How To Generate Ideas As A New Writer When You’re Short On Time

As a fellow Nine-to-fiver, sharing a time-tested hack that has helped me

Trying to multi-task in the busy world, image generated by AI via Freepik

I woke up at 6:00 AM and logged into the laptop nice and early to start writing. The next hour was so frustrating. I barely managed to write 100 words on a topic I was not feeling confident about.

Another 30 minutes, and I would need to start getting ready for work.

Does that feel relatable? In this multi-tasking and busy world, do you also have days where you struggle to follow your content strategy? Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a hack to find topics to write about when you are busy?

Discovery of the “AHA” moment

I decided to use those 30 minutes more wisely than I had the last 60 and started reading my journal from last week.

I kept coming back to one entry about meeting an old friend and how they had surprised me. Every time I read it, a smile came to my face.

F**k it, I thought. Let me share this on Medium, even though it was very personal. If reading that story gave the readers half the joy that I had reliving it, it would be totally worth it.

Photo by Nimi Diffa on Unsplash

I managed to write that story in the next 15 minutes, and it gave me a chance to relive such a happy memory. A win-win, as they say.

I realised I was definitely onto something here, and after having put some more thoughts around it, I wanted to share a quick steps that I followed:

1. List everything that happened to you in that week—it could be anything that you watched, experienced, read, or listened to. In my case, since I journal regularly, it was easier to reflect back on it
2. Look for the AHA moment — highlight the moment that stands out, anything that made you smile, amazed or shocked
3. Understand the reason — try to get to the root of why you had that feeling while reliving that moment
4. Draw conclusions — understand the reason why it resonated with you and why the readers may like it

While all of us have a content strategy in place, it is still challenging to write regularly with a full-time job. I believe it is always good to have a backup strategy in place for days when time is not on your side.

And since this technique revolves around incidents from your daily life, the writing becomes more relatable.

Let me know in the comments if you have tried this before or if it works for you.

I am also sharing a link of my story about meeting an old friend for you to judge.

Friends Are like Whisky; The Older The Better