How to write a bio…

How to…? is a typical question I ask myself before starting any new activity (writing a biography in this case). My typical strategy for answering these kind of questions is something like this:

1. Create a vision of the future (think about what I would like to see as the endresult)
2. Learn from the best (find rolemodels and/or theories)
3. Re-create the vision (synergize steps 1 and 2)
4. Take the first step (just start doing things)
5. Evaluate and evolve (this never ends)

Writing the Extended Biography for the About me page, followed the same path. Usually for a simple task like this, I don’t write down every step, but for this post I have (and in the meantime, I created my biography and the first post for this blog).

Step 1: Create a vision of the future

I want to write a 3 to 4 paragraph biography, long enough to give information, short enough for people to have the courage of reading it (thus limiting it to 1 scrollpage). The bio should cover the past, the present and the future (how did I get here, who am I, and where do I want to go). The bio has to be “me”.

Step 2: Learn from the best

I stuck to a selection of my people I suspected to blog. They were Tom Peters (management guru), Paulo Coelho (spiritual author), Richard Branson (the rebel billionaire), Guy Kawasaki (former technology evangelist, and blogger), David Allen (productivity guru) and Merlin Mann (professional blogger). Quite a variety of people, I admit. I actually did not expect Richard Branson to have a blog as I’m reading his autobiography right now (he states that mobile phones and e-mail are not for him). I did find a bio at Virgin however.

Step 3: Re-create the vision

My findings in step 2 were that most biographies are written for the press, and had citations from magazines or from other influential people, overviews of achievements and publications and so on. Guy’s and Merlin’s bio’s were different and have the same objective as I have, mainly target readers instead of the press. I missed the future part though. I felt there was no need to re-create the vision based on step 2. Not changing your vision is a viable finding as well in my opinion.

Step 4: Take the first step

This is simple, start writing now.

Step 5: Evaluate and evolve

This can be done actively (ask for feedback) and passively (wait for feedback). However, as I have yet to publish both my bio and this post, I have not gotten to this part yet.

You can find the result in the about me section of this blog.