creativity

Writing Every Day Might Be The Biggest Mistake You Make As A Creator

An unpopular opinion that changed my ways of content creation.

Anangsha Alammyan

27 Feb 2024 • 5 min read

Photo by ConvertKit on Unsplash

An unpopular opinion that changed my ways of content creation.

Being consistent almost killed my growth.

In the early days of my writing career, I thought publishing every day would be my savior.

After all, every established writer swears by this one tip: “Write every day.”

I believed if I woke up, turned on my computer, and put in a few hard hours of work, I’d be successful in no time.

I tried to show up every day at my desk to write. I even reached a point where I published one article every day for 3 months. It kick-started my journey on Medium, but the results I got were still mediocre.

Turns out consistency isn’t enough.

I tasted true success in my writing career when I realized actual growth comes from tiny evolutions every single day.

Let’s talk about how you can make this happen.

Same Efforts Lead to Same Results

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” — Albert Einstein

Doing the same thing every day leads to a plateau. You grow initially, but after a point, you hit a rough patch. The same happens with writers.

Today, everyone is used to consuming digital trends that change every day. Internet users like to have variety in their content consumption.

If you don’t experiment much with your content, you don’t offer anything new to readers. Your views remain the same. Your audience stagnates. I call it the “writer’s saturation.”

If that sounds familiar, you might be on the plateau.

How to get out of it?

Read more: add unique books, essays, and articles to your to-be-read list
Challenge your beliefs and explore new ideas,
Try new techniques, explore new writing styles, and mirror writers you adore — this will make you better and unique.

Let Your Habits Grow With You

You don’t start a habit and continue forever.

You constantly assess, try out, and work through who you want to be and adapt your habits to that vision of you.

For example, there was a time when I spent 30 minutes every day writing a LinkedIn post. The results were great. My views grew, my audience expanded, and LinkedIn even paid me to create content.

I continued doing so until that was no longer feasible.

So, I created a new habit: to batch my content for LinkedIn instead.

If I stuck to the daily LinkedIn writing habit, I wouldn’t have been able to allocate more time to other areas and get better results.

How to keep upgrading your habits

Reflect on what habits are serving you today
Get rid of habits that no longer give you results
Batch similar tasks together to save time
Journal daily, and review your growth every few months.

Know When It’s Time to Level Up

After a while, the stories that earn you 1000s of dollars will barely make you peanuts. The LinkedIn posts that once drew in millions of eyeballs now rake in a few hundred.

When that happens, know it’s time to evolve.

Step out of your comfort zone, try writing about new topics, and aim for a different segment of the audience.

Here’s how I avoid monotony in my content, even if my core niche remains the same.

My highest-earning Medium stories from 2021 were about journaling, travel, and writing better.

In 2022, the biggest winners were book recommendations and reading productivity articles.

In 2023, I wrote about exercise, physical fitness, and workout motivation to make the most money.

The broader umbrella is the same: self-improvement. I kept tweaking my niche and writing style to stay relevant in an increasingly competitive online writing world.

If you want to win, move with the rhythm of the world. You must adapt and evolve.

Every niche opens a gateway to interconnected ideas. Try to find the intersection between them to present them to your audience.

Suppose you write for the fitness niche. You can expand it by pairing it with multiple related and seemingly unrelated topics.

Here are a few suggestions:

Explore similar topics like nutrition, mental and emotional wellness, discipline and personal development
Experiment with niches that are not directly connected like:

Fashion- types of outfits to wear according to body type, or gym wear for particular physical activity, etc
Technology- health-related applications like meditation apps, mental health support, fitness tracking gadgets, and whatnot
Creativity for rejuvenation- exploring creative ventures to improve overall wellbeing
Travelling- “how to maintain consistency while travelling” or “fitness-friendly destinations to explore.”

Once you’re able to do it, you’ll never run out of unique, fun, and engaging ideas for your audience.

Conclusion

As an online writer, time is the biggest asset you have. Use it wisely.

Consistency is only half the game. The real growth comes from evolving and constant upskilling.

Be willing to take a few punches, but always know you’ll get back up before the next round begins. And that, my friend, is exactly how you win.

If you feel stuck in your content creation journey, take a step back to reflect instead of writing for the sake of consistency. Here’s how:

Experiment with your writing style to expand the audience base
Don’t fear the results before even trying and explore new ways to hone your craft
Reflect on your habits to save your time and eliminate creative fatigue that leads to burnout, lack of motivation, poor content quality
Track your analytics and explore ways to refine your content strategy to create engaging content.

My dad had a saying that I’ve now made my life motto, “Anangsha, if you’re going to do it, there’s no point doing it half-heartedly.”

If you want to win the online writing game, don’t make half-assed attempts. Throw yourself all-in, write your heart out, be vulnerable, and tell stories that truly have the power to change lives.

If you’d like to have a career as a successful freelance writer, but don’t know where to start, grab my 90-day guide on how to start from scratch and land your first freelance client.