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Writing Productivity Hacks

Bryan Young

June 13, 2024 | 4 min read

It is a truth universally acknowledged that finding focus in the digital age is impossible.

Everything we do is optimized for productivity, so it's no wonder that we get lost scrolling for hours on end. Consuming is so much easier than creating.

Whether you're a seasoned author, a struggling student, or a pro journalist, focus and productivity are important — and difficult to find. To help, we gathered the top writing hacks that are relatively easy to implement and will help you streamline your process.

By integrating these hacks into your creative process, you can cultivate a more productive and prolific writing life.

In this article:

Learn from the Pros

Set Writing Goals

Build a Routine

Utilize Writing Sprints

Make It a Habit

Gamify Your Process

Create Your Workspace

Join a Community

1. Learn from the Pros

As in anything, first and foremost, we like to look to the professionals for advice. Seeing how Ernest Hemingway liked to write or reviewing Stephen King's routine are not only fun and interesting, they're downright educational.

And the best part is that every writing process is as unique as every writer. So go research your favorite author's writing process. Just make sure to take the tips and tricks that serve you — and leave the rest.

2. Set Writing Goals

We are firm believers in this one, and so are psychologists. Research shows that setting achievable goals (key word: achievable) is a concrete way to push yourself toward higher achievement, whatever that may look like for you.

It turns out that people who set goals are more self-confident, have higher levels of motivation, and are more independent.

Concrete goals give you something tangible to work toward, and that is often the difference between completing a manuscript and giving up entirely.

Learn how to set effective writing goals, backed by psychology, that will actually help you smash your word count targets right here.

3. Build a Routine

Some of the greatest writers of all time swear by their writing routine, and it's for good reason. Once you've set your goals, there's no better way to reach those goals than to make writing part of your everyday routine.

Of course, what that looks like will be different for everyone. You can find our best tips for building a writing routine that fits your lifestyle and creative process here.

4. Utilize Writing Sprints

So much of writing is managing your time. But how do you make the most of your time when the words just won't flow? Try writing sprints.

It turns out a little competition — with others or yourself — can really push the process forward, even when it feels like slogging through mud.

5. Make It a Habit

Humans are creatures of habit. Which is great, because habits free up mental energy by automating our actions and allowing us to focus on more complex tasks — like writing.

For example, when sitting down in your favorite armchair at 5 p.m. to write becomes a habit, you don't have to expend the mental energy deciding whether to do that. And that makes getting started a lot easier.

There are many ways we can leverage our tendency toward the habitual to aid us in the writing process. Good writing habits, when used correctly, can help us get into a regular rhythm that keeps us focused during our writing time.

Find out what habits experts recommend writers cultivate here.

6. Gamify Your Process

There's a lot of powerful neurochemistry that's unleashed by turning difficult tasks into a game. It's called "gamification," and there's a reason the most successful apps of today use it. (How many times has that sad little Duolingo owl shamed you into continuing your daily learning streak?)

The same methods work for writing, too. It's just a matter of implementing them into your own writing process!

We did the heavy work for you by creating Postbox Profiles, which track your key writing stats, and we put together this guide to help you gamify your own writing process.

Read the Gamification of Important Tasks

7. Create Your Workspace

We all have a place where we love to write. If we're lucky, we get to arrange it just the way we like it. The key is to create a space that helps you focus and inspires you.

Because that's the ideal writing space: whether it's a fixed point in your house, or a setup that travels with you, the point of this space is not to be pretty or professional, or to impress others or look good on social media.

The point is to create an ambience that gets you in the mood to write.

8. Join a Community

The act of writing is a solitary activity. But it's more fun when you can share that activity with others. As Writer & Agent Eric Smith says:

"Not only does [collaborating] make the writing process feel less alone, particularly in times that feel, and are, so wildly difficult to navigate. It can also make you a better writer. Because without a doubt, your collaborator will start to rub off on you in ways you don’t expect."

We couldn't agree more.

But how do you find one? A good place to start is by signing up for writing workshops and retreats. Find writing instructor Bryan Young's take on workshops and retreats here.

Bryan Young

Writer

Bryan Young is an award-winning podcaster, journalist, filmmaker, fiction and nonfiction author, and founding editor of Big Shiny Robot! Bryan has written in the official Robotech, BattleTech, Star Wars, Shadowrun, and Doctor Who universes, and teaches writing at conferences across the U.S. and at the University of Utah.

The Set Up

The 2024 study recruited 293 writers to write an eight-sentence “micro” story. The participants were split into three groups:

Writing by human brainpower only
The opportunity to get one AI-generated idea to inspire their writing
The opportunity to get up to five AI-generated ideas to inspire their writing

Then, 600 evaluators judged how creative these short stories were. The results confirmed a widely accepted idea but also offered a few surprising findings.

Prompts from AI Can Jumpstart the Creative Process

Right off the bat, the reviewers rated the AI-guided stories as being more original, better written, and more enjoyable to read. (Interesting to note that they did not find them funnier than the fully human-inspired stories.)

This actually isn’t that surprising. Most writers know the “blank page dread” at the beginning of a project. Even as I write this, I can’t help but wonder, “If I had been tasked with writing an eight-sentence story, what the heck would I have written about?”

Many writers share this sense of needing to pick the “right” story to tell. And that uniquely human concept of perfectionism can end up actually inhibiting our creative process.

A prompt, then, can help us quickly clear this mental hurdle. To test this, I’ll give you one, courtesy of ChatGPT: “Write a story about a teenager who discovers a mysterious journal that reveals hidden secrets about their town, leading them on an unexpected adventure to uncover the truth.”

Can you feel your creative juices flowing already?

Since its release, AI has been celebrated for its ability to assist in idea generation; and this study confirms how effective using artificial intelligence in this way can be for writers — some, it seems, more than others.

AI-Generated Ideas Helped Less Creative Writers More

It doesn’t feel great to judge a writer’s creative prowess, but for this study, researchers needed to do just that. Prior to writing their short stories, the writers took a test to measure their creativity.

Researchers found that those considered less creative did substantially better when given AI-generated ideas — to the point where getting the full five ideas from AI “effectively equalizes the creativity scores across less and more creative writers.”

This isn’t the case just for writing. Another study by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship WZ also found that AI tools most benefit employees with weaker skills.

So is AI leveling the playing field between okay and great writers? It seems it may be. But before we lament, there’s one more finding that proves using AI isn’t all perks.

AI-Aided Stories Were More Similar — And Needed to Be Credited

The researchers took a step back to look at all the AI-supported stories collectively. And what did they find?

The AI-assisted stories were more similar as a whole, compared to the fully human-written stories.

Additionally, when reviewers were told that a story was enhanced by an AI idea, they “imposed an ownership penalty of at least 25%,” even indicating that “the content creators, on which the models were based, should be compensated.”

This leads us to that all-important question about AI-assisted work: who owns the content?

According to Originality.AI, an AI and plagiarism detector, “When there’s a combination of AI and human-generated elements, the human elements may receive copyright protection if they meet the requirements.”

So right now, if a writer uses AI to generate ideas — but writes the content themselves — they retain rights to the work.

However, Originality.AI even admits that “the legal system is having a hard time keeping up” with the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence. Time will only tell what AI regulations will look like in a few years.

What Does an AI-Assisted Literary Future Look Like?

The researchers from the University of Exeter Business School study raise an interesting point about what the future landscape for writers may look like. If droves of authors begin using AI to come up with ideas, we may end up with a lot of well-written yet dime-a-dozen stories.

So will human beings choose the easier, but less diverse, path? Or will we stick to fighting through writer’s block armed with nothing but our own brain?

Or, a third option: can we somehow learn to harness AI to supercharge our writing process without sacrificing the wholly unique creativity that infuses human creation?

That’s one question that even ChatGPT can’t answer.

Editor's Note: Artificial intelligence may have already transformed writing, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be in control of your own words. Read Astrohaus Founder Adam Leeb's statement on AI and privacy.

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