How to Reduce Time Spent Writing
One of the biggest challenges involved in business writing is making time for it. Writing can potentially be time-consuming, and many job roles don’t allocate sufficient time to the task – or may not even allocate any time to it, viewing content production as secondary to the primary demands of the role. As a result, the faster a person can write, the better.
However, there’s more to the speed of writing than just improving convenience and reducing burden. It also factors into efficiency, productivity, and total ROI. As we say, your writing is the real deliverable; and the faster someone can produce a written document, the more value it will generate relative to cost of producing it. But how can you write faster and make the writing process more efficient? We’ve addressed this question with 10 strategies to reduce writing time, and we’re back with more tips today.
- Start with “what” and not “how.” One way that writers can trip themselves up is by trying to figure out the perfect way to say something before they’ve even really articulated what it is they want to say. Always start by asking yourself, “What am I trying to say here?” and just write it.
- Batch your writing tasks. Work on multiple writing projects at once. As productivity and task management site Asana.com argues, it takes time and energy to constantly switch between tasks. In fact, it can take nearly half an hour (23 minutes) to fully regain focus after a distraction, and batching tasks can help prevent what Asana calls that “switching tax.”
- Develop your writing skills. Writing is a teachable skill, and the more you learn about the craft of writing, the better you become. In turn, that improvement translates into higher-quality documents and faster production times. A skilled practitioner can simply complete a task faster than an amateur. To learn more, view our writing course catalog.
- Build a writing habit. Often, the biggest delay in writing is simply getting started, but if you write every day, diving into a blank page will be less intimidating and less challenging. Even better, proceduralize how you write. Follow the same process every time so all you have to do to get in the groove is follow the same steps.
- Figure out a way to get words on the page faster. This is obvious once articulated: if you can just type faster, you can write faster. If you are someone who usually just pecks at the keyboard, make some effort to work on your typing speed. Alternatively, use dictation. Most modern word processors have dictation functions built in, and then you can just speak your ideas. This is a great way just to get the jumble of your thoughts out of your brain and onto the page.
- Sprint. Another way to get words onto the page faster is to do a writing sprint. We usually treat writing as though it’s a marathon, carefully working our way through a document so that it sounds as good as possible from the start. Forget that. Instead, tackle one section at a time and sprint through it. Use a timer and try to break up larger documents into chunks for multiple sprints.
If you have further questions or would like some help bolstering training skills, please reach out for more information.