My workflow that produced 200+ articles per year
There’re plenties of frictions. I am not going to address each one by one. I am just gonna give you my workflow that eliminated most of the friction in my decades of online writing endeavor.
So here’s the most fearsome one. Staring at a blank page.
I have plenty of tips to avoid getting stuck on a blank page. Among the first ones is never to start from a blank page.
How do you not start from a blank page?
Have an idea pre-populated in your draft page. It may be a “line” or an outline for a specific topic or collection of random points.
How to do that? How do you never run out of ideas? Just record all of your ideas for later use —whenever inspiration strikes.
Have a way to draft an inspiring idea —quickly. It could be a pocket notebook or any app.
When you want to write, pick an idea from the collected list. You don’t have to choose the best idea to write on. Just choose whatever feels good to write at that point in time.
The whole idea is to train our writing muscles (habits) to write consistently. Not to produce the best article by force. (Even if you try, you can’t do that continuously).
Record ideas —quickly — without filters
I use an app called Drafts. Yeah, it is only available for iOS. I couldn’t find a similar one for Android. (If you know one, share it in the comments for our readers).
The point is not about which app is the best app. The point is you should have a go-to place to record your random thoughts that pass by and go away and never come back. You need to record those ideas without any filters.
The Drafts app, whenever I open it, opens with a fresh draft window for me to type anything there.
There’s only one click, one finger-punch to capture my idea.
I’ve never rejected an idea before it goes into my Drafts. The decision part comes later. Now, this is only the recording phase.
Just don’t have any filters. All ideas —even the stupid ones are qualified by default to get into your drafts collection.
Remember, this is not your draft; this is just a collection of ideas. (Sorry for confusing the app Drafts and drafts).
Whenever I write my idea in the Drafts app, I write it like a hint. A rough outline. Sometimes as a single line of inspiration. There are no rules here. The only rule is to record it as quickly as possible.
Write the idea from anywhere, in any form, with any tool. But it need to be as one storage point/one place.
Write, Don’t edit now.
Now, you have chosen your topic/idea. You started to develop the outline. Or you can write in a flow. Whatever. Just Write.
Just don’t edit while you write. Write everything, every point, as the thought flows.
Re-arrange them later. Don’t fix your grammar then and there.
You don’t have to finish your first line to its perfection to start the second. If you do that, you’re just killing your flow. You’re the worst enemy of your natural flowing creativity.
Don’t edit. Don’t correct. Don’t try to perfect it.
Sleep on your drafts.
If you don’t feel like continue writing, then just close the draft and open another (choose from your ideas list).
Let your subconscious part work on it, while you stay occupied with other things.
When you know you can make the content better, but you couldn’t now, then leave it on the top of editor list. I just pin them on top, if I repeatedly adding points or editing the draft as the idea flows in (especially when you’re away from writing).
When you give sufficient time between writing, you’ll get a chance to see the content with fresh eyes. Fresh eyes means new perspectives.
The yesterday’s most beautiful point might look stupid today. (That happens to me often).
I can add new ideas, or change my old ideas with new, or add better perspective to it.
Sleeping on my draft (not literally) is the wonderful hack I’ve learned after many years of experience in writing.
At any point of time, I at least have 3 to 5 articles in my draft list (I am using Ulysses app) for me to continue editing. One good thing about writing in Ulysses (for editing drafts) and having Drafts app (for collecting ideas) is I can access my idea and draft posts from anywhere (from my phone, Mac, and iPad).
Organize Less
I don’t organize my ideas into folders. I want them to be visible to me all the time when I start to scroll my ideas.
Whenever I find an idea worth writing next time, I just make some edits to it, so that it move to the up in the list (as my list is sorted to last modified date).
For relevancy, I tag them. But it is not the usual case. I use tags to connect ideas linked to each other. But to be frank, that happens very few times.
If I can’t find a note where I want to add a point, just I add it to a new note and tag it. Because I don’t want to forget the idea during my search for the particular note.
I can also use drafts bidirectional linking (Yes Drafts app supports linking, but it is not bidirectional) instead of tagging. But I got used to the simplicity.
My entire system is based on simplicity to avoid friction of writing as much as possible.
Outlining without friction
Once I am done with filling all my ideas. Now it’s the time to connect them and order them.
Can you see the outline on the right side of the editor. Check the below screenshot. This helps me to control the flow of the article. I write whatever point that comes to my mind. Once done, I move them to relevant titles/ sub title one by one.
Likewise, I move sentence up and down to reorganize my content. You could have seen that all of my articles has very few sentence per paragraph. I isolate the single point into one para. So that I can move them up and down without reediting them.
Rework on story telling
Once you done the above outlining and sentence arrangements, now you can see the missing links to the story that you want to tell.
A simple read through will show where you want to add some connecting sentences. Do them.
As long as the transitioning from one point to the next is not abrupt or odd, you’re good to go.
Work on your phrase
The final thing is don’t overthink.
In this step, focus only on phrasing your points told in the sentence which needs change.
Focus on the meaning that every sentence conveys.
Proof read
I use Grammarly and built-in Ulysses proof reader for this. I don’t focus on this step a lot.
And I ignore most of the Grammarly’s suggestions to preserve my writing style.
End of the day, I have to put the content out.
Never publish in a hurry. But publish quickly.
final notes
When I was start writing, I never had a luxury to use any paid app for writing. The apps that I mentioned are just to make my work easier. Regardless of the apps the system should be strong, simple and foolproof.
The more features you start to use or you start to add it to your system, you’re just adding one more layer of complication to the process.
The more complex it is, the more friction you will feel doing the process.
the moto is to create a frictionless system. Not a perfect system.
As long as it produces the result, I don’t want to change the system.
If you have one, as long as it works, don’t change it.