10 Different Ways You Can Knock Out 7 Days Of Writing In 60 Minutes (Or Less)

Dickie Bush & Nicolas Cole

Ultimate Guide Table of Contents

Ahoy and happy Monday!

Let's face it, sometimes writing feels like a BIG thing.

Like you have to sit down in a chair to write—formally. But there are ways to write that aren't just sitting down to write.

And as you build yourself as a Digital Creator, there will be times when you need to redirect your attention to other activities in your business. But you will still need to keep your writing momentum going. After all, it is the engine for your audience building—and that takes time.

So, how do you keep your content engine on full tilt without needing to give it the same amount of attention and time on your calendar?

Fear not, because we have a solution for you!

Today, we're going to explore 10 different ways you can knock out 60 minutes (or less) of writing by putting The Lean Writing Method into practice.

These approaches will help you generate ideas, create content, and keep your writing schedule on track, even when you're short on time (or feeling uninspired). Whether it's writing tweets, threads, or Atomic Essays we've got you covered.

Let’s dive in!

1. Consume Content & Capture 10 Rough Ideas

Writing isn’t just the act of writing.

Writing is thinking.

So, what gets your thoughts going?

Fire up your favorite YouTube channel, Twitter feed, podcast, or dust off a book on your shelf and consume it. Create a list of rough ideas on your phone or in a note-taking app like Notion. Write down what captures your attention: a phrase, a word, a story, anything that peaks your interest.

These are insights that you can nurture and grow.

Make a habit of capturing at least 10 ideas and over time you will have thousands to work from.

2. Organize Your List Of Rough Ideas And Write 10 Tweets

Collect ideas from all your sources: notebook, whiteboard, phone, etc. and organize them.

  • Group similar ideas together into a single document
  • Organize those groups by theme or topic
  • Extract the big ideas, problems, and benefits that are relevant for your audience

Now turn each of your rough ideas into tweets. Target at least 10.

Then schedule those tweets out as far as you can in your favorite scheduling tool so you don’t have to think about it.

3. Source 10 Potential Atomic Essay Ideas From Proven Tweets

Open your Twitter analytics, or tool like Ilo.

Pick a 90-day time range, and sort by your most liked tweets.

Work your way down the list and brainstorm 10 Atomic Essay headlines based on your most popular tweets. For a quick hack, reframe each tweet into a “How To” or a “List” post.

For example:

  • From “The best storytelling threads” to “5 Steps To Write A Punchy Personal Story”
  • From “Mr. Beast’s framework for growth” to “6 Tips To Write Viral Twitter Threads With Ease”
  • From “100 books I’ve read” to “8 Books That Will Teach You All You Need to Know About Writing”

80% of the writing process is getting clear on your headline. And once you have a backlog of headlines to work from, you will know exactly what to write the next time you sit down.

4. Expand 5 Proven Tweet Outlines Into 5 Atomic Essays

Take the list of tweets you generated in option 2 for a single topic or group and repurpose each of them into its own Atomic Essay.

Expand each point from your tweet in your essay by using one or more of these 10 magical ways:

  • Tips
  • Stats
  • Steps
  • Lessons
  • Benefits
  • Reasons
  • Mistakes
  • Examples
  • Questions
  • Personal Stories

Here’s an example from Dickie:

And here’s how he expanded his initial tweet into an Atomic Essay:

Watch Dickie write 7 Atomic Essays in one hour by repurposing old tweets. This is a 1 hour video with about 20 seconds of talking, so you will want to watch at 2.5X speed.

5. Repurpose Old Atomic Essays Into 10 Tweets

Pull up Typeshare and sort by your most popular Atomic Essays.

Now write a handful of tweets for each Atomic Essay by re-atomizing it.

Rewrite the hook using by taking a single point in the essay and claiming it’s “Another” Good Tip, Mistake, Benefit, Framework, etc. The big idea here is that once your topic has been validated, it’s fair to assume readers want “more” or “another piece just like it. This resurfaces your best work and reduces your creation time.

Here’s a re-atomized tweet from Dickie’s essay: “My 5 Go-To Journal Questions After 1,000 Days Of Daily Journaling.”

Schedule out those tweets!

6. Repurpose Old Popular Tweets Into 10 Tweets

Pull up a 90-day date range in your analytics tool.

Sort by likes.

Now rewrite the best tweets changing the format or structure.

  • Turn a thread into a outline
  • Turn an outline into a thread
  • Apply 1 of the 10 magical ways from option 4.

This is the key to abundant writing. Embrace the art of repetition. Find your core ideas, then learn to say them in 1,000 different ways.

Schedule out your tweets as far in advance as possible.

7. Take One Piece Of Successful Content & Repurpose It Into 10 Tweets Using Templates

Templates are THE cheat code to saving time.

They’ll take your content creation process from 20+ hours down to 2 hours per week (while also making sure you’re sharing ideas people actually want to read)

Find a single piece of content that’s been successful over the past few months.

Repurpose the different parts of the thread or essay using proven tweet templates. Typeshare has hundreds to choose from. And if you need some inspiration, here are 21 templates to get you started.

Schedule out the tweets every few weeks. Are you seeing the theme yet?!

Get yourself ahead of the game.

8. Take A Proven Topic And Generate 10 Content Idea Outlines Based On The Lean Writing Proven Approaches

A proven approach is the “value” of your writing. And this “value” is how readers decide whether reading your writing is worth their time. What will you give them in return?

  • Tips
  • Steps
  • Mistakes
  • Lessons
  • etc.

Pull up a single piece of content that’s been successful over the past few months and identify the core topic (copywriting, productivity, lawn care, nursing, etc.) and incentive being used in the piece. Create 10 new content idea outlines using the same core topic and incentive, but use a different proven approach. The incentive is the reason a reader would want to pay attention to what you are writing about.

  • To learn…
  • To avoid…
  • To achieve…
  • To understand…
  • To inspire…

Let’s look at the topic “Lawn Care” and the incentive “To hire.”  Here are 3 examples of changing the proven approach for “Hiring A Lawn Care Company.”

  • 7 Tips For Hiring Your First Lawn Care Company
  • 8 Steps To Hiring A Lawn Care Company
  • 9 Mistakes People Make When Hiring A Lawn Care Company

Now break each one down into a list. Boom! Your outline is ready. Easy!

9. Write 5 Atomic Essays All Based On A Single Topic Using The Content Idea Outlines From Number 8

Write and schedule out 5 Atomic Essays elaborating on the content outlines you created from option 8.

Pick an outline.

And expand it.

Anytime you find yourself “stuck,” all you have to do is go back to the 10 magical ways from option 4, “How could I give the reader some tips here?” That expands your writing. “How can I give them some lessons learned?” That also expands your writing. “How can I point out some mistakes for them to avoid?” That also expands your writing. And so on, and so forth.

Expanding a batch of ideas on a single topic is also a hack to write a lot in a short amount of time because everything you are writing is focused on one idea (e.g. Lawn Care).

There’s almost zero context switching.

10. Take A Proven Topic And Generate 10 Similar Topics Based On The Lean Writing incentives

Similar to option 8, pull up a single piece of content that’s been successful over the past few months. Identify the topic, the core incentive, and the proven approach.

This time replace the incentive, instead of the proven approach, using the core list of incentives.

  • To Get Started
  • To Learn…
  • To Master…
  • To Overcome…
  • To Unlock…
  • To Streamline…
  • To Get Your First…
  • To Achieve…
  • To Hire Your First…
  • To Buy Your First…

Then either create a list of essay outlines using the same proven approach for all the different incentives.

  • 7 Tips To Overcome The Spring Weed Takeover In Your Lawn
  • 7 Tips To Learn Safe Use Of Lawn Care Chemicals
  • 7 Tips Buy Your First Lawn Mower

Or create a list of essay outlines using one new incentive and different approaches.

  • 7 Tips To Master Winter Lawn Care In Florida
  • 8 Steps To Master Watering Your Lawn In The Desert
  • 9 Lessons To Master Pesky Crabgrass

Wowza! We covered a lot.

But now you are well equipped to be a prolific Digital Writer in an hour (or less).

That's it for today's Digital Writing Compass!

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