These Creative Productivity Tricks Will Save You an Absurd Amount of Time

As an online creator of things, I can tell you right now that I have no time to actually create those things — especially beautiful things that appear to have been lovingly crafted over several painstaking days, as opposed to the few hours they really took.

The latter takes place less often than I would like, but it’s a constant work in progress.

I’ve learned a few tricks along the way, though — a few slights of hand that have allowed me to create a boatload of writing without having the time to fill said boat, and all while handling the emotional outbursts of a highly sensitive 8-year-old and the busy doings of an active toddler.

It’s taken some experimentation, but I think I’ve built up an extensive bag of tricks in the creative productivity department, and I’d love to share some of my time-saving tips with you. Trust me — some of them are a bit weird, but weird works.

There’s a life lesson for you. We’ll call that a freebie.

The “copy/paste” trick

Relax! I’m not copying other people’s work, and please never do that. Not only is it illegal, but it also makes you a buttmunch.

What I do instead is find an article of mine that did well, copy it, and paste it directly into my editor. Then I rewrite the paragraphs and change up my points, and essentially, I rewrite the entire article — only I make it better. It’s still my work; still creative.

It’s just getting an upgrade.

It might even be covering a completely different topic, and this trick still works. I’ve written articles this way in less than an hour. It saves time, somehow, because the words are already on the page — I’m just writing new ones and erasing the old. It keeps the format of my articles consistent and ensures I’m not spending too much time under one subheading.

How did I discover this trick, you ask? I started after hitting a writer’s block the size of Canada, and it stopped my blockage in its tracks. Why it works is still a little bit mysterious to me. Maybe because I’d already written some words some other time; I tricked my brain into believing I could do it because I’d already done it. Maybe it’s because I’m reconsidering my paragraph formations or I find my opinion on the subject has shifted, and having the bones of the article laid out in front of me makes it easier to complete the new piece.

Whatever it is, it’s a huge time saver, and it adds a fresh perspective to my old work.

The “do it better” trick

Have you ever read an article by someone and thought, “Huh, I would probably have added in something here,” or “I think I would have worded that differently?”

Same. Sometimes I read articles and think I could possibly have written them better — which is not to say I’m a superb writer. But as a unique person with her own unique thoughts, it’s easy to look at an article and pick out things I would have done differently or, yes: better.

Guess what? You can do just that. You can even use my copy/paste method as long as you don’t actually copy their work, for the love of Pete.

It’s perfectly reasonable to take an article like “10 ways to do the thing” and rewrite it — but make it better. Start with “11 genius ways to do the thing,” for example.

Take something that someone has written and write it better — write it from your own perspective and create a unique piece; one that someone already did the legwork for.

It’s repurposing old, less-effective writing, and doing it better — and faster.

Just make sure you give credit where credit’s due, and don’t copy! You can create unique, beautiful content, too, even if that content comes from another writer’s great idea.

The “always outline” trick

I have several different outlines that I use to literally fill in the blanks for each kind of article I write.

One, I’ve created for my newsletter, since people prefer shorter reads delivered to their inboxes. (Subscribe!)

I have a few different outlines for personal stories, “how-to” stories, and listicles. I also have a huge and incredibly detailed outline for my book, because I would be completely lost without it.

Working from an outline is probably my biggest time saver. Within each outline, I have sections to work off of, including places to include bulleted or numbered lists if necessary, and that way I can ensure that my articles are kept at the right length and pace for each purpose.

All I need for each article I write is a topic — and I have some time-saving tips for those, too.

The “write it down and forget” trick

I spend a lot of time holding a toddler’s hand, building Lego towers, or braiding my daughter’s thick hair. I don’t spend a ton of time brainstorming in front of the computer.

I’m always brainstorming, however, even though I don’t always have the time to catch those fleeting ideas. It would be a problem if it wasn’t for my notes app.

My notes app (of which there are many to choose from) has prime real estate on my phone — it’s front and centre. When I open my phone to jot down a quick headline idea, it’s so simple that I can do it one-handed (which I often do), and then I can get on with my day; the idea is safely stored.

Ideas can fly at you from all angles and at all times of day. To date, I’ve snatched ideas for my headlines from:

Podcasts — a word or phrase is all it takes
Articles — I often resonate with subheadings and titles alone
Friends — my social media is full of inspiration
My kids — out of the mouths of babes

It’s amazing where ideas come from if you practice the art of listening. A simple word or choice phrase is often all that I need to think up a great article, and I’ve been fortunate to have had so many.

And really, most of those ideas didn’t come from me. They came from listening.

The “never delete a draft” trick

Not just a time saver, but the biggest mistake you can make as a writer is to delete a draft that you feel isn’t working.

Ugh. This brings up some serious pain for me. A while back, while I was still pretty new to writing my book, I wrote this amazing chapter that was so beautifully crafted, I woke up one morning after I’d dreamt about it.

But it didn’t fit in with my book — or so I thought — so I deleted it. Why, oh why, did I do that? It’s bothered me ever since, and I’ve combed through every archive and digital bin I have; it’s just gone.

Never delete a draft. I have no less than 37 drafts in my Medium drafts, and I am so not mad about that. I circle back to my old drafts all the time, and I don’t regret their existence, especially when I finally get a story out of one of them. You’ve already done the work for a reason, and sticking with a partially completed draft saves so much time, particularly when you really need to pump out some content.

Maybe a draft will never see the light of day as is, but it can be tweaked. It can be one of your copy/paste experiments! It could be gold if you could see its potential, and sometimes its usage shifts in a different direction than how you initially intended it to, and that’s okay.

It’s all part of creating. Sometimes, you write the piece; other times, the piece writes you. You have to let it do its thing.

The “90-minute workday” trick

I recently wrote an article about productivity in which I learned about the effectiveness of working for 90-minute stretches followed by short breaks throughout the day.

Great advice — unless you’re a mom of two. I can write for 90 minutes, sure, but then my kids wake up. Then it’s a school run, playground time, work to do in the garden, housework, lunch, and raising a toddler who dropped his nap about a year earlier than I would have liked.

It’s an all-day job.

My next 90-minute stretch can only really take place after both children are in bed. Sometimes, I take it and turn my 90-minute workday into a 180-minute workday, but I am a person — not a machine. I like a tiny bit of downtime, too. So most days, I have that little chunk of highly focused writing time in the morning, and then I spend all day with new topics floating through my brain like little balloons that I can snatch and pop on my next writing session.

It works surprisingly well, and on a regular week, I’m able to write in the morning on 6 out of 7 days. I’ll take that 9-hour work week, thanks!

The “deadline” trick

Even if no one is giving you a deadline, give yourself one.

Learning to work within a certain number of hours, days, or whatever length of time you give yourself is an incredibly powerful trick. For instance, doubting that this approach would even work, I gave myself a deadline to have a new newsletter sent out every Monday morning — meaning, I had to have it all ready to go by Sunday night.

And you know what? It works.

I hate missing deadlines, so this trick gets my butt in gear every week. The funny thing is, those mini-writing sessions — because, of course, I procrastinate and don’t actually write until Sundays — are my most focused and productive yet.

The writing isn’t too bad, either, weirdly enough.

The “no phone” trick

Part of writing to meet my deadlines is writing without being distracted. That means that my phone — my little handheld computer that houses a plethora of ways to distract myself from anything good — needs to be elsewhere.

I live in a big house, so leaving it charging upstairs in my bedroom works fine, usually, because, in addition to being easily distracted, I’m lazy and don’t want to wander up the stairs to get my phone.

Sometimes you need to work with your own shortcomings.

I also use an app on my computer to prevent me from jumping around to other sites that will pull me from my focus, because it’s alarmingly easy to be distracted from finishing an article.

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The “speed edit” trick

When all is said and done, you need to make sure your work is as close to perfect as you can get.

That isn’t to say that you should chase perfection; that’s an impossible and pointless pursuit. But you do want your work to be error-free and to flow naturally, so that when it’s read, people understand it.

If they can’t understand what you’re trying to say, how on earth do you expect them to resonate with what you’re trying to say?

I already use QuillBot and its extension for most of my grammar and spell-checking needs, but what I really need is to hear it read out loud. That’s why I like to use NaturalReader, which is a purchase I don’t regret making one little bit, and you can use it for free if you don’t mind a more robotic voice. They also have a Chrome extension, which helps massively — I can click the little icon in my tray and the extension will read my work to me.

Hearing your work read aloud while you wash some dishes or take a walk is extremely useful, and your ear will catch errors so much faster than your eyes will. And that saves oh so much time!

Time savers are money makers

As a creator, any time I save in my process is time I’ve won back. It’s a return for my investment that I can then invest in the next big thing, and that’s legit value all on its own.

When you find efficient ways to build your thing, you’re putting money back in your pocket. More time saved means more time you can spend on the content you create.

Building your thing, whatever it might be, requires expert efficiency. Discovering little tips and tricks to help you do that is vital to your productivity, and applying your skills wisely is what will differentiate you from the amateurs. Ask anyone who creates online — the more quality work you create for the world to see, the better.

Giving yourself the gift of time by using these weird little tricks might help you do just that, and who knows? Maybe you’ll discover some new, weirder tricks in the process.

If you do, please share them with the class.

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This post was previously published on ILLUMINATION.

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