The Unique Strategy that Helped me Become a Consistent Writer
My writing life changed soon after applying this strategy and following the custom schedule that I made.
I want to start by saying I'm not an 'expert' writer by any means, but I've definitely found some writing success, and I wanted to share my short personal story and my unique strategy with you.
My Writing Journey
I'll go back in time to when I was a high schooler; that's where my passion for writing started. I used to have a journal where I would write my thoughts in a chaotic and clustered way. That was one of my favorite parts of the day, I enjoyed writing, and I always wanted to improve.
I liked the most indulging in different fantasy worlds or writing my stories based on writing prompts. I had a plethora of worlds to explore and navigate; it was indeed an immersive experience for me.
World-building made me fall in love with writing.
I continued to develop my writing skill, and by the time high school was over, I had written a lot. I noticed that my writing was in bursts of motivation and never consistent.
In 2017, I decided to start a WordPress blog with two of my close friends. We were new to it, and there was so much to learn!
Nevertheless, we dedicated ourselves to the project, and after a while, things weren't looking good. Even though it was a passion project, we still wanted to have some visitors or someone to read our thoughts. So, we had a re-group and launched a new blog that catered more to our strong points.
We improved our writing a lot to make it better for SEO, and soon people started to notice our blog. I remember one day very vividly when our blog was getting a lot of attention.
That day we managed to get more than 20,000 visitors, and I couldn't believe it! But the consistency problem was still plaguing us; soon after, this blog also wasn't getting any more attention.
In late 2019 I joined Medium, and I immediately knew this was the best platform for writing. I didn't have to worry about things that WordPress blogs need, and it allowed me to focus more on my writing.
That's where I also came up with my writing strategy and the custom schedule to make me a Consistent Writer.
What is my Proudest Writing Milestone?
When I started blogging for Medium, my most significant milestone was getting 25,000 views in a month on my articles. I thought it was a bit unlikely, but anyway, I continued with my grind.
A few months later, after consistently writing, I achieved it, which was an impressive feat for me at the time. That was the first significant milestone in my writing career!
My next milestone is to be able to make blogging on Medium a full-time job. I love writing, and I think with dedication and time, I will achieve it. That would be what I consider 'real success in this journey.
The Writing Strategy that Changed my Life
As I previously mentioned, I wasn't a consistent writer for most of my writing journey. I knew things needed to change, and I applied the 'No Zero Days' strategy to my writing.
The ‘No Zero Day’ strategy is what changed my life completely.
Let me explain myself.
A Zero Day is a day that I don't do anything productive, hence the zero. This had a significant impact on my life, and it changed the way I saw things ultimately.
I wanted to be a consistent writer, and to do that; I needed to be productive each day. Meaning I didn't have a Zero Day. This is important!
That's when I came up with the idea of developing a spreadsheet to keep track of my progress and writing tasks that I have during the day. The schedule looks like this. I'll explain how it works in detail below.
What Made it a "Success"?
The strategy itself and the schedule did help me a lot to get into writing consistently. But what made it successful overall was the Productivity Journal.
I decided to get back into journaling, and this time it was going to be daily and with a minimum of 500 words per entry. In the journal, I wrote ideas and everything related to my writing and work-life.
A typical day for me went like this:
- Morning routine (Cleaning my teeth, washing my face, etc.).
- Grab a coffee from the coffee shop near my house.
- Look at the schedule and plan the day.
- Write in the Productivity Journal.
- Then I continue with the rest of my day.
My writing life drastically improved!
I never experienced writer’s block after it and I was feeling really good about myself.
I recommend following this strategy and what I did for anyone struggling to write consistently.
How was it Life-Changing?
In the beginning, I was using the strategy and the schedule just for the writing aspect of my life. Soon I figured if I used this strategy and adopted the spreadsheet to fit in some real-world tasks, I might increase my efficiency and productivity overall.
That's when this strategy changed my life completely. Now I value my time a lot more, and there are rarely Zero Days anymore.
I’m more organized, prepared, and have things planned for weeks ahead of time!
This was when the pandemic started to affect my country fully, and I decided to leave my current job and focus on my freelancing career. I used this strategy and the schedule to keep myself focused and on track.
My Freelancing Journey
After I quit, I had savings to last me a few months, so there was no time to lose, and I immediately started doing thorough research for freelancing. At this time, I was also earning a few bucks on Medium, so I got inspired and decided to try freelance writing.
I joined the top 3 platforms, Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer. After setting up the profiles and sending a few proposals, there was a period of inactivity. This raised some doubts in my mind, but I never lost my faith.
When I got my first paying client, I was over the moon! I delivered the article the same day and worked extra hard to impress the client with my writing ability.
Here are some tips for getting jobs on Upwork since that's my main platform. Also, here's my Upwork profile to check out for yourself; my first job was around August 2020.
Tips for Earning Jobs as a Beginner Freelancer on Upwork
- Send Personalized Proposals.
- The first three sentences of the proposals are the most crucial part since that's what the client sees.
- Be as friendly and helpful as possible.
- Make sure the job is on your skill level.
- Send proposals to jobs that don't have more than one day of publication.
I'll make an article when I talk about Upwork more in-depth soon, so I suggest you subscribe to my newsletter if you're interested and don't want to miss out.
I transitioned from a 9–5 job to freelancing in just a few short months. If you need help with this transition, don't hesitate to send me a message over my socials or leave a comment on this article.
I’m working on creating a course for getting started as a freelance writer, so stay tuned!
How Does the "Super Schedule — To-Do" spreadsheet work?
It's not a complicated document, and I try to keep it as clean as possible since I regularly update it. I'll explain everything in detail, and hopefully, you can give me your thoughts and suggestions in the comment section.
- This is the area where you write your daily tasks.
I rank the tasks in importance order, but you can choose to do it as you wish. In some cases, even leave spaces between the tasks so that there could be room to add another more important one.
- Here is where you change the start of the week.
I duplicate the weeks to plan things ahead, and there's an easy way to change the week dates automatically. Click on the cell as displayed by the picture and enter the Monday of next week like this: 10/25/2021 (MM/DD/YY).
- Here is the productivity points system.
In the top left is the ranking system. It works like this:
- With Green and awarded one point when you complete the task the same day.
- With Yellow and awarded zero points when you complete the task the next day.
- With Blue, subtracting one point from the day's total is when you don't complete the task within two days.
The points are calculated by the end of the day, as shown in the picture above.
These three are the essential parts of the schedule, and the rest are self-explanatory. There's a to-do weekly or monthly on each side where you can be reminded of a task long-term.
Life After Applying the Strategy
I was getting on the right track with my strategy and schedule; my writing improved over time. More and more clients started to be interested in my services.
Finally I was able to turn freelance writing into my full-time job!
After a year and six months of doing it, I can safely say that anyone can do it if they apply themselves. Yes, that's right, even you that are reading this can do it!
The best thing that you can do for yourself is to try it.
Closing Thoughts
As I previously mentioned in this article, I'm aspiring to turn blogging into my full-time job. That is what I'm working on next, and it would be the definition of success for my writing journey.
Let's recap some of the most important parts of this article in this shortlist:
- World-building made me fall in love with writing
- At the beginning of this journey, my writing was in bursts of motivation and never consistent.
- When I started blogging for Medium, my most significant milestone was getting 25,000 views in a month on my articles. I achieved it after a few months of posting articles.
- My writing strategy and the custom productivity schedule made me a Consistent Writer.
- The 'No Zero Day' strategy is what changed my life completely.
If you have any suggestions or questions about the article, don't hesitate to leave a reply, I will be replying to every one of them! I hope that my story was insightful and inspired some of you.
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