How I found time for writing AGAIN

Too many projects, and life, made me drift off. I'm back on track.

Photo by Jacky Chiu on Unsplash

I have always been proud of my consistency. For 13 years, I published at least two pieces of long-form content every week. But at the beginning of 2024, I embarrassed myself.

I was looking at my Medium.com stats and realized I drifted off. A lot. Since October, there was less than a long article per week.

You see, even though the CEO and the staff at Medium repeat that quality wins, almost every single successful writer on the platform publishes at least twice per week. Why? Because for now, the algorithm almost only shows fresh content. If you don't keep publishing, you fade out.

So, without consistent and high volume, on Medium you are not even in the game. And the same holds for many other platforms. Even when a weekly cadence is enough, if you double or triple it, you get more exposure.

I was surprised

Throughout this low-productivity period, my calendar showed a daily 2-hour block labeled Medium. All those hours should be enough to publish to long articles. What happened? I hadn’t respected my commitment, but I didn’t know why.

So I dusted off an old trusted tool: time tracking. I reinstalled the Toggle Track extension on my browser, and I started tracking my work tasks.

It's been hard, like the first time I tried, years ago. I kept forgetting to hit Record at the beginning of a task or to hit Stop when I took a break. So I ended up with just a couple of tracked hours in the entire day. Or with an email writing task that took six hours.

I was prepared for these problems, because I went through them in the past. I averaged out the errors just by increasing the sample: I tracked multiple days. It’s always useful, because it highlights patterns.

Finding clarity

My initial plan was to track everything for at least a couple of weeks, then look at my reports and draw my conclusions. I never needed those reports. As often happens, the mere act of paying attention to the start and end of tasks amplified my awareness.

I have spent years optimizing my productivity and that of my clients. This enabled me to quickly find out my mistakes:

• Several reasons caused poor sleep most nights. Every morning, I needed to warm up before writing. So I started by reading or answering comments and messages. But you guessed it: the warm-up ate into my creation time. It ate my creative energies, too.

• I felt the urge to respond to my coaching clients. This too took longer than expected and consumed creative energies.

• When I finally had time to write, I wasn't productive enough. I wasted my energy and a million thoughts fluttered around my mind.

So I found a draconian solution. The same that worked so often in the past: I established a rigid policy.

Now I must start every day by working on my writing. My Italian business, my coaching clients, and everything else is moved to the afternoon.

I’ve been doing this for weeks and it works. I published more on Medium, I started publishing Notes and repurposed articles on Substack. No client has suffered.

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This won’t sound innovative, but if you are struggling to find time for writing, make it a rule, a commandment. Find a time you can protect, and devote it only to writing. Even if it’s just 30 minutes.

Once you have more time to write, a system will make you use your time more effectively. I wrote a guide to help you design and create the best system for you.

Here it is:

The Adaptive Creation System: How to Be Realistically Prolific and Enjoy Your Work