^^
24.
A clean sheet of paper is lying in front of you, and you have to fill it up. Suddenly, your mind may seem as blank as the paper. What can you do to set your pen in motion? The answer is simple: Don’t be caught in the perfection trap. That is, if you can convince yourself that the first draft isn’t your best writing and can be made more effective with additional thought and some revision, then it will be easier to get started. When starting, don’t worry about what the reader will think about what you have written. Make writing as easy for you as you can by not being concerned with how good the first draft is. There will be time for revising and polishing any ideas you want to pursue later.
25.
When people began to bind books with pages that could be turned rather than unrolled like papyrus, the process of locating information changed. Now the reader could easily move backward in the text to find a previously read passage or browse between widely separated sections of the same work. With one technological change, cross-referencing became possible, while the physical space needed to house a collection of books was sharply reduced. Page numbers became a possibility, as did indexes; tables of contents became workable references.
26.
What is the most prevalent and perhaps most important prefix of our times? The answer should be multi, which means ‘more than one.’ Our modern jobs are increasingly requiring multi-tasking. Our communities are getting multi-cultural. Our entertainment is multi-media. While detailed knowledge of a single area once guaranteed success, today the top rewards go to those who can operate with equal confidence in different realms. Let us call these people boundary crossers. They develop expertise in multiple areas, they speak different languages, and they find joy in the rich variety of human experience. They live multi-lives because that is more interesting and, nowadays, more effective.
