#personal toc

What is Your Personal Table of Contents? Date:

05/28/2014

Author:Doug Toft

Much of my work consists of helping clients create a table of contents for a book they’d like to write. This is essential work. Lately, though, I’ve concluded that our primary task is to think bigger.

Consider that people who write nonfiction books are now called to become idea entrepreneurs. This involves connecting with a critical mass of people who will embrace and embody your ideas (the non-spammy meaning of having a platform).

On a practical level, this means expressing your ideas in multiple formats. Yes, you’ll write your book. But you’ll also create blog posts and presentations as well. You’ll probably also take part in social media such as Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Perhaps you’ll also do webinars, publish an email newsletter, and play with video and podcasts. And at some point, you’re likely to consider doing another book.

This sounds like a lot of work. But there’s an opportunity as well. Since your job is to continuously develop and present ideas, why not create a single roadmap for all your ideas in all their expressions? This is more than a table of contents for a single book. It’s a table of contents for all the books you’d like to write—and all the other content you’ll publish and present over the whole arc of your career.

I don’t have an official name for this roadmap yet. For now, let’s call it your personal table of contents.

For example, Patrick Carnes is a psychologist, author, and speaker who developed a thirty-task model of recovery from addiction. This is the big picture of all the work that he wants to put out into the world. He’s already published books that cover many of these tasks in detail. Future books are planned about the rest.

The beauty of the personal table of contents is that it becomes a single, big bank of ideas from which you can “withdraw” content as needed for the book, article, update, or presentation that’s on your plate right now.

After all, why re-invent the wheel every time you sit down to create a piece of content? Instead, zero in on a single, small section of your personal table of contents. Then flesh it out with something from your ongoing collection of supporting material (facts, anecdotes, and quotes in your commonplace book).

For me, the whole idea of a personal table of contents is a new idea that’s just starting to come into focus. Stay tuned for more updates.