When you write more, you earn more
When you write more, you earn more
Here’s how to write faster *and* better.
Success requires volume.
Writing & publishing more online means:
Writing better
Getting seen by more people
Getting more subscribers
Getting more ideas (appetite comes with eating)
If you look at the world’s best solopreneurs, all of them will tell you content is the key to success, and the more, the better.
Joanna Wiebe, 7-figure copywriter, says to her students in CopySchool that if they “don’t start writing authority-building content right now, I will lose my sh*t.”
Shonda Rhymes, the screenwriter behind Grey’s Anatomy and Bridgerton, says in her Masterclass that “all successful writers write A LOT.”
Tim Denning, 7-figure blogger, started his jaw-dropping business with the goal of being the most prolific writer on the internet. Not the best, not the richest. The most prolific — because he knew that would lead to him being among the best and richest.
Eve Arnold, a 6-figure online writer & marketer, still writes 20–25 articles per month on Medium, plus runs a newsletter with 18,000 subscribers, plus shows up on X.
I could go on and on, but I know you get it.
The question is this: how can you *possibly* write & publish SO MUCH in a sustainable way if you also have:
Full-time job
A relationship
Children
Hobbies
All of the above
You can!
You just have to learn to write faster.
For the longest time, I thought it wasn’t realistic. I thought I wanted to be a writer, not a robot pumping out content. I thought that’s not what creatives do. I thought all these people pumping out content were scammers, cheaters, something was off about them.
The truth? I just didn’t want to change. I wanted to stay in my comfy zone of a poor creative.
But when I changed, my results changed.
The reality is this: to write & publish more, you should learn to write faster and be strategic about publishing.
Here’s how.
Secret to Success: Write & Publish More
In this newsletter:
Psychological strategies to help you write faster (and better).
Beat perfectionism for good.
Train your brain to focus.
When you’re unclear and run out of ideas, do this.
How to write confidently.
Science says you should do this to unlock creativity & write faster.
2. Productivity strategies to help you write faster (and better).
Psychological strategies to help you write faster (and better).
Tony Robbins says success is 80% psychology and 20% strategy. For the longest time, I chose to ignore this. Don’t be me.
So much of how you manage your time is psychology.
Example: I used to spend too much time on finding an idea that felt right.
Let’s address a few psychological problems that slow you down and keep you from sounding like yourself.
Beat perfectionism for good.
Perfectionism isn’t a category, it’s a scale.
We’re all somewhere along that scale, and if you’re an online creator, my guess is your perfectionist score is higher than the average.
Perfectionism slows you down by:
Keeping you stuck on finding the right idea (as I was)
Making you postpone writing
Making you postpone publishing
Making you edit way too long
There’s a 3-step process I use to beat perfectionism:
Step 1: Write a crappy first draft. Just put it all on paper. Be a mess on purpose.
Step 2: Step away for a day. Or at least a few hours.
Step 3: Edit for an hour. 2 hours max. Give yourself an editing deadline, then hit publish.
Whew! Done.
Do that long enough and it will become second nature to post your thoughts online even when they’re not perfect.
Train your brain to focus.
The more you multi-task, the more you train your brain to get distracted.
Suddenly, you can’t focus for 5 minutes. The brain needs its break; its variety — that’s what it’s used to.
If you find it hard to focus, start working in focused stretches of at least 20–25 minutes. Then slowly increase those. You can take 1–2 min breaks when you need them.
Some people time themselves. I don’t like that, but I do make sure to leave my phone in the other room, get water and close down unnecessary tabs.
The more focused work you do, the easier it will be to focus quickly. When you learn to focus quickly and stay focused for longer, your productivity will explode.
When you’re unclear and run out of ideas, do this.
When everything in my brain turns into a hot mess (which happens at least once a week), I stop and get a break.
Then I go back to the reader.
Because this is not about you, right? So what are your readers’ problems? Their goals? Their desperate needs and desires?
I write these down. Then… Clarity.
How to write confidently.
I like to start my writing routine by writing how awesome I am in my journal. :)
I also do a few yoga poses for stretching and balance, making myself feel big and strong.
If you have your own pump-up ritual, use that. If not, create one. Use your inner monologue to remind yourself of everything you’re proud of. Move.
When you approach writing with confidence, you’ll find it much easier to write faster and better. Plus, your confidence will shine through and people love that.
The scientific way to write faster & better.
Science says writing by hand unlocks creativity and helps you write more, faster.
Plus, you can easily grab a journal and write on the subway, during lunch or even in your bed, before sleep. It doesn’t feel like work. It feels like being you.
When I feel stuck, I always grab a pen and my journal and write first drafts that way.
Then you can edit while typing it up, and you’re done.
Productivity strategies to help you write faster (and better).
Now that you’re all set up for success, let’s talk about boosting productivity.
Here are my favourite productivity hacks that help me write & publish A LOT, even though I also work with clients and raise kids.
Ideation.
Ideation can be a stand-alone process. Sometimes, I look at what others are writing, I look at what my audience is asking, and I write down ideas for my content.
That works well. You always have ideas to choose from.
The other way to do it is to get in the habit of stopping and writing your ideas right on the spot.
Sometimes I’m out with the kids. Sometimes I’m in the car (I’ll wait to stop, of course). I could get an idea anywhere, anytime, and I stop and write it in the notes app on my phone.
You should always have ideas ready. When it’s time to write, just choose one.
Micro-productivity.
Melissa Gratias, Ph.D., a workplace productivity coach and speaker, calls it microproductivity. “Breaking tasks down helps us to see large tasks as more approachable and doable,” she says.
The idea is this: you should be able to do meaningful work in 10–15 min windows.
Example: instead of having a task that says “Write a newsletter”, I have a list of tasks:
Find the idea. I either choose from my list or ideate for 10 minutes.
Write the sections/structure/what you want to say. If I’m familiar with the topic, that’s another 10 min. If not, I add another task to the list…
Research. 10–15 min. I only look for scientific research or articles published in top pubs (HBR, Forbes). I choose links I want to quote in the story and save them.
First draft. About 30–50 minutes, but can be broken down further. I can do 10–15 min on each section.
Edit. That’s the one thing where I sit my butt down and do focused work. I polish the writing, choose a headline, and insert links and CTAs.
Publish. Well, that takes a minute.
Instead of having one huge task — write a great newsletter — I have 5–6 small tasks that I can do on my phone while waiting in queues or while preparing dinner.
How do you do that for any task at hand?
Allocate the time to do it. Most people expect that chunking down should happen on autopilot. That’s how they end up with overwhelming to-do lists. Stop and think about your tasks.
Work on your most important or overwhelming tasks. No need to break down tasks you already find easy.
Break them down into tiny steps. You can use my newsletter process as an example.
Keep breaking it down until each step feels effortless.
Test your process. It might require a few iterations before it works like a well-oiled machine.
Reuse content.
Publishing more doesn’t mean writing more.
Even writing more doesn’t necessarily mean writing more.
Here’s how to reuse content and recycle ideas so you pump out more (quality) content than you thought possible.
How to publish more without writing more:
Publish the same or similar short posts to many social media platforms.
Break every piece of long-form writing down to as many social media posts as you can. AI can do this for you.
Reuse the same long-form piece on multiple platforms. I often cross-publish the same work on Medium and Substack. Dan Koe reads his newsletter in front of a camera and posts them on YouTube.
How to write more without writing more:
Look at your top 10 pieces of content. Choose specific sections of each piece to re-do into separate articles. Use what you already have written, just dive deeper into it.
Look at your top 10 pieces of content. Combine 2 or more ideas to present a new idea. Mash existing articles and edit for clarity.
Look at your top 10 pieces of content. Choose one where you know you can do more research. Rewrite it from a new perspective with the new information you find.
Do you have any posts you love that didn’t do so well? Try again! Take that same idea, make it a bit more reader-oriented, use parts of what you have, and publish it again.
Is there really a benefit for the readers if you keep re-using content? Yes!
People rarely learn from the first time they hear something. Repetition helps.
People forget what they read.
Parts of your audience never read it in the first place.
You’ve attracted a new audience since you last published it. They never read it either.
Find the time.
If you want to build an amazing business, you must find the time to make it work.
Be real with yourself: Can you wake up a bit earlier and write? Can you come up with ideas and write the sections of your new article/newsletter before bed?
Identify little pockets of time that are currently unused and use them to build your dreams.
Important: choose a sustainable way to do this. You don’t want to start strong, then burn out and stop. The name of the game is consistency.
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