How to Write 2–3 Articles a day

Tips and tricks to help maximize your productivity

We all like to be productive, but it’s equally important that the work we do remains at a consistently high quality. Many new writers are surprised to discover that writing articles is a physically exhausting task. Goal setting is important to help you achieve your weekly objectives, but you have to be prepared to adjust your goals to account for unforeseen circumstances.

The best way to achieve success in life is to be mindful of your victories and try to build on your successes. Frustration and despair are not useful emotions, and if you can keep yourself in a positive mental state you will be more productive and success will follow as a natural consequence.

In this article I will go through the physical and mental process I use which enables me to write two to three quality articles per day.

How do you do it?

I’ve talked to a lot of writers who only try to write two articles a week and they’re absolutely stunned when I tell them that it’s possible to write two to three articles a day. They’re skeptical of quality until I tell them that about 30% of my articles get curated.

I was even recently interviewed about my process:

This interview is courtesy of Mark Ellis who also produces a fantastic amount of high-quality content, follow him here:

Be mindful of word count

Before I go too far down this rabbit hole, it’s important to point out that you need to be mindful of word count. I’ve found that I’m very comfortable writing articles between 1,000 and 1,200 words. When I say two to three articles, it means two to three articles around 1,000 words.

I realize that some people crank out 10,000 word articles, and there’s nothing I can say which would make it practical to do 3 articles of that length a day. This might seem obvious, but word count is a much better way for a writer to assess productivity than total number of articles.

I know from experience that my maximum word count output for a day is around 10,000. I can sustain that level for about a week without a massive drop in quality, but after that I’ll start showing signs of burn-out. I’m much better off at around 3 to 4 thousand words a day. I can produce that level daily, even through weekends, without any distress, but this is something I’ve built up to after 20 years working as a writer.

My background as a content writer

Some of the technical side of my writing comes from my education and professional background. I have a degree in English and I’ve worked as an editor, novelist, teacher, translator, transcriber, and content writer.

Transcribing taught me how to type very fast and content writing taught me how to produce a lot of content in a very short amount of time.

I would suggest that all writers spend some time working as a content writer. You are given assignments so you don’t have to waste time thinking about a topic. Instead, content writing affords you the opportunity to focus on coherence, format, and grammar. Once you master these three components, articles start to flow out of you.

Also, with content writing you are often required to write the same article over and over and over. It’s interesting how much different an article might turn out if you go back to the beginning and try writing it again, even if you use the same set of notes. I know from hard won experience that you don’t start to repeat your sentence structure until you’ve written the same article around 20 times. In the meantime, you’ve just composed 19 unique, high-quality articles!

Don’t write emails, write articles

Interaction with readers is a terrific way to find inspiration for article ideas. For example, I wrote this article as a response to a comment:

Chances are, if somebody is asking you a question, there are more people who would be interested in reading the answer. The energy it takes to compose an email response is the same as the energy it takes to write an article, so write the article and tag the person who asked the question.

Also, I find that when I write an article instead of just responding in an email, I tend to give a more detailed answer, so this approach is a win for everyone.

Don’t be afraid to jump to another thought

My articles often look a little odd as I’m writing them. I don’t spend a whole lot of time staring at a blank page. Instead, I just start writing. Sometimes I find that my first sentence is an introductory sentence to the third paragraph. Sometimes I sit down and write out the headers and then jump back to the introductory paragraph.

I’ll bounce back and forth all over an article. It’s sort of how you’ll see a painter jump all over a canvas when they are sketching out an image. You must consider every part of your article in the context of the whole, and the easiest way to set up a revelation at the end of your article is to write the relevant components in the introduction and the conclusion simultaneously.

If you get hung up on what to write in the introduction, but you have an idea for paragraph three, then go write paragraph three. I spend very little time sitting in front of my computer trying to think of what to write. Normally that only happens when I’m trying to hit a second level of eloquence and tie everything together in the conclusion.

Have a spreadsheet of ideas

On most days I have no idea what I’m going to write about. I wake up and check my emails and comments, and more than half the time that gets me started. Sometime there’s something in the morning news that will set me off and I’ll write something like this:

I also have a spreadsheet of article ideas. I try to think of an engaging title and right now I have about 240 article ideas waiting to be written. It’s important to be mindful of inspiration when it hits you. Often, while I’m out for a run or something, I’ll start composing possible titles and I’ll stop and email them to myself so I don’t forget them before I get home.

Start article seedlings

Sometimes in the evening when I’m getting tired, I don’t have the mental energy to tackle a whole article. At those times, I’ll open up a new document and I’ll just free write a title and perhaps some headings.

I always find it takes less energy to edit than it does to compose, and once your article hits around 200 words you start to transition into editing. My computer desktop is littered with 200 word article seedlings that I can pick up on a low energy day and turn into thousand word articles.

It’s important to give yourself permission not to write the whole article. Just jot down some notes and you might find you’re halfway there.

Follow your muse

Sometimes I sit down to write an article and the thing that comes out is completely different than the article I intended to write. Don’t be frustrated with this, embrace it! I’ve gotten down to the end of an article and found that it needed a new title. So I give the article a new title, take the original title to a new blank document, and make a second attempt at writing the original article.

I’m not a big fan of deleting large blocks of text. Just because they don’t work in your current article doesn’t mean that you can’t build a whole new article around them. Writing is a creative process, and anything that invokes your creativity is a helpful process to engage.

If you don’t know what to do with a block of text, just put it on your desktop as a seedling. You might be cleaning up your desktop sometime and it might inspire you to compose something.

Swim with the current

Writing 2–3 articles a day is a result of learning how to swim with the current. For most people, the writing process involves a lot of uncomfortable stops and starts. However, you just need to stop, take a deep breath, and understand that articles don’t necessarily flow out of you the way a sheet of paper comes out of a printer.

Writing an article can be a similar process to assembling a jigsaw puzzle. My mind tends to jump around quickly from the title, to the body, back to the beginning, then over to a completely different article, before finally settling down to the conclusion. Early in my writing career, I tried to harness, control, and organize this process. That effort was a dismal failure.

Today, I embrace how my mind works and allow myself to follow my natural inclinations. In the act of writing this article, I’ve created 2 additional word documents and jotted down notes for other article ideas. Don’t waste time and energy fighting against yourself. Figure out a process that works for you and go with it. There’s no right way to be productive.

Check this article out for more tips on mental preparation: