How To Take A Month Off (But Still Produce Content)
I have to come clean about something…
The article you are reading right now (and every article for the past month, actually),
Were all written back in December 🫣🫣🫣
Oops, I did a little trick
That’s right — this past month was my first real exploration into batch-writing my newsletters, and the experience has taught me a lot about my own writing process.
Pre-writing and organizing your content is not for the faint of heart,
(Good GOD, is it hard to find motivation to write things so, so, SO far in advance)
But in my case, with the hectic events of January coming my way, I knew that batching the work was the only way I would be able to stay consistent.
Batch-writing is plenty controversial (some people SWEAR by it, and others can’t stand the idea of not creating your work near to it’s release time),
But if you are interested in exploring batch writing for yourself, here are a few of my top tips from this month-long experiment:
Get real about the workload
I’m not sure if this is just a neurotic part of the way my brain works,
But if I am starting any new project, I NEED to map out the work and expected hours in advance to know what I am getting myself into
(Otherwise, I will just spiral into stress that I don’t have time to do it all, when, in fact, I have lots of time)
So, to combat this, when I started this project, I sat down and answered the following questions:
How many weeks of content was I planning on creating?
How many pieces of content a week do I want to post?
How long does it take me to write each newsletter?
How many days do I have to write the content to meet my deadline?
For me, the answers to these questions looked like this:
(4 weeks of content) X (1 newsletter per week) = 4 total newsletters to batch-write
On average, I write a newsletter in about an hour, meaning I had 4 hours to complete between December 27th — January 1st.
I know this type of simple math doesn’t appeal to everyone, but for me, knowing that getting all of my January newsletters dealt with would only be 4 hours of time divided between multiple days made me feel SO MUCH BETTER,
And I highly recommend taking the time to chunk it out before you start to help reduce anxiety and keep you on track.
Use your dang calendar
Listen, if you know me, then you know that I am NOTHING without Google Calendar and my desk-side whiteboard.
I am a big, big, BIG fan of scheduling work and using checklists to monitor my progression, and this practice comes in particularly helpful when you are creating content for your own personal brand.
I don’t know if this is just a me thing, but I often find it hard to set aside time to create things that I will publish.
Client work? No problem.
Helping a writing friend with edits? I have so much time, of course I can help!
Writing my own content to publish for myself? Umm… yeah… can I just go play Stardew Valley instead?
(Side note — if you are looking for an adorable farming-based game to destroy your life in the best way possible, you must play Stardew Valley. I can sink hours into that game and not even notice)
So, to prevent myself from pushing off personal work for yet another round of exploration in the Stardew mines, I use my two-prong organization system to keep me on track:
All tasks are added to my Google calendar
Each day, I write a checklist of the work I need to complete that day, only once I erase the final task from the board am I allowed to jump back into virtual farming lol
I know it may seem restrictive,
But, for literally an hour a day, I think it’s worthwhile for me to be strict with myself to get ahead, knowing that I will still have plenty of time for leisure once the big task is done.
Important note: If you want to even further improve your chances of getting the content written, try scheduling the newsletters from the furthest away to the closest (I wrote this article, the last in the series, first, so I would actually get to it). This trick helps me stay focused and on track, and it might work for you, too!
Separate ideation from creation
Ideation (especially for a large amount of future content) can be really tough to crank out all in one go.
And, for me, I find that a lot of my best ideas come to me at random times of the day, like in the shower or when I am out for a walk.
So, to capitalize on these creative ideas, I have an ever-expanding list of newsletter topics in the notes app on my phone.
Some are horrible, some will never be made — but some are great starting points for (hopefully) great newsletter content.
If you are not currently in the practice of collecting and storing personal creative ideas for future projects, I highly recommend that you start.
No matter how silly or non-viable your ideas may seem, having a go-to place for creative ideas is so, so helpful when it comes to batch-creating content,
(I literally pulled all four of the newsletter topics for this month from my list in 30 seconds, which cut back on stress and time!)
Do you have any experience batch-writing your content? If so, please reply to this article and let me know how it went for you — I’m super interested in hearing about how it went for you!