5 Ultimate Ways To Drastically Reduce Your Writing Time By 40% Without Sacrificing Quality.
Because life necessitates it.

I wrote in my previous article how we can still write when we have little to no time. This story is an elaboration of that read, where I go into the various legs of the writing process and explain how I trim time down to its absolute minimum.
To proceed, I need to define what quality is. To me, quality means getting my message across to the audience with clarity.
That is my goal. Measured against that, everything else is a luxury. I have to be efficient given time constraints.
Therefore, I give a lot of thought to the entire writing process. I refer to the following process break-down: -
- Ideation.
- Structure.
- Writing.
- Draft pruning and editing.
- Publication.
Each of these legs has unique issues of its own. Therefore, I pre-empt them each time I start writing. By doing so, I get to reduce the entire time duration of writing by 40%.
Let us begin.
1. No One Says You Have To Write Today.
I mean it. Who is pointing a gun barrel to your head to write something?
No one.
Think about it this way. Staring at the flashing cursor does nothing to our writing output. If you happen to be bankrupt of ideas that day AND you are busy, I say this.
Do not write for that day.
You prevent yourself from going through a heartache knowing you produced zero work.
1a. Preventing Idea Bankruptcy.
Keep a treasure trove of ideas for reference.
I am a fan of journaling because I do. You may not. I suggest you record what comes to mind in other formats. You can use your smartphone to do the following: -
- Taking a photo, saving it into your album.
- Typing a sentence into your reminder application, setting the reminder at your designated writing time slot tomorrow.
- Recording a voice memo if you have a lot to say.
Take, for instance, oh my gosh, this bowl of ramen is fantastic because the soup is thick, it has a savory taste, the sliced pork melts in my mouth, e, f, g, all spitting out from your mind within a fraction of a second.
Trust me. You would not want to lose what your mind is telling you. You are at least three paragraphs ahead when you start writing the out-of-world ramen story.
2. Start Writing Only When The Idea, Structure, Introduction, and Conclusion Is Clear To You.
Yes, start when you have them mapped out.
Specifically, start writing only when your mind has the article structure in place. That way, you get into the State of Flow very quickly because the target board is up. All we have to do is to hit it.
I start writing only after scribbling the following into a sheet of paper:
- Title.
- All Sub-Titles.
- Introduction.
- Previous articles to piggyback.
- Clear Takeaway.
It is easier to pile the meat and muscle into the right places when the skeletal structure is up.
2a. Racing From The Start.
No, no. Hang on. Do not start writing first.
Start by optimizing your working desk for writing. Ask yourself what you need to chain yourself to the working desk. The goal is to finish the draft in one cut. I do the following: -
- Prepare a cup of coffee.
- Clear my biological waste before I start.
- Put on headphones, so I hear nothing except what I want to.
- Prepare a music playlist comprising of high-tempo original soundtracks. I recommend this and this.
- Set my smartphone to aeroplane mode.
- Set an alarm buzzer to sound by the end of the writing block.
When I have all these items in place, my fingers are ready to race.
3. To Trim Writing Time, Keep Sentences Short.
40-minutes of writing time is insufficient to crank out a 5-minute article.
Techniques are required. One method is writing shorter sentences. More on that below.
Also, we write with the upcoming sentence in consideration. The topic sentence and the final sentence from the previous paragraph must gel.
When you do that, you are talking to yourself, except you are pressing the “enter” button to replace the pause for breathing.
3a. Write Shorter Sentences.
For a start, eliminate excessive expressions.
You can safely eliminate the following: -
- I think.
- I believe.
- That.
Chances are, you do not need the above. What you write is what you think and what you believe. Leave them out.
It is the same for that.
Take, for instance, the sentence below.
“I believe that you are a jerk.”
You can prune the above sentence without diluting the core meaning. See below.
- “I believe you are a jerk.”
- “You are a jerk.”
Removing that, I believe, trims the fats of the original sentence without sacrificing the intended message.
Plus, when you start thinking that way, you reduce the time required for editorial work down the line.
4. You Need Copyright-Free, High-Quality Images. Not New Images!
Yes, I spend a lot of time searching for images across Unsplash and Pixabay.
While I want the best image to match my story, I hate spending excessive time image hunting. There are days where I spent more than 10 minutes searching for images that click.
Geez!
And then, this morning, the light bulb moment came to me.
4a. Searching For Images, Fast.
Search on our local drive instead.
I am sure you have tonnes of high-resolution images on your local.
Those images you stored in the folders resonated strongly with you in the first place. Otherwise, you will not download them.
Why not reuse them? No one says we can only use it once.
When we use what we like, we need not spend time hunting for what we may like.
Imagine the time savings here!
5. No One Says We Have To Submit To A Publication. We Can Self-Publish.
Submitting our work to a publication has its inherent problems. The following applies: -
- Rejections.
- I love it, but please re-work.
- Submitted for publication, and no response after a week.
There is one common thread that runs across the above points. Time!
It takes up more time than we would like.
5a. Publishing Our Work When We Are Out Of Time.
Yes, we can publish directly into our profiles.
Many of us are worried that self-publication means lower viewership and readership. Wrong. It opens doors to publications that you never know existed.
Many up-and-coming publications are hunting for content contributors. They come knocking on your door when the story appears under your name.
Give it a try.
Plus, you will not reject your own story.
A Summary.
For full disclosure — The first draft of this story is completed within 45 minutes, counting from the first letter.
Quality assurance is a necessary next step after draft completion. I will leave that topic aside for this story. The time for quality assurance drops when we can visualize the structure of our story and express ourselves concisely,
In short, performing the below allows us to trim our writing time by 40%: -
- No One Says You Have To Write Today.
- Start Writing Only When The Idea, Structure, Introduction, and Conclusion Is Clear To You.
- To Trim Writing Time, Keep Sentences Short.
- You Need Copyright-Free, High-Quality Images. Not New Images!
- No One Says We Have To Submit To A Publication. We Can Self-Publish.
I hope you find this story helpful.
Till then, happy writing!
Aldric
About the Author:
As a content contributor, I write my observations from daily life and my business exposure.
Because our life experience is the bedrock of our unique perspectives.