Intensive Writing, Weak Links in The Chain
I’m a big fan of doing things intensively over a short period.
I’ve spent the day re-teaching myself keyword research, because it’s a weak link in the chain when it comes to my process.
At times, it’s been a struggle. Part of the reason keyword research is a weak link in the chain for me is that I hate doing it. Spending ages looking at excel sheets or other tables to assess keyword difficulty and … I mean, I yawn just typing about it.
But that’s also why you need to spend a few hours every now and then mastering these weak bits in your skills.
This article is going to be about crazy experiments. What to do, how to do it and why do these crazy experiments in the first place?
The Slow and Invisible Decay
It’s really easy to get complacent with your skills and standing in life. We learn something at one point, and we assume we know it forever. You see someone doing something that looks easy, and so you assume you can do it too. There are loads of guys out there, pot-bellies and everything, who’ll tell you that the speed they can run or the weight they can lift is the one that they managed when they were eighteen years old.
My point is this: we think we can do stuff. We might have done it in the past. You say to yourself, “Yeah… I can put out a fire. I know how the extinguisher works.”
Do you really want to find out you’ve forgotten how to use the fire extinguisher when your curtains go up in flames?
Probably not.
Yet, this is the approach most people – me definitely included – take with a lot of things. “Yeah… I can come back to that.”
Too late.
When you’re rambling through daily life, it’s easy to put off everything that’s not a necessity. With that, your skills and knowledge wane, and you never realise.
To that end… we need to test ourselves.
Now, you can refresh your skills, test yourself easily and go about your business. You’ll maintain your skills this way.
If you want to improve, you want to use crazy experiments.
Crazy Experiments
If you really want to know how good you are at something, take away your advantages. If you want to get better at something, attach stupid variables that make it insanely hard.
Let’s talk about writing because that’s what I’m driving at here:
- Do you want to know if you can write a novel? Only give yourself a week.
- How would you fare as a journalist? Go on Reddit and type a story about every single news story on that front page for 14 hours straight.
- Want to know how long it takes to write a niche site? Do it in a time-limited fashion.
Of course, my go-to variable is to time-limit everything. You can choose other variables though. I’ve experimented with the following:
- No internet connection
- Only pen and paper
- Only work for three hours a day
- Work for three hours several times a day
- Use whatever tools and software you can find
- Don’t use any tools or software to help you
These are all easy enough to experiment with.
Results
A few months back I tried writing a novel in a day. I couldn’t do it. I managed to plot the thing and create characters that had compelling arcs. The planning was easy enough. The volume of words wasn’t something I could do though because I had to check my planning and notes constantly, and fiction writing – with all its adjectives and other linguistic quirks – doesn’t come naturally to me.
I haven’t tried the same experiment since, but I’ll do a damn-sight better next time, because I know where I went wrong. I still might fail. I’ll get closer.
Niche site challenge readers have suffered through my numerous attempts to refine the process and create niche sites very quickly.
I’ve never created a niche site in a single day. It’s a goal though and I get closer all the time. Every time I try, I reveal a new weakness in my system. Last time it was keyword research. So today I spent hours trying to perfect the system.
Next time it’ll be something else, but each time you do something like this, you get a lot better as everything tightens up and gets to a more refined state.
This brings me to the point: Weak links in the chain.
Weak Links In The Chain
We work best when we get into what self-help gurus call a “flow state.” With writing, this is a definite state – it’s a state where you can pound out several thousand words in an hour. I’ve experienced it numerous times and it’s not particularly rare.
Now, the reason you should seek out these crazy experiments and work intensely for periods of time is because you’ll discover the places where you’re weaker.
Writing a book consists of several stages: the research, the planning, the structuring, the writing, the editing and so on. Creating a website follows the same general structure.
When we’re creating, we want to hit a flow state where everything comes quickly and easily. The reason you have to test for weak links in the chain is because these are what take you out of flow state.
For example, if you’re writing a 10,000 word script for a video sales letter about retirement planning, you have to do your research and get your facts and figures right. Now, if you are writing at a rate of a hundred words a minute but you forget the retirement age and thus your story about John who’s retiring rich falls flat on its face, you’re going to come out of that comfortable state. You’re going to go back to the research stage and you’re going to lose your concentration. In extreme cases, you’ll get sad and quit the project.
This can’t happen. That’s why you need to find out these flaws in advance. Get rid of the weak chains by finding them and targeting them deliberately.
How To Eradicate A Weak Link
When it comes to learning a new skill, you’re best off buying a beginner’s book. This’ll give you an “overview” of the skill you want to learn. The big picture, if you like.
Once you’ve got this, experiment. Learn as you go along and see what you’re good at and what you’re bad at.
Go through the process a few times – whether it’s writing a book, learning to play golf or dancing a tango. Go through the process – your book will be unreadable, your tango will be cringeworthy and you’ll take 50 shots to get the golf ball in the hole.
It doesn’t matter.
What matters is that you get the process down. Almost universally, there’ll be things you get right in the first few tries. You might be a natural at one aspect of a skill or another.
After a few walkthroughs, then try and learn about the specific stages.
When you find a weak link, concentrate on it for hours. To use the golf example – if you’re great at getting the ball onto the green but terrible at that last couple of feet, then spend hours bringing your putting up to par.
Then repeat the process starting at the beginning again.
Final Thoughts
I’m sorry for the meandering, Dear Diary –style entry today. It’s important though. Many people get confused between getting good at something overall versus concentrating on an aspect of it.
There are plenty of daydreamers who overthink “the big picture” and there are plenty of anal-retentive people who will pull something apart under the microscope without ever considering the big picture at all.
To push yourself forward, get the balance right. Push through the beginning stages, get a sense of the whole system, then concentrate on the specifics in depth and then repeat.