What are some ways to write more efficiently?

For LinkedIn writing specifically: - Define your 3 "content pillars" (What are you going to write about?) - Write your hooks (What grabs attention?) - Write your takeaways (Why should they care?) Once this is all set, go through and complete the body of the post. The first 10% and the last 10% of your writing are worth 99% of the impact. Draw 'em in. Hit 'em in the feels on their way out.

To write is to communicate; to communicate is to have something to say. Before you start writing, you need to have an idea of what you want to say. But the power of writing process goes even further: as you write, other ideas may come to feed your initial reasoning, and push your thinking even further. From my point of view, in order to write, you need to have ideas to communicate from the outset, but you also need to be willing to let yourself be worked on by the writing process, to enrich your reasoning.

Everyone has his own way of looking at things, normally we recommend having a caneva but in my experience, often a writing plan slows down ideas in the sense that when writing you want to stay within the ideology of the plan. In formal writing, it's good to have a plan, but when it comes to creativity, the best thing for me is to let the ideas flow (brainstorming) and then make the plan by grouping the ideas by theme, which is a good basis for avoiding the blank page. The revisions are still important to ensure consistency, add other information that may arise and correct spelling mistakes. Revision also means having your work reviewed by others to ensure quality.

When you start writing with a focus on efficiency, it's easy to overlook the spontaneous ideas that emerge as you write. The most effective approach is to initially pour all your thoughts onto paper, similar to laying out puzzle pieces. This way, all the key aspects are visible before you, allowing for a clearer understanding of how each piece interconnects or complements another. Of course, even after that, you will have to revise it several times. Once you feel satisfied with your draft, I recommend leveraging an AI tool like ChatGPT. Share with it your intended message and target audience; it will then evaluate your work, pinpointing any missing elements. This feedback can greatly help you refine your final draft.

I suggest start by exploring when and where your ideas flow best! Experiment with writing during different times of the day—morning, noon, or evening—and consider the impact of beverages like tea, coffee, or water on clearing your mind. It's crucial to discover the ideal physical and mental environment that helps you get into a rhythm. Once you pinpoint that sweet spot, you can consistently immerse yourself in the drafting process.

Three ways to get started- 1. Keep separate time slots/days for ideation, outlining, writing the first draft, and editing 2. Build the habit of working in the same time slot every day to train your creative muscle 3. Be ruthless with editing. Remove all the adverbs, passive sentences and supporting phrases like 'some', 'really', 'very', 'I think', etc.

This is really the same as a plan, and in my experience another waste of time. Just get down to it, write the thing, then fix it, then fix it again. Planning and outlining are the opposite of efficiency! But they're often advised, so the AI agrees...

Once objectives are established, it is essential to identify critical messages supporting them. Key messages are concise statements that convey necessary information or ideas related to the goals. They serve as focal points for organizing and structuring the communication. Key messages should be memorable and easily understood by the target audience.

If you have lots of ideas, write down all the ideas you have in mind. Then, start your outline from there. To avoid wasting time and effort on this, set a time limit for writing your outline. Say 30 minutes or 1 hour or more. The first draft will never be perfect - the important thing is to start writing as soon as possible.

There's no one right way to go about writing... Personally, once I've got my plan, which sets out what I want to say, I go into detail to find out which stages I need to go through so that my readership understands me. This saves me time: at the level of the plan, we don't focus on problems of wording or language: we just analyze the validity of the content and reasoning. If the reasoning doesn't make sense from the outset, pretty sentences aren't going to make it logical and coherent. But when you have a good grasp of the content you want to distribute, or when you're more experienced, it's possible to do without intermediate plans: this is notably the case when I write e-mails, or when I wrote this short text ;)

The #1 tip to drafting... Do not edit while you're writing! Write the SFD (Sloppy First Draft), let the ideas flow out of you, and get it all down on the page. You can clean up all of the spelling/grammar/punctuation later. When you're in a flow and you're writing, just stay in the zone.

One incredibly efficient way to get a first draft down - and this article is about efficiency, right? - is to blather into voice recognition software. The days when such tools needed hours of training are over, and everyone with software as basic as MS Word now has it.

Probably one of my favorite (and arduous) parts of writing...hacking out the rough draft. Like other posters, I am a huge fan of just letting things flow. Don't dwell on things too much and get the words down. If you're stuck on something, just fumble through it (make something up or throw in a few yadas or blah blah blahs as a placeholder). Sometimes the best ideas are right around the corner and if you lose momentum, that great idea that was just forming slithers off into the ether....

Yes, you need to edit your writing before publishing or presenting to your approver; however, you're much better off soliciting 'another set of eyes.' As a professional writer, you should't require heavy editing, but any reader can find typos, misspellings, etc., that even the most prolific and experienced writer/editor might miss in their own production. As a content director, I rely heavily on Loom to record and share training videos of my own content development processes, as well as my process for editing their work; I talk through everything so they don't receive a documented covered in track changes without explanation — and, instead, are educated and empowered to do better each and every time, increasingly adhering to best practices

Welcome both digital tools and human feedback to your writing. Digital tools are made by us humans, so they will not be very accurate in checking styles or errors. But they are helpful in catching typos and grammatical errors most of the time. On the other hand, human feedback can help check for context and capture nuances in the language used in your writing.

Whenever possible, place physical time between the writing and editing stages. By return to review your work with fresh eyes--the next day or a few days later--you're more likely to catch errors and notice places in which you can reduce clutter.

To be relevant and effective, text revision must not stop at language errors, typos or forgotten words. It can also involve a deep analysis of the first draft, when it doesn't live up to the original idea. The expert copywriter is able to spot these deviations from the intended purpose, and readjust his or her writing to get back to what he or she wants to communicate. Novices, on the other hand, tend to get carried away by their own writing, by their own sentences. The more you work on your writing, the more you acquire the ability to see when you're straying from your original subject.

Take a break from the text before editing, even if it's just 10 minutes. Your eyes will magically make it all seem perfect! I still tend to print out my work, take it to another location away from the desk and hit it with a red pen. I've also used the read-aloud feature in Word to hear it. For tools, I like to use the built-in editing features of Word to start, but my go-to is Grammarly. I like that it goes deeper and helps keep things concise. I'll use ChatGPT and ask to make a sentence or a paragraph more concise or harder-hitting. It's not perfect, but it provides good feedback. Try to get an ally who can read your work and give you high-level feedback vs. just another red pen. But do try to get a final QA check!

If you're staring at a blank page, stuck on what to write... Try speaking it! Use a dictation tool (like the one on Google Docs) and just speak all your unfiltered thoughts. Read it through after and see if there's anything that catches your eye. This technique will give you a lot of original content as inspiration and a place to start!

The availability of various writing tools has made it easier than ever before to create stunning contents. Whether you are an experienced writer or a starter, there is a tool out there that can help you bring your ideas to life. So, explore these tools mentioned above or discover new ones – and start creating captivating contents that will engage your audience like never before.

"Antidote" bien s?r, what would I do without Québec! And... I don't know about you, I haven't already, but we can test AI, consider it like a tool (not the solution). Create prompts can be a writing exercise! You're remaining master in command, you just may test a tone, a language register. Like a said, a tool more, but without getting lost in prompting... Never thought I would suggest this but there I did, although I always remember to not believe the hype.

Everyone has that special time slot where your brain works best and ideas flow. For some, it may be early in the morning after a run. For others, it may be later at night when you are less distracted. Find that sweet spot. You may find it easier to put your ideas on paper!

The point of writing and editing is to move past the idea of perfection. Or else you will never find the time or courage to start. No writing will ever be perfect in the first draft - feedback will tell you that. Your content will go through lots of revisions. No edited material will ever be perfect as well. You will look at your material after days, weeks, or months and you'll still think that you could have rephrased that one sentence in a more clever way.

One of the most challenging aspects of the writing process is 'writer's block.' Here are 3 helpful tips to navigate it, especially for academic writing: 1. Take a small mental break from writing all together. Use this time to read, collect research insights, and evidence to support your hypothesis. 2. Look at the plan/brainstorm you wrote at the beginning and remind yourself of the main points you wanted to cover initially. Read through your draft, how well did you do this? 3. Use writer's block as a time to revisit an earlier draft, or the one you're working on and just edit it for grammar and word choice. Writer's block will go away, but the key point is to not let it discourage you & redirect your attention to other related tasks.

I discovered a new efficiency level when I created my own writing process that I manage via Todoist. While I initially thought it was overkill, I had chapters in my career when I had a full-time day job and was writing articles for publications on the side. Over time, my process helped me make the most of my writing time on weekday evenings and weekends. My process helps me stay on track and efficient through the starts and stops that life can bring a working writer.

Good writing means adapting to a writing context, to a particular audience with its own expectations, in terms of content, form and style. For each type of writing, you need to ask yourself whether your text conforms to the scriptural habits validated by the milieu. There is no such thing as an absolute good writer: each new context requires new learning, and new adaptations.