Since I launched my startup Proxies API, to date, I have created nearly 100 blog posts here on Medium and our blog combined. I have also posted about 30 articles designed explicitly for communities like Reddit, Quora, and Facebook.
That’s 130 blog posts in a year, bringing it to about 2.5 articles per week.
The consistency is staggering, considering my weekly average in my entire life before this, which was a big fat: ZERO.
One of the things that suddenly helped me get to this sudden level of productivity is merely batching the blogging process.
I divided it into four steps because I believe they are four different brain functions.
a) Hunting for and coming up with a list of ideas to write about
b) Writing the draft with gay abandon
c) Editing and making the selection publish worthy
d) Scheduling and pushing the publish button
So when I started this process, I spent time hunting down, getting inspiration from other bloggers I admire and listing out actual titles of articles I could write about and made a list of 100 strong. Yes, before I ever wrote a word of actual content.
It served as super motivation because I knew that I would love writing at least some of the articles I had listed. I could see the whole thing finished in front of me on WordPress and Medium. That was motivation enough. Then I decided that I would open ten drafts at a time. I think of this as opening ten channels in the brain which the brain can then go to work out simultaneously. So day 1, write just the main ideas of all ten articles quickly. Day 2 rolls in, I have some quotes rolling in my head, some old memories refreshed. Day 3, the thoughts are turning into insights and summaries of what exactly is the “core” of what I want to say. Day 4, I find my brain is coming up with a better turn of the phrase to describe the insights I tried to communicate the day before. It goes on sometimes for a couple of weeks for individual articles. In the last few days, I try to let it run on empty just to makes sure it is has exhausted all the ideas for now.
The editing process is more of a checklist. Reading and re-reading out loud, just to see if the language flows well and if there are too many jumps in the flow, enhancing the article with images, research, links where necessary, proofreading with Grammarly, etc.
The last step is scheduling the posts that are ready onto a calendar. What should go out when? How I can repurpose and cross-link content. Which channel to publish on etc. all this is written out. At this point, because of repurposing, there is something to be released every day or at least promoted various channels appropriate to the content.
The author is the founder of Proxies API, a proxy rotation api service.
