The Sandwich Technique Is Helping Me Stay Consistent With My Writing
I borrowed the technique from my reading process to stay consistent with writing
As a writer, consistency is one of the challenges that all writers face. As someone writing on the side with a full-time job, I find it terribly hard to stay consistent. I intend to write for 40 minutes after work, but often I am too exhausted to put the words down.
When you have missed a few days, it becomes even harder to get back on track. To avoid this very situation of long breaks not publishing any new work, I have found a method that helps me stay consistent and keep the momentum going.
The method is inspired by my reading process, and today I will share it with you.
The “Sandwich” Approach
As a book lover, I have come across some books that are hard to read. They require a lot of mental labor and extra attention. I struggle to read them for a long period of time and give up after 20–30 minutes.
This challenge made me read less than my usual quota and kept me away from the joy of reading and learning.
That’s when I started reading multiple books and created a Sandwich strategy to increase my reading time. The Sandwich strategy is sandwiching a tough book between a couple of easy reads. For example, if I am reading difficult non-fiction, I will pair it with uncomplicated fiction and some poetry book.
At one point in time, I am reading 3 books — a healthy combination of fiction and non-fiction. When I get bored or can’t understand the complex ideas from the tough book, instead of taking a break from reading, I switch to another book.
This approach is not new, and I have seen many avid readers reading multiple books at once.
Keeping the same principle in mind, I decided to divide the articles I write into three categories — a healthy mix of hard, medium, easy.
Easy Articles
This category contains the topic you love writing about. You are likely an expert in that domain, and you find it easier to write it down. They don’t require to go back and fro and take less time to finish.
For me, these articles are mainly personal essays and book recommendations. They are personal and require less research and time to marinate. When I tell my story and experiences, I am in a safe spot, and I know what I am writing has no layers.
- I write these articles when I have gone too long without writing. They warm me up, and I feel accomplished when I finish off of these.
- They keep you going when you feel stuck.
- If you’re a crypto expert, you can write about it much easier than writing a self-help article. For me, it's personal essays and personal experiments.
- They get you in the flow state to get to the medium ones.
Note: Easy doesn’t mean they’re basic ideas or have poor formatting; easy articles mean they are easy to write because they come as second nature to you.
A few months back, I had a long period of time when I hadn’t published anything. I started multiple articles but couldn’t finish any of them. So, I wrote about what I was doing while procrastinating, and it was so much fun and easy to write that article.
Think about what you're doing at the moment while you’re not getting any writing done, and write about it. It could be your addiction to your phone or the feeling of low self-worth.
The Easy Article category is about documenting our journey and being personal with our audience.
Challenging Articles
To become a writing machine, you’ll have to rust; you’ll lose patience in the process. But remember the article that challenges you will make you a better writer. These articles won’t come out of you in two hours or even a day. They will require more time and more research.
This category of articles is difficult to do in one sitting. If you can manage to do so great, I have observed that most of my well-performed writing has come from weeks and months of thinking and editing.
- This category consists of 3000 words guides, Better Human articles, or a highly researched-based manual.
- Don’t go on a sprint to produce your best articles in a day or one sitting.
- Spend a fixed amount of time in this range of articles and let it come to you in bits and pieces over a couple of weeks.
Note: Challenging articles don’t have to be challenging. They can be time-consuming because it often takes an extended amount of time to develop a proper understanding of a topic.
When I was writing almost 3000 words of happiness guide, I took a week to recollect all my emotions and understanding about happiness. It took me another day or two to do the research.
It was challenging while I was doing it, but o this day, I am very proud of the result. And my understanding of happiness has increased drastically.
When you find yourself stuck in the process of writing a challenging article, write an easier one to keep the moment going.
Conclusion
Excepting every piece we write to be the Eat Pray Love of our career is the biggest mistake, we can make as writers.
All we can do is focus on the process and be consistent. The sandwich concept is not to differentiate the efforts you put in your writing but to create a process for you to stay consistent. If it weren’t for this approach, I would still be stuck.
This process will save you from getting burned out and writing good articles every day with your knowledge.
