I Followed Tim Denning’s Writing Routine — and Created My Best Performing Article Yet

A look inside my creative content factory on overdrive

My best performing article has earned a healthy three-figure income and more than double any of my other articles. Here it is:

Here are the stats for the article:

Views: 4.7k Claps: 4.1k Comments: 41

I wrote the above article by following Tim Denning’s writing system. Below, I’ll explain what that is, and the other results I achieved following Tim’s system.

The Backstory: My Tim Denning Writer Crush

I got obsessed by Tim Denning’s writing. Every article he wrote pulled me in and left me hungry for more. He’s got over 150k followers and publishes viral hits on pretty much a weekly basis, so I’m not the only one he has the effect on.

I wanted to know how Tim creates such compelling content. So, I studied everything I could find on Tim’s writing style, and I shared my discoveries:

I then decided to take it a step further. I wanted to go inside the Chocolate Factory and touch Tim’s magic for myself.

I Decided to Follow Tim Denning’s Writing System

I looked into Tim’s writing system, and I found that Tim’s writing process is incredibly simple.

Tim writes:

• On two days per week — in intense bursts on Thursdays and Saturdays
• 10 articles per week (5 articles per writing day)

That’s the essence of his method.

He follows a range of different strategies within that. Sometimes he plans his articles, sometimes he writes from the top of his head. Sometimes he listens to music while writing, sometimes he has a shower before writing.

His aim as he writes is to get into a state of flow. As Tim explains:

Flow states are like teleporting from consciousness to a dreamland in your mind where effort looks easy… Flow equals easy work.

I decided to copy Tim’s method. However, I don’t have two full days a week for writing. I don’t even have one full day. So, during my winter vacation, I booked a day in my schedule just for writing. I planned to write just like Tim, creating five articles during a single day.

I wanted to dive into a state of flow, just like Tim, and pump out at least five article drafts in a single day. I’m saying drafts here because that’s the same as Tim’s process. Tim does his editing on different days to his writing.

I hoped the articles I created would perform well — and most of them did, giving above-average results. I’ll share more details on the results below.

First, here’s a look at how I planned in advance for a full day of writing.

The Schedule I Planned for My Tim Denning Day

I know I can easily finish an article in under 90 minutes when I’m focused. So I planned a 90-minute writing period for each article.

Within that 90 minutes, I broke it down into three 25-minute writing sessions, followed by a five-minute break. I often get distracted when I’m writing, and working to a timer likes this helps me concentrate.

I planned out my day as follows:

• 8.30am-10am — Article 1
• 10am–10.30am — Morning break
• 10.30am-12pm — Article 2
• 12pm–12.30pm — Lunch break
• 12.30pm-2pm — Article 3
• 2pm — 3.30pm — Article 4
• 3.30pm–4pm — Afternoon break
• 4.30pm–6pm — Article 5

Alongside this schedule, I had article ideas planned out for the day, in a plaintext document:

The above are raw outlines, so you can see how my writing looks before it develops. I link to some of the articles I wrote up below, so you can see the finished product too.

You’ll see in the above screenshot that for some articles, I had an outline drafted. For others, I only had a headline.

I actually had over 10 ideas ready to go, so I could follow my whims and choose the articles I most felt like writing on the day. I’m more creative when I give myself a mix of constraints and choices. The 90-minute timed sessions were my constraints. The range of article ideas I could write gave me choices.

What Actually Happened on My Tim Denning Day

“No plan survives contact with the enemy” — Unknown

I don’t like military metaphors for creativity. I know a lot of people love Steven Pressfield’s books such as The War of Art, but his “resistance is the enemy” mindset doesn’t work for me. I create rituals for my creativity, but that’s very different to sticking a gun to my muse and forcing myself to write.

Creativity, to my mind, is not a battle to be won, but a dance to be savored.

All that is a pre-amble to me using another military phrase:

Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance — British Army

My planning helped. My writing day started well. By lunchtime, I had two articles written, just as I’d planned. I’d spent my morning in flow.

But I’d pushed myself hard and I needed a break. I couldn’t face the idea of taking only 30-minutes for lunch, then ducking back into my office for an afternoon writing marathon.

So, I rebelled. It was a beautiful winter’s day, and I decided to walk down to the seafront, to get some lunch from the local bakery. Walking unlocks my creativity. I knew the walk would take an hour — or maybe more — but I was willing to risk the experiment, even if it meant I’d only have three or four articles at day’s end.

So, I laced up my boots, and got walking.

As I sat eating lunch on the seafront (which included a chocolate cookie), I got inspired by the seafront atmosphere. I picked up my phone and started to write. I tapped a full article into my phone in 40 minutes (I know others who write on-the-go like this using voice-to-text tools).

By the time I got home, I’d taken over 90 minutes on my lunch break. But that included writing an article. So, it turned out I was ahead of my planned schedule. The walk had worked to reinvigorate my creativity, and I’d written a full article while I was out of the house.

I ended up writing two further articles that afternoon. That included a second article based on my thoughts at the seafront. I’d gone way off plan by this point and was simply writing whatever I wanted to write about.

I was enjoying writing so much, that I wanted to continue writing in the evening. So I did.

Overall, I wrote up six articles in that one day of writing.

The Results of Following Tim Denning’s System

The articles I wrote up with Tim Denning’s method have, overall, far outperformed my typical articles.

As I already shared, I created my best performing article yet during this day of writing:

This was the final (sixth) article I wrote on the day. I didn’t have high hopes for it. I thought it was a useful explanation of my writing process that might help some people. It turned out that readers loved it.

Here are the stats for the article:

Views: 4.7k Claps: 4.1k Comments: 41

Here are the other results I achieved:

I finally got accepted into The Ascent!

The first article I wrote during my Tim Denning writing day got accepted into The Ascent. This was the first time they accepted one of my articles. I lost count of the rejections I got from them prior to this being accepted!

It was one of my top-earning articles for January and continued to earn well through February.

Views: 701 Claps: 567 Comments: 5

I beat my fear and got personal, publishing in PSILY

I’m putting this write-up together three months after my Tim Denning experiment. There’s a reason for that: fear! Before I wrote up the experiment, I wanted to see what results the articles would achieve.

But, I got scared of submitting articles.

I’m used to getting rejected, but it still bothers me, especially when I poured my soul into an article. The article I wrote on my phone at the seafront was particularly personal. I wanted to submit it to PSILY, but it took me months before I found the courage to sit down, complete the final edits and click submit.

I had no idea if it was an article they’d want, so I was delighted when they accepted.

Views: 158 Claps: 608 Comments: 4

Tim Denning commented on my article

When I first wrote an article about Tim Denning (as I mentioned at the start of this article), he then wrote a follow-up.

I was so excited about this that I decided to tell the story of what happened. I wrote this up during my day of writing like Tim.

Tim commented on the finished piece, which made me even happier:

Views: 81 Claps: 526 Comments: 8

Additional results

I got another of the articles published (it’s now self-published as the publication has since closed), that’s here:

And I’ve got another draft that’s still in my editing pile.

This was one of my favorite writing experiments, and it paid off! If you can set aside a full day to write intensely, I highly recommend it.

With thanks to Tim Denning for the inspiration and writing method.