I felt yesterday was a supremely productive day.

I wrote five articles, gave some serious thought to a business proposal or two, and then, when I had about an hour on my hands, I idled the time away at Starbuck's.

Perhaps this last line item, repairing for some brew, stimulated the zenith of my productivity, because, as is my custom I write a few pages in long hand of whatever comes to mind.

Sometimes these musings are accompanied with squiggles or very poorly drawn people, but a mix of completely free meanderings almost always leads me to some insights.

Yesterday, for instance, I pulled together an idea that had been a mere fragment, a business concept for an integrated suite of public seminars, short speeches, and consulting.

What I came up with is so clear that it has to be a great idea. What writing enabled me to do is get beneath surface distractions to explore what I was really feeling about my occupation as a coach and consultant.

I could see, at last, the types of people and companies with which I'm most comfortable, while distinguishing them from those with whom I don't really click.

Once this portrait appeared, it was easy to generalize to see how I could offer programming that would appeal to these prime clients.

Finally, I could see them in the same room, in my mind.

What happened next is my hand wrote a perfectly succinct title for the class, and I could then see the individual topics sorting themselves out.

Without writing, I've found, there isn't much quality thinking. Jotting down ideas and concepts expresses to us what's within, and it will emerge if we just get out of the way and let it.

I think this is akin to taking notes during a lecture or after reading passages from books. Our minds read the ideas or hear them first, from these sources, but solid connections aren't made until we translate them into words that mean something special to us.

When we take the ultimate steps of writing our words, seeing them on the page, and considering them, we finally promote deep understandings.

By having a leisurely coffee and thinking and writing we accomplish much the same thing without the external stimulus.

Writing then becomes a natural process of reaching in and reaching out, a rhythm that's similar to breathing, or the movement of the tides.