By Abdulraheem Jameel Ango
It is a not-so-hidden secret that writing takes more than just the ability to write. The ability to write, ideas, resources, all these are part of the ecosystem of writing; the largest and arguably most important part of this ecosystem is productivity.
Productivity is simply the act of producing quality work over time. In the writing world, this may mean producing qualitative and original content with improvement over time. Productivity in writing is the long-term powerful tool that writing wizards use to produce great content in a period of time.
Below are three effective ways to increase your writing productivity.
Prioritize Your Writing
This should be the first thing you do. Give priority to your writing, make it an important aspect of not just your career, but your life. This helps in terms of boosting your productivity, because when you prioritize your writing you take it as something important that must be done regularly and with quality, not just as a hobby.
When you value your writing, you are more likely to keep at it for a long time, making improvements as time passes and finishing a project at the desired time.
Set Deadlines
Utilizing deadlines is a great way to increase your productivity. However, they can be tricky. Deadlines can help you get far in your writing journey, but they can also work against you if you don’t use them the right way.
A great way to use deadlines is to set them in a way that they do not limit your writing or make you write in such a way that the quality of your work suffers. Setting a deadline too tight could make you write in a rush to beat the deadline and in doing so, the quality of your writing is diminished. But if you do it the other way round, setting your deadline over an extended period, this lets you write at your normal or even an improved pace and at usual or improved quality, all within a desired period.
Break It Down
Another reason why some writers still haven’t finished their book or why the quality of their writing keeps deteriorating is because they write too much at once. For example, a writer may make it part of their writing schedule to write up to 1000-1500 words a day, all in one sitting. By the time they finish they’ll probably be exhausted, which might negatively affect the quality of their writing, or in the worst case they might reach a stage when they’ll find it hard to continue writing.
So break the amount of writing you do into smaller amounts you can handle without any negative effects, say the 1500 words daily target is broken into three batches of 500 words that can be done during the day. This way your creativity and productivity are preserved and hopefully even improve over time.
Final Thoughts
Productivity really isn’t something hard to achieve in your writing career. Just follow the right steps, write, keep at it, and you could be on your way to becoming the next writing wizard!
