Today I want to write a bit about productivity and how I’m managing to put content out every day of the week. Wow. Don’t I have work to do? Find out how I’m doing it and the tips I have to share.

I wrote about a week in the life of Mike at the start of this month. Since then I’ve published content every day. It’s part of my writing habit. What I’ve not shared is how I’m doing it.

I mentioned in the post above about a week in my life, that Sundays I spend the time planning my content, so what I’ll do on the 16th Jan is I’ll plan out Week 4: mikestottuk 22nd Jan - 28th. That way, when I get some free time (usually Saturday mornings) I’ll start working through the content I’ve planned.

Important: I don’t write ALL the content in a day, I just write what I can in batches, so as I’m writing this post it’s the 14th Jan (08:36am) but I’ll schedule it to go out on the 18th Jan.

I also like to cover Newsletter and YouTube on my plans, so I know what I’m writing about or recording in advance. It helps me to make sure the story flows.

For example, I moved around my content (the eating for energy post, I’ve flipped a bit and it’ll be out on Friday) so that was initially scheduled for the 16th – but setting my content out this way, means I can make the story flow and link to earlier pieces better.

YouTube is different

YouTube, I’ve slowed down my initial goal of churning out 4 videos a week down to 1 a week. I’m still learning with the setup and I don’t want to just churn out 4 rushed videos a week.

Writing blog content I feel much more confident with so I’m more than happy to just let the words flow and so far I’ve been hitting my goal of having content published every day. I write LOTS of content daily at Automattic, whether it be slack, on P2s or on Google docs so I’m firmly in my comfort zone here.

I still want to hit my YouTube goal in 2022 of 1,000 subscribers. It might take me some time to get there though as videos I’m a little less familiar with. I’m pretty sure I can speak faster than I can type though so once I get more comfortable I may increase my content production there too.

Growing Twitter Followers

I also have a crazy goal to grow my Twitter followers. I don’t have a set goal here, but I’d like to get over 1,000 (similar to YouTube).

All the content I’m writing here I’ve got set to auto-share to Twitter which is great. The “Twitter Thread” doesn’t seem to work very well so far – but just a single tweet linking to the content is a great way to get regular content on Twitter.

That’s assuming you have the writing habit to produce the content in the first place, for tweets you can batch smaller tweets using something like Buffer.

Then it comes down to a bit more planning on the Sunday, to plan the Tweet schedule and work on growing that audience through more tweets that aren’t just auto-posted content.

Why batching works (for me)

I find batching my content helps me stay focussed. If I’m writing content I’m in my Gutenberg editor and I’m writing. That’s all I have to do (plus grab some images so you’re not just looking at a wall of text).

If I wasn’t batching, each day I would have to get into the headspace of the storyline of this blog, what I’ve written earlier in the week and I’d find it much harder. When you first start on the spin bike, or the rowing machine – getting the wheel turning is the hardest part.

If you’re always jumping on and off the rower you’re putting extra strain on the content creation process. It doesn’t have to be just writing content. The same goes for other parts of your work:-

• Start batch checking emails twice a day, or go pro and only check them Monday and Wednesdays. Close your email otherwise.
• Put slack on snooze notifications, check them at the end of the day (but if in a team, be clear that’s what’s happening).
• Batch zoom meetings to a single day.
• Have “no meetings” days where you batch together your free time (which can then become focussed deep work).
• Keep getting the same question from customers or your audience? Batch your answer into a blog post about it and share that (vs having to tell the same thing over and over).
• Batch time (by blocking out Calendar slots) to work on a project or task.

How about you? Does batching work for you? It’s my number 1 productivity hack and it’s one of the secrets of how I manage to produce content daily.