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** Business Book Awards 2023 Finalist **
‘A really powerful book.’ - Bruce Daisley
Simple tools, extraordinary results.
Everything we’re learning about how we function best as humans in the digital age is pointing towards one of our oldest technologies: the pen and the page.
Exploratory writing – writing for ourselves, not for others, writing when we don’t know exactly what it is we want to say – is one of the most powerful and lightweight thinking tools we have at our disposal. It’s also been, until now, one of the most overlooked.
But the world’s most influential leaders are increasingly using the techniques in this book to support the key skills of the 21st century – self-mastery, creativity, focus, solution-finding, collaboration – and so can you.
Alison Jones has been helping business leaders identify and articulate what matters over a 30-year career in publishing and as a coach. The founder of Practical Inspiration Publishing and host of The Extraordinary Business Book Club podcast and community, she is passionate about the power of writing to change ourselves and the world.
I don’t often complete a “guide” with any real feeling of being able to take it forward as part of my daily routine but I genuinely believe exploratory writing will be an invaluable asset for my wellbeing, writing and work!
Alison Jones is founder of Practical Inspiration Publishing and host of The Extraordinary Business Book Club podcast. Formerly Director of Innovation Strategy at Palgrave Macmillan, she now works with business leaders and entrepreneurs to help them clarify their thinking and communicate more effectively.
She has written and edited several books, most recently This Book Means Business (2018), speaks regularly at industry and business events, and contributes articles on books and writing to national press and industry publications.
Introduction
Part 1 - Why exploratory writing?
The science
Is this about better writing?
Let’s get started
Part 2 – The toolkit
Exploratory narrative
freewriting
mindfulness
chimp management
empathy
Metaphor
surfacing metaphors
finding new metaphors
forced metaphors
analogy
Inquiry
learning through inquiry
inquiring of future you
appreciative inquiry
humble inquiry
Visual thinking
writing into drawings
storyboarding
graphic organizers
developing your own visuals
Part 3 – Using the tools
Wellbeing and mindfulness
sense-making
mental resilience
happiness
self-coaching
Clarity and focus
decluttering
focus and deep work
reflective practice
Creativity and problem-solving
creative thinking
problem-solving
prototyping
Leadership and collaboration
visioning
uncovering bias
conflict resolution
culture change
Conclusion: over to you
Appendices: glossary of tools, list of prompts, bibliography