The most underrated knowledge work skill

What’s on the menu

Today is a little different.

I’ve been creatively stuck for a while, so I decided to go back to the basics.

One of my key challenges is writing more.

So I decided to dive back into how I can produce more writing on a daily basis.

The result is this guide, which is the routine I came up with to follow. Here’s what I’ll cover:

• Why write more

• How to write more

• An app to remove distractions

• An app for dedicated writing

Why you should care about writing more

Since 2013 I’ve worked in technology startups.

As my career progressed, I started to see the importance, and impact, of great writing.

An essential tool in a Product Managers toolbox is concise written communication.

Now that I’m self-employed, writing has become even more important.

It’s my vehicle of communication with the world. A way to transfer ideas and knowledge so others might find value from it.

Every tweet, thread, newsletter, and Youtube video relies on writing. So I’d like to write more on a day-to-day basis by focusing on building a better system to do so.

As a reader of this newsletter, chances are you are a knowledge worker and you might also benefit from writing more.

While writing has many different components to it, in this edition I’d like to focus on simply writing more and increasing the number of words you produce.

First comes quantity, then quality.

Let’s dive in.

How to build a writing environment

Writing is a lot like building a habit of going to the gym and exercising regularly.

You can exercise at home without any equipment, visit a distant gym, or spontaneously hit the gym whenever you find an available hour, and still manage to work out thrice a week.

However, it becomes more challenging to do so.

It's much simpler if you have a preferred gym nearby and have planned days and times each week to go.

The same goes for writing. How can we create an environment that makes it simple to produce great writing?

Here are some ideas:

• Create your sacred hours

• Remove distractions

• Have ideas ready to go

• Get in the writing flow

Find your sacred hours

This is a concept crafted by Dickie Bush, one of the leading experts on digital writing.

The TL;DR is to find a consistent set of hours in the day where you are able to fully focus and be distraction-free.

Personally, I love using mornings for this as it’s when my mind is most at peak performance and distractions are rare.

Remove all distractions

Now this one can be tricky. Distractions can come from so many directions that it’s hard to keep up.

The obvious one is to leave your phone out of sight, hearing, and touch (so not in your pocket where you feel the vibration).

I like to use noise-canceling headphones or earbuds, usually in the shape of my Apple AirPods Pro.

To fully block all distractions I like using Freedom.

Check out Freedom here.

It blocks access to websites or apps on a set schedule. So every day my sacred hours can be completely distraction-free.

In my experience, it’s much easier to completely remove the ability to go to distracting websites, rather than relying on willpower to do so.

Have ideas ready to go

One of the blockers for producing great writing is thinking about what to write. In my opinion, there are three modes of writing.

• Ideation

• Writing

• Editing

As we are currently focused on the writing part, we want to make sure that when we sit down for our sacred hours to write, there’s a list of ideas to write about.

This can be as simple as keeping a note with ideas in bullet points that are ready to be picked up.

Every time you start writing, you pick one and you start typing like Bruce almighty.

Get in the writing flow

While the tool where you do your writing shouldn’t matter, I think it does.

The real OG’s of the world use a .txt file in their native Mac or Windows application for it.

As someone who obsesses over digital products, I like to find something a little more delightful than that.

What I’m looking for is an app that makes writing feel effortless, has a clean minimal design look, and does not give me options to procrastinate.

For that exact reason, I personally don’t like using Notion for this.

I’ve been guilty of spending way too much time finding the right emoji, cover image, and formatting of the page, rather than actually writing.

IA Writer

I’m currently testing IA Writer which has a delightful writing experience. It’s clean, minimal, and puts all the focus and writing.

The con is that it’s not free. It will set you back about $100 US or €120 to get it on all devices.

The good thing is that it’s not a subscription, so pay once and use it forever.

Check out IA Writer here. There’s a 14-day trial you can use to try it out.

Hope that was helpful :)

If you enjoyed this email, feel free to share it with a friend. It really helps!

Cheers,

Arjen