One of the most important things you will learn in this course is going to be about tracking your growth and progress as you start writing faster and becoming more productive.
The reason I say that tracking is so important is because concepts like writing faster are very subjective. Even with the best planning, the best research, and zero distractions, you might just have an off day and struggle to get the words out. Other times, those words might flow with hardly any effort at all.
By tracking your numbers, you will learn two very important things about yourself:
- It's working, and you actually are getting better and faster, and
- When you're feeling your most creative.
Believe it or not, science says we're at our most creative when we're feeling a bit groggy.
Yea, I laughed, too.
I always felt that I had to be up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to really get any creative juices flowing. But it turns out that's not always the case. Actually, not being quite as sharp might be exactly what you need.
When you're feeling groggy, your inhibitions are a bit lowered. Your inner-editor is probably also sleeping in. You worry less about picking out the exact right word and worry more about getting your ideas out onto paper.
So, before you really start digging into this course, you're going to want to establish your baseline: how fast do you write now? And when is the best time for you to write?
The best way to do this exercise is to pick a topic you know a lot about. It can be anything, but preferably not something you're working on for a client. It should be a topic you love and could talk about for hours. With this topic, make a list of three main points.
Schedule Three Writing Sprints
You're going to schedule three writing sprints, each one at a different time of day. So one might be morning, one might be in the afternoon, and one might be at night. They can all be on the same day or spread them out over different days – that part won't really have much effect on the results.
Now, assign each of these writing sprints one of the main points from your list. Because you chose a topic you know so well and are passionate about, you shouldn't need to do much research to get prepared, but if there is something you need to look up make sure you do so before the sprint.
Get Your Timer and Sprint
We're going to cover exactly how to manage writing sprints later in this lecture, but for these three sprints, all you're really worried about is writing what you can on your main point in ten minutes. Set your favorite timer and go. When the time is up, get out your tracker and record your results.
Once you've finished all three sprints, compare your results. Which time of day were you able to really pump out the most words? Which time of day did you struggle a little bit?
Later on in this course, you're going to use these results to help you establish your routines and schedule. As you get more and more writing done, continue tracking your progress so you can see how far along you've come.
This will be especially helpful to you when you're working on those longer projects and feeling like you're not getting anywhere with them.