Practice Starting!

For years I've been writing that I have no trouble writing. The hard part for me is sitting down to write. Once I sit down, the words come. Like right now.

This morning I realized (finally) that the solution to this problem was simple: I needed to practice sitting down. So I did. After my morning pages, I got up, went to the kitchen. I took a breath, and then headed back to my writing room, sat down, and wrote.

Then I got up and did it all over again.

Each time I did it, I did it a little differently, and each time I learned something.

The major lesson "learned" is something that I've known for a while: that if you want to get good at something, then you have to practice. I'm not good at sitting down to write, so I need to practice it.

More generally, I'm not good at starting. Once I start I can generally (not always) keep going, but starting is the hard part. So, the remedy is clear. I need to practice starting.

I'm also not great at finishing, but that's for another day. Right now my "deliberate practice" is starting.

To do that, I need to try to "deliberately start" whatever I do. I can practice starting lots of times, each day.

Who knows, I might even get good at it!

Staying on Course

In a course on usability, my friend Jared Spool described what happens when you fly from New York to Boston. Most of the time, he said, the plane is off course. Still, you get there. What gets you there despite being off course most of the time is course correction. The pilot (or the autopilot) is constantly correcting errors. Head a little too far North and it points the plane a little further South. Perfection is impossible, so the correction will inevitably head the plane a little too far South. Fine. Correct it again. The wind blows harder than expected and you’re off course again. Correct it.  You might get blown so far off course that you need to touch down and refuel. Get back up in the air and adjust your course once again. That’s how planes get from coast to coast. They correct, correct, correct and eventually they get there.

Life’s like that, too. You try to reach a goal and find yourself headed in the wrong direction. Maybe you’re not a little off course; maybe you’re way off course. It doesn’t matter. What will get you there is course correction.

It’s hard to course-correct effectively if you’re busy berating yourself for being off course. Self-criticism or self-abuse won’t get you back on course; it wastes time and energy. And it sucks.

Being hard on yourself won’t keep you from going off course again. When you’re flying a plane, going off course is part of flying. When you’ve living a life, going off course is part of living. You need to accept it, and adjust.

Sometimes the winds of fortune or errors in life navigation will push you way off course. So refuel. Do any necessary maintenance. Then get back flying again. But before you do, you might take a look around. Your unscheduled stop may turn out to be a pleasant surprise.

Hard to Make, Easy to Break

Good habits are hard to make, easy to break. I should know. I’m back in recovery again after having built, and then broken some really good habits. If I examine them, maybe I will learn something and be able to keep things going the next time.

And this post is further proof of how hard it can be to repair a broken habit. I started writing it on 7/26. The stuff that’s highlighted like this was written on 8/11 when I finally got the goddamn thing off my desk. But in the course of it I think I learned something. I hope I did.

So with that in mind, let’s proceed first to the data then the examination.

What Happened

In May I decided I was going to write. I was going to do it regularly and diligently. I started writing, and as I  wrote I found good tools and configured them so my writing was easier and smoother. And I made a resolution: if I opened a web page with something useful, I would not close the page unless I’d written about it. I worked diligently on my other writing projects. And the results showed it.

	TWR	RSILT	WPFW	BWAS*	Other	Total
May	5	10	2	0	0	17
June	8	35	6	0	0	49
July	13	2	4	3	0	22
Total	26	47	12	3	0	88

This does not include daily pages, which are a well established habit for me, and it does not include my first ever stage play, started in June and finished in July.

And this does not count August which has been pretty much been a washout up to now.

To read the stats: my blogfest in May started near the end of the month, so those first 17 posts have to be extrapolated to the whole month. June was a rockin’ month. I was in a pretty steady state, with continuing improvements. And in July the roof caved in. Why? And what can I learn?

What happened in July?

The obvious and wrong answer was my computer problems. I feel like I have been fighting it all month. But that’s not true. It crashed the weekend I went down to Boston: that was July 10th. It’s only been two weeks that I’ve been fighting it. It just seems like forever.

Then I thought it might be Evernote. Once I started using Evernote I just clipped interesting web pages instead of blogging about them. Turns out this is half the story. I blogged about Evernote on July 6th. My Evernote notebooks show that I started clipping on July 3rd – and I started clipping articles about Social Media. Ahh!

So another answer: At the start of July Mira and I decided to work on a blog. That sent me into another round of process improvements—including Evernote. I let Evernote be a proxy for blogging what I learned about. Then the computer crashed. And things got worse from there.

And the last answer: I just lost momentum, and did not know how to gain it back. And here’s the proof. I started this particular post on 7/26 (or before—that’s the date of the last draft before I picked it up on 8/11)

Now what do I do?

Well, this is a first step [I wrote in my original draft]. I’m writing stuff in the blog. But it’s not enough. I’ve gotten out of some really good habits, and into some bad ones. Just getting myself to write this post was a real struggle. I kept wandering off, surfing web pages and NOT WRITING!

So the answer to this seems to be: put the discipline back into your life.

Really?

That was my remedy on 7/26. “Put discipline back in your life.” And where did it get me? Nowhere. Why? Because “Put discipline back in your life” is a slogan. It’s not a behavior.

And worse, I’ve got bad Beliefs. “I’ve lost control.” “I don’t know what to do.” “I can’t handle it.” All that old shit.

Well, I can handle it. And here’s how I’m going to do it.

My Daily Pages is a fully established, very reliable habit. When I started doing the Pages it was partly with the idea of making it a keystone or foundation (depending on your metaphor) for other good habits.

I got myself into the writing habit and when I lost it I did not have a reflexive way to recover. So I was unstable

What will stabilize me? My answer is good, tight management. I need to managed, or coached until the habit is set, and to intercede if I slip.

Right now I need management at a very granular level. A day is too long a time. The right level of granularity is: a Pomodoro  at a time.

So here’s the current plan.

I will build on Pages. I will start each day with Pages, rather than doing them “some time during the day.” I will follow the Pages with Daily Planning. I will figure out some things that I am going to do—or at least attempt that day. Then start to work on the plan a Pomodoro at a time. Each time, write some notes. Coach yourself on a continuing basis.

Ellis cautions that to make changes it’s necessary to approach the problem both cognitively and behaviorally, and to reward the right result and penalize the wrong one. So: if no pages, I will take a cold shower. I hate cold showers. I have a strong incentive to avoid them. I will avoid them.

Will it work? Time will tell. Pages work. Building on Pages just might work.

I’ve got a new blog (Oh no! Not another!!!) Yes. It’s a personal one. To give myself that feedback and create a sense of history. It’s a personal blog. I may or may not make it public later on. We’ll see.

Today, under this new regime, I’ve done my pages, made my plan and made two posts in the personal blog.  I’ve completed two Pomodoros of varying sizes.

This one will make three of each.

We’ll see what happens.

Anyone can be anything

What do you want to be when you grow up? That's what grown-ups ask kids all the time. It's the wrong question. Being is easy, especially for kids. A kid can be a cowboy, a firefighter, a soldier, all in the space of a few minutes.

Being is not only easy for kids. It's dead easy for adults too. Watch this: I'm a writer. Now I'm an actor. Now I'm a fireman. Now I'm back to being a writer. I can be anything that I want to be. But once I'm being something can I do anything effective? That's a greater challenge.

When I'm being a writer I can write--or not write. If I write, I'm being what you might call a productive writer, or a practicing writer. If I don't write, then I'm being a blocked writer, or a lazy writer, or an aspiring writer. Whether I write or don't write, once I decide I'm a writer, I'm still a writer.

Want to be a writer who writes? Easy: sit down, pick up a piece of paper and a pen and write anything at all--say the word 'dog.' Wow! You're not only a writer but you are writing. Not very much, and not very good, but it's a start. So doing is almost as easy as being.

Doing something well is where it starts to get hard: it takes practice, practice, practice. And not just practice: it takes constant review, criticism, self improvement, maybe coaching and education--what Malcom Gladwell in his book "Outliers" calls "deliberate practice." If your objective is ambitious it may take Gladwell's 10,000 hours of practice. And even that may not be enough if you don't start with a certain level of talent or capability. 10,000 hours of practice would never have gotten me to the NBA. I just don't have the physical skills. But I do believe the skills to write.

I've wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. It took a long time to realize that 'being a writer' was an easy and unsatisfying goal; writing effectively and fluidly was more like it. I've done that more than a few times and I discovered that wasn't what I wanted either. What I now want (and I believe I always really wanted but could not articulate) was to have a body of writing that I wrote and that satisfied me.

And that's what I'm working on (among other things): being what I need to be and doing what I need to do in order to have what I want to have: that body of work.

Right now I want something less than a body of work. I want to have one more finished post. To do that I'm being a writer (easy); I'm writing this blog post (a little harder); I'm rewriting and editing it so that I'm satisfied (much harder); and by the time you see it, it will have reached the state of "good enough for now" and I will have posted it.

Then on to the next post, and the next, and the next. And if I do this (and other practices of writing) enough, I I'll get to my long term goal--maybe.

So I'm writing a lot. I've got five blogs going; I've just finished my first play; I've got some other writing projects in mind. My plan is to produce a few posts a week on each of the blogs. If I keep that up--or even amp it up beyond that--I might reach my long-term goal. Or I might die trying, which is not so bad, either.

The right question is to ask kids--and yourself is not "what do you want to be?" It's what do you want to accomplish--to have? Then figure out what you need to do to get that. Then figure out what you need to be to do that. Then be that; do that; and maybe you'll have that.

At least you'll have fun.

Related articles

• How will you close in on your 10,000 hours today? (lisarivero.com)
• The 10,000 Hour Rule (bellwort.wordpress.com)
• What Malcolm Sees (lisarivero.com)

Why self-discipline (sucking it up) sucks

I’ve realized that self-discipline, so-called, is a lousy technique for personal change, for me certainly. Now I know why, and based on this analysis I believe it sucks for everyone. I can use ABC+D to get a better result. So can you. Here’s why, and how.

According to the ABC theory of Rational Emotional Behavioral Therapy (REBT), discussed in this post, when behavior (a Consequence (C) ) runs counter to a Goal you’re trying to achieve, it’s not by accident. There’s a reason: an Activating event (A) plus a Belief (B) has led to the undesirable Consequences (C). To handle it, according to the theory, to get an Effective result (E) you need to uncover the Belief, and then Dispute it (D). Then you get to do what you set out to do. E=ABC+D.

What if I don’t use ABC+D but instead try to use "self-discipline” to get some desired result? As I have tried many times. After all, that’s what everyone says. Suck it up! Well, sucking it up sucks.

There are two problems with the self-discipline approach. The first is that usually it doesn’t work. The number of failed self-disciplined diets, self-disciplined exercise programs, and on and on worldwide—is enormous and growing daily. That’s a good reason to drop self-discipline, but despite that, people kept telling me and others to do it; and I’ve kept telling myself to do it, and then telling myself that I sucked when I couldn’t do it.

The second problem is worse. Suppose I do “suck it up” and force myself to do whatever it is I’m trying to do. When I do that, what am I actually doing? Well if the undesired behavior is because of a Belief that I hold then “self-discipline” equals forcing myself to do something that goes against my belief! The fact that I have an opposite belief doesn’t matter. I’m bullying myself to breach my own integrity by acting against something (however self-disabling in its consequences) that I believe.

Self-discipline then becomes self-brutalizing.

Better to find, Dispute, and change the Belief than to breach integrity.

Example: I want to write a post called “Self-discipline sucks.” Kind of like this one. Only finished. Instead of writing it, I find myself editing the first part over and over. Then surfing the web. If I do that (and I did)—I have some Beliefs that support those Consequence. And I do.

One Belief that makes me over-edit is: “What I wrote isn’t very good—so I should fix it.” I dispute it by saying: “Yes, but you know that if you go back to edit it before you finish your first draft, it will be both not very good and not done. You’ll be better able to make it good after you’ve gotten all your ideas down.” I quickly agree (this actually happened) and go back to completing my draft.

Another is: “I can always make it better—so I should keep working on it.” Dispute: “Yes, you can make it better. You can always make it better. No matter how good anything is, it’s not perfect, and so by definition you can make it better. But the fact that you can make it better doesn’t mean you should work on it more.”

One Belief that supports surfing is “I need to do some more research.” I dispute it by saying: “you know what you want to say. Just say it. You can find citations later.”

So, if you see this post, you’ll know that this was successful.

I suppose I could have beaten myself into finishing it, and I have in the past. But the beatings have stopped, because morale has improved.

And now it’s time to push the button and….post.

Technorati Tags: REBT,ABC+D,Writing,Productivity

Memorandum from the Prefrontal Cortex

To: All staff
From: Your Prefrontal Cortex
Date: 21 June 2011 : 8:41 AM
Subject: Management training and organizational direction.

This morning, prompted by David Eagleman’s book "Incognito” (which some of my staff and I read this weekend) and using some other ideas we have acquired about neurological function, my executive staff presented me with a very exciting idea. I think it’s a Big Idea. I’d like to share with you now, and I will provide you with more information as we develop the idea.

Now to explain the Big Idea.

As some of you know I and the Prefrontal Cortexes (PFCs) of other humans are widely considered to carry the out the executive functions of the brain. We PFCs make high level decisions, meddle occasionally, and don’t fiddle with the details. This is often due to incompetence rather than disinterest. Consider visual perception. PFCs can decide (as can a few others parts of the human brain) what the eyes are to look at. In some cases we are asked to help resolve ambiguous visual data. But when it comes to image processing--to taking the raw data, as it arrives from our retinas and other sense organs, and turning it into information that is useful to us and to the rest of the organism--well, there we are completely out of our depth. For that work we depend on teams of specialists in the primary and secondary visual cortex, in the superior colliculus, and in many other units of the brain. They, in turn depend on support staff, including millions upon millions of unheralded glial cells who do such a great job of keeping things together and running smoothly. (My thanks to all of you in my brain!)

Responsibly for executive function makes me metaphorically speaking, the CEO of this organization. This is one of several useful metaphors the Eagleman uses, and I will be writing about later. Following this metaphor, I have certain responsibilities. One of them is continuous learning and finding ways to improve organizational performance. Carrying out this responsibility led to the Eagleman book and this Big Idea.

Another of my duties as CEO is assessing organizational performance. Of course, we know that our performance is excellent relative to most human beings, but I now realize that we do that in spite of our management techniques, my own included. Most of them date from well before the stone age! Modern civilization and continuing education have given us better management techniques than the ones that we inherited form our hominid ancestors. But the fact is most of what I, and others in management have learned—beyond our caveman tricks—has been learned in a haphazard and accidental way rather than an organized and intentional way. Following this management metaphor: none of has an MBA; we’ve gotten where we’ve gotten through on-the-job training. Indeed often it’s just been on-the-job experience, and not even training. Effective yes, but not effective as I believe a more structured approach would be.

So I'd like to start by focusing attention on my management skills and those of our executive management team. I’d like to consider, and have us all think about how we might improve those skills. Here are some of my initial thoughts. These will be developed further as we develop and roll out this plan.

We can start by simply adopting this management metaphor more widely and more consistently. Metaphors are powerful tools for human brains. They can help us acquire new ways of thinking far faster than "classroom learning” can. This one has certainly helped me.

Another way we can improve is by introspection, using this metaphor as a guide. We can find places where there are "low hanging fruit” for management improvement. I believe there’s a lot of low hanging fruit around, and I intend to have us pick it.

Another is by explicit

Technorati Tags: Prefrontal Cortex,Neurobiology,Productivity,Management

management training. There are several parts to the management training syllabus that I'm beginning to have in mind, and which I will address in later memoranda.

Another approach, which I particularly want to note for future consideration, is to find ways to get fast feedback through outside coaching, either from others, or in some mechanical way. Eagleman has a section in his book that describes how airplane spotters and chicken sexers are trained. (Yes, chicken sexers!) They are not and cannot be trained by teaching them a set of steps to follow because those who have demonstrably acquired these skills can’t explain how they do it. They just do it. Airplane spotters and chicken sexers, among others, are trained through fast feedback from experts. I think this is applicable my own training—and training for many others of us.

I am asking the executive team, and indeed any of you with management responsibilities, to start looking for opportunities to improve your management skills. You might think that there are limits that derive from our organizational structure, which dates from even earlier than our pre-stone-age management techniques. Indeed our organizational structure makes “stone age” look positively modern! But recent research indicates we can do quite a bit within the existing framework—if we work at it. Particularly we may be able to open new communication pathways between related functions and change some of the ways in which we delegate decision-making and other responsibilities, to mention just two.

So, I'd like each of you individually, and in your workgroups, to consider what this new direction might mean to you. I know it means change. And I know many of you (thankfully) are responsible for our organization’s homeostatic self-regulation. Operationally this means that your job function is to resist change. I thank you for your excellent service in the past, but ask you to reconsider your role with respect to these changes, and think how you might retain homeostatic control but not block progress.

I believe that a well thought out, well planned, widely understood, widely agreed on, and well executed change effort can take what is already a highly successful organization, and move us fairly quickly to levels of performance (and satisfaction) that I, and some others of us have only dreamed of. That’s what I am hoping to develop, deliver, and ultimately help manage.

This is not (and given the way we are organized it cannot be) a unilateral decision. I expect discussion and I hope that this memorandum will generate a lot of new, good ideas. We are an excellent team and I see potential for us to do a lot better--individually, as teams, and as an entire organization.

Let me close by reminding you of what (I hope) is well known to senior staff, but which I may have not made explicit in the past. We have an open door policy here. We are looking for new ideas. We are also very interested in exploring, not suppressing, dissent. If this plan heads in a direction that you don't like, or are concerned about, then metaphorically speaking, speak up. We’d like to hear about these opinions sooner rather than later. We may adjust plans based on your input. Or we may need to communicate more clearly so that those of you who don't see value in our changes can support them—or at least not oppose them. I can't promise that we will please everyone (indeed, given the diversity of our group, I can pretty much guarantee that some will be dissatisfied) but I can tell you that as much as neurally possible that I and executive staff will listen, will do our best to understand, and will attempt respond to every one of you intelligently and respectfully .

Because of the time I've spent writing this memo, I believed that I had cancelled this morning's executive staff meeting—until one of my staff reminded me that this memo has actually required considerable staff input. I agree, and thank all of you for your help. This is a much better document than I could have produced by myself. We’ll meet, as usual, tomorrow morning, to discuss these ideas, and others.

As you can tell, I'm very excited by this idea. The cynics among you will point out that I am very excited by almost any new idea. And I admit that this is true. But I believe that this idea is one that, like daily pages which I have sustained for more than three years, I will be able to sustain. Indeed my plan is to use daily pages, which has served the occasional function of my executive staff meeting, to help ensure that this process continues.

These proposed changes will be new for all of us, and I'd like continuous monitoring and feedback as we proceed. I know that all of you are busy with other responsibilities, but my staff and I consider this very important. Please do your best to prioritize accordingly and please pass the word to any who do not receive this memo directly.

I'd like to get feedback quickly and directly from those who are in feedback loops directly connected to the Prefrontal Cortex, and indirectly from those who are not. And unless there are extremely strong objections we will proceed immediately to implementation

I'm looking forward, as always, to working with you.

Regards,
“Mike”
Prefrontal Cortex

ABC+D=?

My continued investigation into addiction has led me to Albert Ellis, one of the originators of cognitive/behavioral therapy. His particular therapy brand is called REBT, for Rational Emotional Behavioral Therapy.

Like most cognitive approaches, Ellis’s focuses on the links between perception, belief and behavior, and works to change the behavior by changing belief. ABC+D is an acronym describing his method.

The goal of REBT is helping people reach their goals more effectively—or at all. So REBT starts with defining goals. Then judge your actions this way: “Did that get me closer to my goal?” If so, then that action is good. If not, then bad. Regardless of the Consequence, you can use the ABC+D model to analyze what happened, and find better ways to reach the goal.

So let’s define terms.

A = Activating Event. An Activating Event is something noteworthy in pursuit of a goal. The event might block or delay reaching the goal. It might be a distraction. It might be a success.

B = Belief. A belief is something that you hold to be true. Activating Events do not result in behavior; according to Ellis’ model the event is interpreted, and action is prescribed according to beliefs. Change the belief, you change behavior.

C = Consequences. These are the results of some Activating Event. I might be a change in what you have been doing—or it might be no change.

All, right, this is nice and theoretical. Let’s take an example to see how it’s applied. Since I’m writing this post, and since I often have trouble finishing what I write (or do), I’ll use this as an example. My goal is to finish this blog post. Along the way there might be Activating Events that result in negative Consequence (I give up).

Of course sometimes the Consequence is that I succeed. We’ll look at that another time. It’s more useful (right now) to consider failure modes.

How do I fail? Often I I sit down to write then I find myself searching for something on the Web. Or I might find myself down in the kitchen looking in the refrigerator for something to eat. Whatever the case, I am not writing, so I am not reaching my goal. Something is getting in the way.

In this analysis we have one part of ABC—the Consequence. We have C, but we don’t have A and B. Now it’s time for detective some detective work. What’s the Activating Event? And what’s the Belief?

For me, a common Activating Event is this: I stop writing for a moment. Perhaps I review what I’ve read, and I decide I don’t like it. It might be missing something. It might be not well thought out. I might think that the argument is weak and has to be presented differently. Perhaps I don’t know what I might do next. The Activating Event is some disruption in my writing flow.

Fine. We have some examples of Activating Events. What Beliefs do I have that lead me to the undesirable Consequences? Doing a bit of introspection about writing failures, I dredge up these beliefs:

• I don’t know what to do next. This is a handy all-purpose Belief that leads me to “step back and think about things” or “take a break and see what comes to me.” These require some subordinate Beliefs:
  • I have no way to figure out what to do next. If I did, then I’d be doing it.
  • If I take a break, what to do next might come to me.
  • I need to do some more research. Then I’ll know.
• This post isn’t going to be good—or good enough, so it’s a waste of time to work on it. I should work on something else.
• I really should be working on something that’s more important.
• I should be enjoying this—and I’m not.

Most of these beliefs lead to my undesired Consequence. One belief leads to a good Consequence. “I should be working on something more important” could lead me to work the more important project. It’s the others that are problems.

So now I’ve got a bad Consequence, an Activating Event, and a few representative Beliefs. That leads us to Ellis’s D step: Disputing.

Disputing is central to most forms of cognitive therapy. Activating events will happen—although sometimes we can do things to prevent them. For example if a person has a problem overeating and seeing a refrigerator full of favorite foods is a common Activating Event that leads to a binge—the probability of that Consequence can be lowered by leaving the refrigerator empty or filling it with foods that don’t lead to temptation. No Activating Event, no Consequence.

But most Activating Events can’t be prevented. Sometimes my writing flows and it’s all I can do to type as fast as I think. But sometimes I stop I might step back and wonder “How is this going?” That event might not be preventable. Or I just stop. There are no words coming to me. Here the leverage point is Belief. So let’s look at these Beliefs. But before we do this, let’s clarify my goal.

When I’m writing my goal is not to write something great, or necessarily even good. It’s just to write. My fundamental Belief is that if I practice enough, study my practice, and make adjustments, eventually I’ll get good.

With that in mind I can Dispute the Belief “I have no way to figure out what to do next,” by saying: “Yes, you do. You can just write whatever comes to mind. Eventually you’ll find something that makes sense. Or not. But at least you’ll be writing, which is the goal.”

Or I can Dispute “I’ll take a break and see what comes to mind,” by reminding myself: “If you take a break you’re likely to quit. Better to stay in your chair and keep going.”

Or I can Dispute “I really should be enjoying this, but I’m not,” with “It would be nice if you were enjoying this, but the writing process is not always enjoyable. What is enjoyable is finishing what you’ve started. So even though you are not enjoying this, keep going,”

Or I can Dispute “This post isn’t going to be good, or good enough,” with: your goal is to get a first draft done. Once you finish the draft you can criticize it and make it better.”

Or after enough frustration I get the belief Belief: “This is getting nowhere. I’m never going to be good writer.”

I can also Dispute it. “You may not ever be a good writer, but that’s not the goal. It’s to write at whatever level of quality you can achieve, and by practice get better. “

Examining, Disputing and changing these Beliefs might lead to a different Consequence: finishing the goddamn post. And if you are reading it, then indeed it has. As I’ve been writing this post, I’ve stopped from time to time and briefly reflected on what I’m doing. Some, but not all, of these troubling Beliefs have arisen. And I’ve Disputed them.

The result: as of this draft I’ve more than 1,260 words written. I haven’t gone off chasing the new. I’m pretty pleased with what I’ve written—and even more pleased that I’ve written.

Now I’ll answer the question that titled the article:

ABC+D = this post.

And more generally:

ABC+D = goals reached more often.

Related articles

• Rational Emotive Therapy Approach to Counseling (rumorsofglory.net): In this post, the author extends the ABCD acronym all the way to F.
• One Strong Belief: A Blog Post (sanjaysabarwal.com)

Technorati Tags: Ellis,Cognitive Therapy,CBT,REBT,Writing