This is How You Nearly Double Your Writing Output

I tested 4 productivity methods for you: these are the results.

Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash

You have a goal: you want to write more while retaining your usual writing quality. But time seems to be something you’re always chasing and never quite catching up with. What do you do? You conduct productivity experiments and then benefit from the results; or at least, you let me do it for you.

Over the last month, I’ve given each of the 4 methods below a week’s trial. During that time I only used that single method, although how I used it often changed as the week wore on.

I wasn’t able to pause my day job (I’m a copywriter and editor) that usually takes up much of my day, so I was only able to test these methods in the 4 or so hours a day I devote to my own work (article writing with a healthy dose of short-story experimentation thrown in).

Here’s how I got on and what I’d ultimately recommend.

Distraction blocking

This is when you remove all distractions to help you focus on the task at hand.

I downloaded a free software Self Control that allows you to put in any website you don’t want to be able to access; you then set Self Contol to be active for however long you want to write, and it…