Simple Secret Trick to Double Your Writing Productivity.
How to write faster and more efficiently.
If there is a single factor that has helped me monetize content, then it would be the ability to write quickly. Speaking with multiple other writers and content developers also reinforces this idea — the faster you can publish articles (while adhering to decent quality standards), the more you earn money.
Writing faster and efficiently is not easy, but once you master it, the process leads to many benefits and creates the following domino effect of positive outcomes:
- Higher productivity will help you create more content in shorter amounts of time.
- Once you have a large portfolio of content pieces, it is so much to easier to pitch to more clients/publications, by picking custom pieces relevant to their needs. This translates to more paid work, more clients allowing your to earn more and also raise your hourly rates.
- More pieces means you can also reuse some of that content, create synergies by cross-linking articles or aggregating popular pieces into a series.
- Higher writing efficiency will organically increase your hourly rates (word count pay) because you can finish tasks faster!
I’ve been blogging for almost 4 years now. I started initially with my tech blog, diversified with guest posting, published an e-book (Yup! Self-published author with modest earnings) and now a book review blog and monthly articles on Medium.com. Did I mention I also work in the fintech domain full-time, so all this happens over weekends and evenings?
I love writing, but my long list of commitments implies I need to be very careful with the time-ROI aspect and weigh opportunity costs with a critical eye. This is why it is crucial that I write fast without compromising on quality.
Here are 5 of the methods that have worked successfully for me. All are easy, FREE to install or learn, and require one-time minimal time commitment.
1) Learn touch typing.
Touch typing, the process of typing without looking at the keyboard, is a lost art and something only our grandparents learned at vocational school. Yet, this is one single skill will skyrocket your productivity.
I can hear your objections — everyone uses their phone and laptops, we are all familiar with the keys. That is what I assumed and I write code for a living! If you’ve never formally learned to type, your speed is probably less than 30 wpm, no matter how much you use your laptop. Try it! You will be surprised. One reason for slow typing speeds originates from the fact that we are extremely used to auto-complete features while composing emails, searching or texting. So composing original articles are time consuming since we start from scratch.
If you Google, you will find many different software FREE to download and use. My personal recommendation, and the only one I have ever used is called “TypeFaster”. It comes with lessons, analytics on your progress and even games to keep you motivated. Even going from 15 wpm (words per minute) to 25 wpm will be an excellent boost in your efficiency to churn out content faster.
Even the time commitment is not as long as you would think. I spent <10 hours over an entire month. The moment I hit 40 wpm for that lesson in 2 consecutive sessions (with 90% accuracy or more), I stopped and moved to the next lesson. After all, I don’t intend to be a typist, and at an accuracy of 90%, I can quickly compose written material, Just remember to use tools like Spell Check or “Grammarly” to edit the piece to perfection!
2) Do not combine thinking and writing.
A lot of authors find it hard to finish their book or blog because they can rarely type or write as fast as they think. Unfortunately, multi-tasking idea development and writing is a lose-lose situation, except for some extremely prolific writers. Slowing down our thinking to write causes breaks in the idea generation process and interrupts our “flow”. On the other hand, typing in short-form causes us to lose key concepts, unless we edit immediately.
An easy solution to this catch-22 situation is to carve out separate chunks of time for “ideation” vs writing. Obviously, writers do need to jot down their ideas, plot lines,etc. Those fleeting genius thoughts are best mapped by the following methods:
- Long form writing, using abbreviations. This seems counter-intuitive but the task of physical writing is quite fast, especially when compared to typing in the same way. Plus, writing on paper seems to trigger thoughts which an electronic screen somehow does not!
- Use “Mind maps” to create outlines for the book and individual chapters. Carve dedicated time to put these thoughts to paper/laptop. When you do transfer maps to paper, do it mechanically, leaving expanding and editing tasks for later.
3) Pomodoro technique.
This is a popular productivity technique that my mentor taught me, where you set a timer and focus continuously on a single work item for 45 mins or so. No stopping or getting distracted until the timer goes off.
In today’s age of social media, 45 mins is spectacularly difficult. When I started, I found myself checking repeatedly to see if the clock had stopped! Over time, I’ve found this to be an amazing technique for all aspects of my life, writing included. Specific for writing, I use a modified format in either one of the two methods:
a) 5–45–10 marathons:
- 5 mins preparation time — decide on chapter, or expand a previous draft, or assign time only for mind mapping topics. Get work table ready with notebook/ laptop, water bottle and switch phone to silent.
- 45 mins writing time — This could be writing in long form, i.e. physical notes for mind mapping, or working on my laptop.
- 10 mins break time — I use the break time only if I am planning to embark on a second sprint. Otherwise, I use this time to file my notes using Evernote or save my Word files to cloud storage.
b) 20–5–20–5 sprints:
These are mostly to get some quick writing done, with 5 minutes of break for every 20 minutes of writing. Good to use when I am traveling, waiting at appointments, or just have a small pocket of time to kill. Also works well when I have deadlines but don’t feel any motivation to write. My book blogs typically emerge from a single sprint, while my tech blogs typically require 2 sprints.
Note that for both methods, I keep a very specific content goal and word count goal, to maximize my focus.
4) Use templates.
As I started my career as a techie, I tend to automate anything mundane and repetitive. Writing also falls into this category, so I use templates for different types of writing tasks. Tim Ferris, a bestselling author I follow, also offers the same advice.
There is also a psychological benefit to using templates. To me personally, starting from a blank piece of paper is very demotivating and hard. (Scrolling through social media is so much more interesting!) Many author/writer friends have shared similar fears and writing from scratch seems to prolong writers block.
Instead my templates keep me disciplined and focused on the writing task at hand. For example, I follow one template for my book review blog, which follows the following format:
Genre and book details -> Why I chose the book ->One thing I loved about the book -> Review Score ->List of similar authors, books and movies, so readers can compare or relate to the book.
My tech blog tutorials have a completely different format, so I can quickly plug my code snippets, screenshots and explanations into appropriate slots. This allows me to develop an engaging 2000-word tutorial in under 1 hour. Even if you write for multiple niches, having a basic Word or Google Doc with basic elements will help you shave off considerable time.
5) Write offline.
Seriously, when you write, do just that — WRITE. No editing, no research, no looking up URL links or anything else. The internet is so captivating that most “online research” loosely translates to authors diving down useless internet rabbit holes, skipping from one online click-bait article to another!
Instead, use the code <kyz> and move on. There are no words in English with this sequence, so you only need to use the “search” functionality, [Ctrl]+F in Word, to fill those details later. This is another tip I learned from Tim Ferris, in his amazing book “Tools of the Titans”. I’ve used this method for work projects, my MBA assignments and all my paid writing side hustles.
These are the writing methods I use to get more done in less time. Try for yourself, and see your productivity skyrocket!
Happy Writing!