'Getting Started' - Lay An Egg!
Objective:
By the end of this section, I hope you’ll be better at getting started!
Introduction
This may seem an odd little section of this booklet! For a start it’s
only got one objective. There is reason behind all this - it’s because
I hope to help you get started on just about anything, including writing essays.
• writing
essays
• reports
• preparing
seminars
• revising
• even answering
exam questions
Whatever the task - it won’t get done without getting started!
What’s the hardest part?
Suppose you’re about to start on some work. Imagine you’ve got
a blank piece of paper in front of you and a pen in your hand. Do you agree
that the hardest part is often making your first marks on the paper - whether
words, figures, or drawings?
A technique - then its uses
For once I want to spring on you a technique before we explore what it can
do and why it is useful! So let’s dive straight into it with an SAQ.
This is in several steps - please do one before reading the next!
I hope you had some fun with your chosen word and my responses! I hope too
that you’re now beginning to see what a useful technique this can become.
However before we explore some of it’s uses let’s think of a finer
point of the technique.
SAQ 1:
Draw an egg and write river in the centre.
Now try and think of 20 words relating to a river.
do your words match mine (see the eggs below.)
I've shown below a number of 'eggs' relating to the words we set out with.
The better examples were written by my wife - in half the time it took
me to write the other ones! (She's used this method for longer than I have.)
Right then! But what's this technique for? After looking at the egg-collection
below, please rejoin the section and we'll explore this.
Why not make more sets of spokes?
See what I mean? Spokes radiating from other words - and so on - rather like
a tree with smaller and more numerous branches? I suggest you avoid this. Why?
Because if you start subdividing one of the topics on a main “spoke” there’s
a big danger of running off at tangents and getting away from your central
topic in the egg. The real purpose of the technique is to keep your thinking
as close as possible to that central topic. Furthermore you want to think of
as many things as possible which relate directly to that topic.
If you were to go off at ever-branching tangents you’d be diverting your
energy away from finding all the things that relate to the main topic.
But surely there’s a place for tangents? Well yes, but I suggest that
you do this separately. Separate eggs in fact. So after you’ve finished
your first egg you can start another with one of the words around your first
egg on another blank sheet of paper. This means that you’ve got far more
space to squeeze in things relating to your “new” egg-topic - much
more than you would have had trying to continue round the periphery of the
first page.
Now let’s see how this technique can be applied in a number of different
ways in your studying.
Revision
Suppose you’ve sat down at your desk about to revise a particular topic.
You haven’t been revising this topic for days (or even weeks) but you
remember vaguely some bits and pieces of it.
Put the topic in your egg and fire away. You’ll do three things that
are useful - in very little time:
• You’ll
mentally run through a lot that you already know as you put in the words relating
to various aspects of your topic on your “spokes”. You may even
delight yourself at how much you remember.
• You’ll
be reminding yourself of things that you know you’ve got to do a bit
more work on. This means that when you shortly see them in more detail your
brain is actively waiting to take in the information concerned. Your mind is
programmed with some questions and is seeking answers. (Simply seeing answers
isn’t very useful unless we know what the questions are).
• You’ll
be avoiding that terrible danger of going off on tangents! Because as soon
as you put a word on a “spoke” you think again for another word
to put on another spoke– you avoid thinking of extra branches from your
surrounding words. This helps you to constantly go back for more words relating
to your central topic and keeps your thinking as relevant to that topic as
possible.
Writing essays
In the same way as explained above, our egg method can be a useful way of getting
started with the plan for an essay. It helps you collect together the different
ideas you already have in your mind. It helps you identify those ideas where
you’ll need to do some further reading. Above all it helps you ensure
that your essay doesn’t run off on one particular tangent but allows
you to cover all the important aspects relating to the main topic. (More about
essays in the next section of this booklet).
Lectures
Five minutes with an “egg” can be a good way of revising the content
of a lecture. Remember you’re doing it from your head– not from
your notes.
Other uses
We could go on describing similar uses of the method - for example:
• in preparing
seminars
• writing
up practical work
• active reading
• writing
a curriculum vitae
• even planning
your study schedule.
I’ll leave all this to you. Let’s simply end by listing the benefits
of the method briefly - you can adapt the method for use whenever it will help
you.
Benefits
Laying “eggs” can help you:
• getting
started - on any blank sheet - and with almost any task
• keeping
your mind working round a central topic
• finding
as many as possible things related to the central topic
• exploring
separately things related to sub-topics
Finally let’s look at some of the things you can avoid by “laying
eggs”:
• losing your
way and going off on tangents
• sitting
staring at a blank piece of paper for a long time
• concentrating
on a few aspects of a subject in cases where you need to think of all sorts of
aspects