Writing is a big part of work life for most of us. Whether it’s emails, training materials, articles or website updates, you’re probably writing something every day.
When you’re looking to increase productivity, the best place to start is with something you do every day. Tiny shifts in things you’re doing all the time can add up to make a big difference overall.
So, today we’re going to look at how you can write more quickly. These are our top tips to help you write faster without sacrificing quality. We’ll start with some quick fixes, but the real gold is towards the end where we look at long-term techniques that yield big results.
Short-Term Speed Boosts
These are all tips you can use today, and they should bring instant results. This section is all about tweaking your workflow to make faster writing the default.
- Use an outline. Nicholas Cole from Ship 30 for 30 refers to this as “prepping the page”. Even if you take five minutes to put down a few bullet points, you’re removing the freeze that many people experience when they look at a blank page. Get something on there, and it will help you write more quickly in the next step.
Watch the video: 1 Simple Exercise To Defeat Writer’s Block Forever - Get a messy first draft down as quickly as you can. If you can separate the writing from the editing, you’ll free your brain to just get your ideas down on the page. Editing and revisions can come later.
- Break tasks into chunks. Rewriting a 40,000-word staff manual feels overwhelming. If you just focus on the introduction though, or a single chapter or section, you’ll be able to work more quickly. It’s about tricking your brain into seeing a small, simple task rather than the panic-inducing whole.
- Work in timed sprints. This trick works for all kinds of things but is especially good for writing if you combine it with the first few tips on this list. The Pomodoro Technique is one approach to timed sprints, but you don’t need any fancy timers or training. Use your phone, set a timer, and write as much as you can before it goes off. Take a five-minute break, and then repeat. The official Pomodoro is 25 minutes long, but you can experiment to see what length of time works best for you.
- Spend time distraction-zapping before you start. Turn off notifications on your phone — maybe even turn the phone off altogether, even if that feels scary. Close your office door if you can, and cue up your preferred focus music in your headphones. Try a binaural beats playlist or movie soundtrack — Lord of the Rings is one a lot of people love. It’s also helpful to keep a notebook next to you to jot down things that pop into your head unrelated to the task at hand.
- Make templates for everything. Templates and checklists can save time and reduce mistakes for all kinds of tasks. If you’re starting from scratch with every new piece you write, you’re wasting a lot of time on repetitive set-up work. Blog posts, emails, social media posts and internal communications can all be streamlined with simple templates highlighting essential elements and prompts. Starting with a fill-in-the-blanks type template will make your overall writing process faster.
Speed-Maintenance Strategies
Once you’ve tried the tips above, you’ll want to maintain those improvements and keep your writing speed up going forward. That’s what this section is all about.
7. Practice every day. The best way to improve any skill is to do it more frequently. Think about how hard it was to learn to read, try to remember yourself stumbling over unfamiliar words, and then consider how easy it is now. Repeated practice makes skills second nature, and that’s where you want to be with writing. Even if you’re writing posts that never see the light of day or emails you don’t need to send, keep practicing.
8. Learn keyboard shortcuts. Any time you can save a few keystrokes, or a click or two, you should. Add up all the time you spend moving your mouse pointer up to the toolbar to format a heading. That’s a lot of wasted time over a year when you can use markdown to format the headings for you in many programs. Here’s a great markdown cheat sheet to get you started.
9. Try a text expander tool. Breevy is an affordable option that’s easy to use and works wherever you’re typing on your device. You can set up shortcuts for frequently-used words, and even reduce whole chunks of text to just a couple of keystrokes. If you have to add an affiliate disclosure to every blog post, use Breevy to make a shortcut. Audio transcriptionists use tools like this all the time to speed up their typing process, and they can be a huge help for all writers.
Idea Generation
For some people, the writing itself isn’t the sticking point. If you struggle with thinking about what to write, these suggestions will help. It takes a bit of time to train your brain to see ideas everywhere, but it’s a habit worth nurturing.
10. Have a daily brainstorming session. Set aside five or ten minutes each day to brainstorm future content ideas. Use mind mapping, free writing, or a simple bulleted list to put down as many ideas as you can, without judging them. At this stage, don’t rule out any ideas, just get them down. James Altucher has a great post about becoming an “idea machine” that you should definitely take a look at.
11. Repurpose old content. Successful blog posts, Medium articles, or emails can be turned into new content. This saves you time generating entirely new ideas, and it also helps you get the most out of ideas that have already proved successful. One way to do this even more quickly is to leverage AI tools like UPDF AI — upload an existing blog post, for example, and ask for help turning it into an email or creating slides for a LinkedIn carousel.
12. Focus on quality input. High-quality input in the form of articles, podcasts, books and interviews with well-respected figures in your industry will help you produce high-quality output when it comes to your own writing. Curate a list of influencers in your field and make time to consume their content every week.
13. Make it easy to save ideas. Tools like the Evernote Web Clipper, or the Notion Web Clipper, let you save snippets of text, images, and even whole articles. If you make this a habit, you’ll soon build a bank of inspiration to draw from when you’re creating content.
Long-Term Tactics for Big Results
These ideas will take a little longer to pay off, but the rewards are big. Pick one to focus on for a month, and then add in something else.
14. Use a content calendar. If you plan your writing ahead, you allow time and space to develop ideas, and you don’t have to face a blank page ever again. Set aside brainstorming time, fill in your content calendar, and then schedule the time to write specific pieces.
15. Take an online course. If writing and content creation are a big part of your working life, then it makes sense to invest time in developing the skills you need. Yes, you can pick up a lot from watching what others do, but it can be faster and more efficient to just set aside time to do a course. HubSpot has a free Content Marketing Certification which makes a great starting point.
16. Consider dictation. This can make writing much faster for a lot of people, and modern tools make it far more accessible than you might think. The initial outline for this piece was done with a cheap Bluetooth microphone plugged into an Android phone, and Google Docs. Otter.AI is another tool to investigate. It takes time to learn how to dictate effectively, but it’s a skill well worth putting time into.
Now It’s Your Turn
Reading about how to write faster won’t make you write faster — sorry. But, trying even a couple of these tips will have an impact, and you’ll start seeing results. Don’t try to do everything at once, that way burnout lies. Do pick one thing and try it this week. Even better, try it today. Right now. Or, if you’d rather just read about being more productive, try our guide to the top 10 productivity tools for 2024.
