Here’s The Creative Process That Lets Me Write 2–3 Articles Per Day.
There is only one way of predictably creating results in any type of creative endeavour. And that is to have a clearly defined creative process.
In it’s essence, a creative process is a blueprint on what to do every single day, to achieve the results that you are looking for. You are automating your daily behaviour in a way that will get you the best possible results.
Why is this important?
Because it allows you to focus 100% on your work itself. Instead of constantly being distracted with the thought of what you should do next, you know exactly what your next step is.
Here’s an example of what I mean with that:
Every morning, I start my day knowing which article I am going to be working on first. The article is already half-finished, and my subconsciousness already had the time to process how to finish it, over a good nights worth of sleep.
As you can imagine, it doesn’t take me long to finish that article. Perhaps an hour or so, at maximum.
That’s one article done.
In the best case scenario, the day continues like that. Every aspect of it is highly routinised, to the point where you know exactly when you are going to be doing what.
The most important thing you need in order to do reach that point, is the right policies.
Policy #1:
Idea generation always happens (at least) the day before.
You can not predictably write 2–3 articles every single day, if at the beginning of your day, you don’t even know which articles you are going to write.
If you try to come up with article ideas on the same day, then maybe you will succeed, maybe you won’t. It all depends on your luck.
Here’s the way that works best for me:
I do my brainstorming sessions after all my writing for the day is done. I give myself about 2 hours of time to come up with a whole bunch of ideas. Then, I choose the two or three ideas, which I believe to be the best ones.
Basically, I do this every day. Sometimes, there are exceptions. For example, when I already have plenty of good ideas written down in my note book. But on more than 80% of my days, I go through this process.
Policy #2:
Always do your writing when you are at full energy.
The human brain can only maintain about four hours of highly concentrated work on a daily basis. Every other type of work, or anything else you do which takes away your energy, is taking a chunk of your working time.
Of course, you can write (or do any other kind of work) for more than four hours per day.
We all do that.
But we simply won’t do a very good job at it. Once we are passing the limit of our concentration levels, we are only performing at a fraction of our real potential.
The solution?
Always get your writing done first thing in the morning. Before you do anything else that may drain your energy, sit down and put in the work.
Tackle any other tasks that need to get done for the day only after your writing time is complete.
Policy #3:
Always give your subconscious mind a problem to work on.
While you are writing, you are consciously dealing with a problem or coming up with new ideas. Most of your work will get done in this way, but certainly not all of it.
Your subconscious mind is an equally important part of the creative process.
It keeps processing your problem, while you are resting. Regardless of whether you are going for an afternoon swim, or whether you are deeply asleep, your subconscious keeps working on your current problems.
You can not really control your subconscious mind.
But you can give it directions.
By always finishing your work day with an open question (e.g. a half-finished article), you are giving your subconscious mind something to process.
When you wake up after a good nights worth of sleep, you’ll find that you will quickly come up with some new insights on how to continue that article.
These insights are a result of the thinking done by your subconscious mind.
Because of this, there is something that I do every single day. I start writing one article, without finishing it. Finishing it will be my first task for the next morning.
In this way, the first article of the day always gets done quickly.
And it gives me motivation for the rest of the day.
Some final words:
The result of these three policies have led me to a work structure, which looks the following way:
- Four hours of writing — first thing in the morning.
- Two hours of brainstorming.
- Two hours of other work (responding to comments, planning other projects, social media etc.).
The point here is that my priority in life clearly is the writing process. I am making sure that I am getting my writing done, when I am at the peak of my energy level.
Once I got my writing done, I brainstorm ideas for the next day’s articles. And I do whatever other kind of work needs to get done (if there is any).
With that, I try to get a clear separation between my work times, and my resting times into my life.
Instead of trying to simply work more, I am trying to maximise my concentration during those four hours, that my brain is actually capable of performing at the maximum of its performance.
The rest of my time is designed for resting.
Giving my subconscious mind the space that it needs.
During the times that I am following this process, I can say with confidence that I can predictably produce 2–3 articles every day. These articles would have a total word count of about 2000–4000 words.
If I don’t, then my performance becomes much more unstable. On some days I produce great results, on other days nothing at all.
You will need to develop a highly structured creative process for yourself, if you want to produce results predictably.
The process itself might look completely different for you. After all, we are all different and we have different needs.
But I have no doubt that having such a clearly defined and highly routinised process in place, is the one single thing that makes it possible for us to produce large quantities of creative work on a regular basis.
What does your optimal process look like?
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