’ll be a smarter, faster decision-maker in your writing life, and you can stop throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what might make you more productive. 

This process of alignment starts with knowing the difference between weakness management and strength leverage. 

Weakness management comes out of years of studying what is wrong with a person, and the conviction that if we can just shore up and manage our weaknesses, we won't have them. That has been roughly as effective as trying to dam the ocean. We will never stop having weaknesses. Weakness isn't the problem.

Enter Strengths® theory (and positive psychology—the study of what is “right” with us, simplified). Gallup has a program called the CliftonStrengths® Assessment, which sought to understand how we could become better, faster, and stronger, by studying what was good about us, instead of what was wrong. Convinced that spending time and intention on areas of natural strength was more effective, psychologists (most notably, Dr. Donald Clifton) spent decades researching that theory.

It turns out they were right.

If we focus more intention on where we are strong, rather than where we are weak, we get "better-faster" (as I call it). Better-faster is the exponential capacity-building place where getting better (developing) and getting faster (efficiency) multiply. 

Let's look at the first example of Clifton's research, the one that led them to explore the theory of focusing on Strengths.

They took two groups of young readers. One group had an average word-per-minute speed of 90 and the other group had an average of 350 (already three times as naturally gifted as the average readers). Both groups were put through a class to improve their words-read-per-minute skills.

The first group came out with an average of 150 words per minute. Normal improvement.

The above-average readers with unschooled natural ability, their scores also went up. To almost 3000 words per minute.

You didn’t read that wrong. It says three thousand. That puts them in the top 1% of all reading speeds in the world. With time and intention applied to an area of natural ability by an excellent teacher.

The Top One Percent. 

Both are results of growth. One is exponential.

So, the concept of “better-faster” is that place, that top one percent place, where you are wired for success, and where you are naturally going to get better-faster. (Better x Faster. Exponential success.)