A Day in the Life of a Full-Time Online Writer

How I Keep Myself Productive

Most of the things you’re doing today aren’t required for where you wanna go.

That’s if the goal is big enough…

Massive goals expose your most important tasks.

This gives you better insight into the things you do that are just a waste of time.

The secret to making massive progress in a short space of time is cutting off those activities that don’t matter and doubling down on those that do.

This is why I quit freelancing.

My past self was committed to my freelance obligations, but that’s not where my ideal future was headed — it had to go.

Now, I’m completely focused on my commitment to being a full-time online writer.

This has caused quite a bit of shakeup in how my days are structured; here’s how it looks…

Note: I’m unsure whether this is a hard stop or something I’m doing for now while I focus on solopreneurship — we shall see.

The generic structure

Regardless of the day, there’s a few things I do that remain consistent from Monday to Sunday.

These things don’t change, no matter what!

5 a.m. — 5:15 a.m.

I never used to journal, but now I do…

Religously!

My journal is where I track my thoughts and orient myself towards my ideal future.

In my writing, I cover everything from where my head is at, to ideas I’m thinking about, to new concepts I wanna create content on, what I think I have to do to reach my goal, and more.

It sets the mood for my day and gets me aligned with my greater purpose.

5:30 a.m. — 7:30 a.m.

On weekdays, I walk to the gym and do strength training exercises for 30–40 minutes.

On weekends, I spend this time going for a long walk around the block.

The main objective is to get my body moving.

It takes my mind a little while to boot up and get going — this may be down to the fact that I don’t drink coffee.

Doing some form of movement speeds up the process of getting my creative juices flowing.

8 a.m. — 9 a.m.

Here’s where I:

• Schedule posts for LinkedIn and Twitter based on my content publishing system
• Reply to DMs and emails
• Consume/curate content from my favorite creators.

This is all done to gear me up toward whatever it is I’m doing for the day.

9 p.m. — 10:30 p.m.

Reading has become a staple of my life.

Whenever I don’t read, I struggle to write.

I also find it important to read before bed cos I end up dreaming or waking up thinking about the thing I read the night before.

The other important thing is going to bed at the same time.

Once it hits 10 p.m., I can feel my eyes getting heavy.

I no longer struggle to sleep and realized the quality of my sleep is much better when I sleep at the same time every day.

I also wake up feeling energized.

The structure of a working day

In 6 Things That Significantly Boosted My Productivity in 2023, I shared with you guys that task batching has been one of the hallmarks of my productivity this year.

I took my task batching to an extreme by dedicating entire days to a single activity, which significantly reduces the likelihood I incur cognitive switching penalties.

That said, my days fall into one of four categories: 1) Writing, 2) Solopreneurship, 3) Editing, and 4) Rest.

The rest day is self-explanatory — I have fun doing whatever I want with zero guilt.

The other days vary…

The average writing day

I have two writing days every week.

My objective these days is to create a total of ten Medium stories to match Tim Denning’s insane output — so far, I’ve fallen short each week, but my creation times are getting better.

The way I split the workload depends on how my creative juices are flowing.

Somedays, I get behind the keyboard, and the words flow like a Busta Rhymes verse.

On other days, it’s more of a struggle.

The generic framework for a writing day is standard…

9 a.m. — 12 p.m.

I always aim to knock out the two pieces of content in the morning — these are usually the pieces I’m the clearest on.

Since I have a better idea of what I’m going to say, it’s much easier for me to smash out each story in 1.5 hours.

12.30 p.m. — 6 p.m.

The second session is reserved for the articles I’m less clear on.

These take me more time since I don’t know exactly what I’m going to say before I start writing — despite having a framework I’ve planned.

Stories that fit into this category often take me three hours, hence why I haven’t been able to hit my target of ten stories per week just yet.

The average solopreneurship day

On my writing days, all I do is write.

No meetings. No social media. No business dealings.

Solopreneurship days are much more varied as they cover everything that’s included in being a solopreneur.

I typically focus on the activity that most aligns with my short-term goal first (more on that later) and then get to work on other aspects of my solo business.

Starting from when I’ve completed my daily rituals, a generic solopreneurship day may look something like this…

9 a.m. — 12 p.m.

In the first session, I’m sending out 200 hundred cold emails to promote my services — this may change in the near future.

It’s also likely I’ll also have discovery calls with people I’ve reached out to from previous solopreneur days.

12:30 p.m. — 6 p.m.

I’m available for meetings until 6 p.m. GMT on solopreneur days.

These slots aren’t always booked up so in between sessions, I used the time to do research and plan out the blog posts I’m going to write for the next day.

I also have notifications on for a few of my favorite creators, so I can be one of the first people to engage whenever they share something.

Basically, solopreneur days are much less intense than writing days.

The average editing day

Editing days are similar to writing days in the sense that I don’t do anything else but edit.

I start by reading the story I’m working on out loud and editing the words to make it sound as if I were speaking.

Then, I read it out loud again to see if it flows properly.

The final read-through is done in my head. On this pass, my main objective is to ensure the story fulfills the premise I gave I defined prior to writing the story.

If it doesn’t, I’ll go in and make changes to make sure it does, then leave it to settle until the next editing day.

If it does, I’ll find a picture.

I recently subscribed to Midjourney to create better, more tailored images for my stories.

My goal is to select images that serve as a direct representation of what I discuss within the story.

There’s no point in me sharing how I break this sorta day up since it’s all I do for the entire day.

How I define what’s important

My goals are always the mechanism I use to define what I should be working on.

These all play into the ideal future I want for myself.

That said, there’s three vantage points I look from: 1) Long-term, 2) Medium-term, and 3) Short-term.

My long-term goal is what I call my vision. This is what I want to accomplish in the next ten to twenty-five years.

My medium-term goal is what I call my wild guess. I call it this cos you can never know what’s going to happen since the world is advancing too quickly. Medium-term goals are derived from the long-term goal and are usually a three to five-year forecast into the future.

My short-term goal is derived from my medium-term goal and is usually a three to six-month forecast for the future — I prefer to stick to three months to increase the intensity.

Most of my time is devoted to my short-term goals since these are the most practical.

My current short-term goal is to convert 20 high-ticket (relatively speaking) customers for my service business, hence why I’ve put such a large emphasis on content creation and reaching out to prospects cold.

Once I’ve hit this objective, my next three-month focus will be on converting the knowledge gained from working with clients one-on-one into a course.

Final thoughts

The majority of my time these days is dedicated to realizing my short-term objective.

I’m definitely a burn-the-boat type of guy once I realize the opportunity is there for the taking, but I’m unsure if this may open the door to another avenue of freelancing, which is more lucrative.

Of course, this can all go wrong, and I’ll definitely end up freelancing again.

Thanks for reading!

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