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Talker’s Block

As you might imagine, not many people at Kellogg suffer from talker’s block.  Ask anyone a question. Seriously, ask them one. Ask them about a class. Or ask them about recruiting. I bet they can probably talk to you about it for hours. But I bet if you asked them to write about it, you’d get a slightly different response. That’s because just about every person I know experiences writers block. So I’m curious. What’s the actual difference between the two?

Some psychological theory suggests that we get writers block because we’re unorganized and overloaded with information, and because we can’t get our creative juices flowing. As a result, when we have to write answers on an exam or come up with novel paper for class, we don’t have words and often times we can’t even pick a topic.

On the other hand, no one at Kellogg walks into a class but discovers they don’t anything to say. They don’t sit in meetings with groups and meet with admits and get tongue tied.

Perhaps one reason is because MBA (and most people) are in the habit of talking. A lot. In fact, probably too much.  We talk to each other every day. We speak with prospective applicants. And we make our opinions known in class. Sometimes with substance, but often times we make things up and pull stuff out of thin air. Sometimes it depends on how prepared we are.

But over time, we get better. We start get some things right. We become insightful. And eventually we sound profound.

Maybe writing can work the same way. That at first, writing is hard. But if we practice writing, over and over (and over and over), we’ll get better. Soon we’ll get some things right. And eventually, we’ll start to sound profound.

I propose the idea that just like talking, we should get in the habit of writing. Write more frequently. Work on becoming better. And do it publicly where people can judge us. Because it will force us to improve.

One way to do that is by starting a blog. Another way to do that is by writing articles. We can also take more classes that require writing. Especially in grad school.

In sum, most people talk too much but don’t write enough.

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