7 Mind Tricks to Writing Faster

Writing.

Sometimes writing makes me want to pull my hair out. Or I don’t know throw something.

Sitting down at your desk to spit out words, not just any words, but good stuff people will want to read and share, is tough.

Brute force doesn’t really help either. Simply typing faster and staring harder at the screen to force the words to come for some reason just doesn’t work.

Even if you enjoy writing, it can be a huge time sink if you spend hours creating boring, ineffective content. No matter what you write, your productivity and income as a writer is limited by how quickly you can turn your ideas into words.

Does writing have to be such a pain?

Not anymore. Keep reading to find out practical ways to write faster.

1. Revise Later

Any time you know what you want to say but are having trouble with how to say it, just tell a story as if you were a seven-year-old kid. No big words. No fancy lingo. Just spit it out.

Even if it’s jumbled and won’t make sense to anyone other than you.

Great writing rarely arrives fully formed as a first draft. Come back later and revise it, but use this method to keep your momentum going. Slowing down will lead to stopping, and that breaks your flow and keeps you from reaching status blog post completed.🎉

You can lose a lot of time editing as you go, so rather than re-reading every step of the way, save the revisions for the end.

Keep moving and fix it up later.

2. Write Short

So maybe long-form blog posts are all the rage these days. But shorter posts hold their value too. When you’re first getting started cap yourself at something smaller. Like 250 words.

Writing fast is like running fast. To run faster, you gotta do sprints. To write faster, you gotta do sprints, too.

Writing a shorter article is the equivalent of a writing sprint.

Soon you’ll find you start writing 1,000-word posts in 45 minutes with no problem.

I got much faster. You will too.

3. Revise Old Drafts

We’ve all done it.

You’re writing, and writing, and writing. And you feel like you’re in a good flow. Then you lose interest. You hit save draft and leave it in your pile.

One of the biggest productivity killers is to leave writing projects unfinished.

Before you abandon a topic, and start another article, consider why you were excited to write about this topic.

Try to recapture that excitement you felt when you first started and then look for what’s good in your copy.

Combine two drafts.

Add your new ideas in.

Develop your article.

4. Use Signals

Placeholders.

Even if you’ve filled your outline with well-researched points, the act of writing will take you places you hadn’t planned. If you stop your flow to look up a fact or idea, you risk wasting time going down research rabbit holes.

Next time you miss a piece of information, write down “TK.” That’s editor’s jargon for “to come.” Typing “TK” anywhere in Medium will generate a yellow “TK” symbol beside the associated paragraph. Keep writing your draft, and add the missing information later. Avoid going down rabbit holes because they’re time sucks.

5. Write Everyday

Do you ever wonder where your day has gone? And get frustrated because yet again, you’ve not started writing your next blog post?

Writing shouldn’t be like that Pirates of the Caribbean movie where Jack Sparrow’s trying to get to the island that nobody can find with no map.

You should know where you’re going. You should make tangible progress every single day.

One simple trick can be amazingly powerful. This trick is described in the “British Journal of Health Psychology.” Researchers found that understanding the benefits of exercise doesn’t increase the amount of exercise we do.⠀

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What makes us stick to an exercise regime is the simple act of writing down when exactly we’re going to exercise next week.⠀

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The research shows that without a specific plan only 35% of people exercised at least once a week. But a whopping 91% of people who had written down their plan exercised at least once a week.

Write every single day. Writing is like a muscle — the more you exercise your craft, the stronger, leaner, and more efficient it will be. Setting aside daily writing time is important even if you aren’t on a deadline. Work a writing session into your routine — make it a habit — and consider building rituals around it.

A healthy writing habit helps you keep writing — even when it feels tough.

6. Eliminate Distractions

Eliminate distractions by hanging a sign to tell people you aren’t to be disturbed. This can be a literal sign posted on the door of your office or study, or whatever other signal works to let people know to only talk to you if something’s on fire and they’ve already attempted to put it out and been unsuccessful.

The most interesting “sign” I’ve ever heard about was used at TSR (the company that originally made the Dungeons and Dragons game). They had one of those cubicle farm arrangements for their writers, which meant no doors. If somebody was working hard on a deadline, they would put an office chair in the cubicle entry, and a giant inflatable tyrannosaurus in the chair.

Whatever your “sign” looks like, make sure it will reduce interruptions so you can stay in flow for as long as you need to.

Even if only for an hour or two at a time, do whatever it takes to nurture a healthy writing habit.

7. Don’t Focus On Perfection

“Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.”

-Pablo Picasso

Pablo said it right. True art is eliminating all that doesn’t need to be there. Don’t focus on perfection. Focus on eliminating whatever feels unnecessary to you.

Perfection is the destruction of progress so set limits on yourself. Don’t write to reach perfection. Write to reach one step higher than yesterday.

When it comes to writing limitations can help us to do our best work.

Set a goal to write 250 words and then hit publish. Set a timer for 30 minutes and no matter where you are, even if you’re in the middle of a sentence, stop writing when it rings.

That’s how to write faster.

So get out there and write.

One last thing: the ultimate mind trick is to make writing a priority in your life.

If it’s important to you, if you derive joy and satisfaction from it, then you will find yourself focused, energetic, and happy when you step up to your keyboard.

Focused, energetic, happy writers always write more quickly than distracted, tired, grumpy writers.

Find your passion and follow it. Everything will flow from there.