Life and learning must be accompanied by curating what we do

I saw a blog post this morning that was titled "This is how to 'work smarter, not harder.' " The top advice came down to "do less -- then obsess." The writer backed this up with research but common sense also seems like support for this idea.

Imagine the opposite: do MORE -- then lower your standards and don't reflect much on everything.

Just putting in the time, or in the case of a writing class, typing lots of words, won't magically produce better learning or writing or government or sales or anything else. I shot a lot of baskets in the driveway in my youth but never rose much above mediocre. Other facts have to be involved.

Gladwell's theory about 10,000 hours of practice needed to become truly expert may work if the practice does not challenge us or qualify as "deliberate." Mindless repetition is not a winning strategy.

I find that asking student to write a lot of quite short pieces of writing is the best way to focus on the HOW of writing. Those weekly short pieces may not produce deep analysis that helps change some area of research or solves some problem but they keep the focus tight enough that the writing instructor (me) can zero in on, for instance, first paragraphs, and really dig into rhetorical and logical choices that could provide needed energy to an eventual longer piece of writing (or a more complete argument).

You might be thinking that the idea of doing less sounds attractive, in the same way that "decluttering" your house or apartment sounds attractive. You might also be wondering about how to make decisions on what to cut from your life. After all, what if you make a poor decision and end up cutting something that really WAS worth obsessing over -- perhaps it was just hard or time-consuming.

I have long tried to convince students that the content of their writing is not really where their writing instructor (me again) should spend time and effort. Content is certainly important, but where I can help is in working on HOW students write, how they makes decisions about diction and syntax and larger structures of their writing. 

My job is not to get into discussions over student beliefs or passions or proposed solutions but to discuss making those statements more accessible for the intended audience and making smart rhetorical choices that avoid confusion and maximize clarity.

I will also mention that being told to "work harder" is a crappy piece of advice. We could think about HOW we can work harder... which is likely what we mean when we talk about working smarter.

As we wrap up the semester, both my online writing classes have fairly large projects/essays to complete. It's almost irresistible to end a course without some culminating, more involved writing.

I'm just not certain anyone learns much more than they would from a more regularly scheduled, tightly focused series of 400-word assignments. 

And that includes the instructor.