Why vision boards work and why you should make one today [for authors]

Visualization is a powerful tool. Athletes have harnessed this power for decades. In fact, visualization stimulates the same regions of the brain as actually performing the action does. This powerful tool, however, isn’t just for athletes. Writers too, can benefit from it. One way to do this, and express your creative self while doing so, is to create a vision board. A vision board is literally a board of some kind that you display images on to help you concentrate and maintain focus on a specific life goal (or goals) you have.

Featured Member Meggin McIntosh – Deliberate strategies to improve your productivity and sanity

Meggin McIntosh is a Professor and Director Emerita of the Excellence in Teaching Program at University of Nevada, Reno. In 1996 she founded Emphasis on Excellence, Inc., a company dedicated to providing productivity and organizational resources to faculty, individuals, and the private sector. With topics ranging from writing productivity and professional development to children’s and young adult literature, McIntosh is widely published with nearly 50 scholarly articles, two academic books, 29 curriculum publications, 14 instructional guides, textbook and scholarly book chapters, a teaching guide, and more than 1,500 blog and online articles.

Here McIntosh shares deliberate strategies to help improve your productivity and sanity.

Top 10 gift ideas for writers

‘Tis the season for thinking (or struggling to think) of and giving the perfect gift to give the writer in your life. Luckily for you I have done the thinking for you and compiled a great list of gifts for any writer. Fair warning, the gifts below range from practical to wacky, but you’re sure to find at least one that the writer in your life will appreciate! Happy holidays!

Begin with what you don’t know: An end of year reflection and meditation for academics

W.S. Merwin, who was recently the Poet Laureate of the United States, grew up in New York City. As a child, he had a recurring nightmare of concrete covering all the green areas of the earth. His whole life, and all his poetry and writing, has had the aim of serving to make sure that this doesn’t happen.

We academics are an anxious group. Will my article be accepted? Will I get tenure? Will my department survive the next round of budget cuts? We can get stuck in endless cycles of worry.