Writing

The FREE Automated Writing Tracker Spreadsheet Template

You’re here because you want to track your writing.

Maybe you want to…

Keep track of your daily word counts
Calculate your writing speed in words per hour
Track your writing progress for every day, week, or month of the year

Or, you’re just a spreadsheet nerd like me that loves creating spreadsheets for every part of their lives.

In any case, you’re in luck – I created a simple writing tracker spreadsheet template that you can use to write more, better, faster content every day – and keep track of all of your writing totals and stats automatically.

My students have used this writing tracker spreadsheet to write over 1,000,000 words

I recently ran a writing experiment where I worked with 18 of my students to help them write more content over the course of 3 months.

Here’s how much my students wrote throughout the program:

“I’ve written 19 YouTube scripts, all with accompanying blog posts and emails, plus 5 extra engagement emails, 2 sales emails and 2 opt-in bonuses for a total of 72,837 words.”
“I have written a total amount of over 58.261 words, mainly blog posts.”
“I wrote 87k words plus! / 10 engagement emails, 3 sales emails, 15 blog posts! the beginnings of 3 novels“
“I’ve come up with 50 article ideas and created an outline/draft for each an every one of them. By combining all the emails, blog posts, and free writings, I’ve written a total of 117,466 words!”
“I wrote 3 monthly newsletters, 5 video scripts, 6 blog posts, and a monster consulting case study for a total of 40,300 words!”
“Oh holy fuck. I’ve written over 30 helpdoc articles for my FAQ. (10 include videos which I would’ve scripted or outlined) I’ve written 4 long-form blog articles, and about 10 emails. I’ve also written OTHER video scripts, and emails for the future on top of this — including one 24 hour launch and one full 5-day launch (both of which performed above 10% conversion rate)”
“I wrote a total of 30,168 words — even while traveling and dropping off considerably in November and December.”
“I tracked 52401 words written over 200 writing sessions during 90 days”
“61550 words, 3 growth studies, I never missed engagement email on my newsletter (12 weeks in a row)”
“Up to Dec. 12th, the day of the final call, I had finished my Ultimate Guide with 44402 words total. I had 100 sessions working on the Guide, either writing or editing. Also, I wrote 20 blog posts and 12 engagement emails.”

I was astonished by their results. I knew that my program worked well, but that it worked THAT WELL? I honestly didn’t expect that, and when I read those responses I had teary eyes as I felt my heart melt.

At the end of the program, I also asked my students what they’ve found the most helpful throughout the program.

To my surprise, their favorite feature was our writing tracker spreadsheet:

Why did the students love The Writing Tracker Spreadsheet?

Here’s what some of the students said about the tracker:

“Knowing how much you write, when, what, energy and focus, is measurable. You can see where to improve and you can replicate good sessions because the info is there.”
“What gets measured gets managed. Start counting. At least know how many sessions you are doing and preferably how much time you are spending writing. If all you do is measure, you will still improve.”
“The tracker is a life changer – it keeps me consistent and accountable.”
“I can now “find the time” to write, thanks to the tracker, and quantify my writing. I can schedule writing so I can get my best writing done. I am not a calendar guy and the tracker is my calendar. I”

I also use the writing tracker spreadsheet myself on a daily basis because I love keeping all of my writing in one place, I love competing with myself, challenging myself, and seeing the progress I’m making.

Plus, I’m a big spreadsheet nerd and create a spreadsheet for everything (from how much work I get done on a daily basis, to writing, to how much I read, to my annual review).

My writing tracker acts as my “lab” that allows me to run writing experiments and learn what actually helps me write more, better and faster.

What is The Writing Tracker Spreadsheet and how does it work?

The Writing Tracker Spreadsheet is a simple spreadsheet where you an track all of your writing sessions:

It helps you track:

Every writing session
How much time you spent writing every day
How many words you write every day
How many writing sessions you have each day
How long it takes you to go from an idea to a published post
Your writing speed in words per hour (WPH)
How long are your writing sessions
How energized you are when you sit down to write every day
How focused you are during your writing sessions
How much time you spend writing vs researching vs editing
How much you’ve written in a day, week, month, and even the whole year
…and more!

It’s super simple to use.

All you do every time you sit down to write is:

When you start writing: Write down (1) the name of the content you’re writing, (2) your starting word count, and (3) how energized you feel when you start writing.
When you finish writing: Write down (1) your final word count, (2) how focused you felt during the session and (3) any relevant notes that influenced your session (optional).

The tracking takes less than 10 seconds per writing session, and I always have the tracker open when I write so it’s super easy for me to use whenever I write.

Automatically calculate your writing stats, daily / weekly / monthly word counts, writing speed in words per hour, and more!

Now for the fun part – the automatic tracking and stats.

Every time you complete and enter a writing session in your tracker spreadsheet, it will automatically calculate and update your daily, weekly, monthly and annual writing word count totals and averages.

Writing tracker spreadsheet daily word counts

It will help you visually see things like:

How much you’ve written in a given day, week or month
How your writing speed and word counts improve over time
How much you’ve already written in the whole year

And it all happens without you even pressing a button.

Want to see the writing tracker spreadsheet in action?

Here’s a quick demonstration video on how to use it:

Get priceless counterintuitive insights about your writing

I love using the tracker because it helps me visually see how I’m progressing with my writing.

It also helps me see what helps (or hurts) my writing so I can continue to improve my daily and weekly writing routine.

For example, here are just some of the things that you can learn from using the tracker for a few weeks:

Which days are your best (and worst) days and times of day for writing so you can plan around that
When you write the fastest and when you write the slowest (and why)
How well you can write when you’re tired vs. when you’re fresh (the results might surprise you)
How short / long breaks and the number of writing sessions every day influence your writing
Which types of content are easier for you to write than others (and why)

And that’s really just the tip of the iceberg – there’s an infinite amount of things you can learn from your writing tracker spreadsheet.

Plus, you could always modify the spreadsheet to track additional data like:

How long it takes you to write different TYPES of content (sales copy vs engagement e-mails vs blog posts)
How different writing locations influence your writing
How much writing you get done for yourself, and how much for your clients (if you’re a copywriter)

The more you track, the more you’ll learn, and the more you’ll write in less time.

Download your FREE Writing Tracker Spreadsheet Template

You don’t have to spend tens of hours creating, tweaking and troubleshooting your own writing tracker spreadsheet.

It can be a bit of a pain to create even with decent Excel / Google Sheets knowledge, and it just takes time to create all the fields and automate all the stats tracking.

Instead, you can use the template I use myself and with my students and get started with tracking your writing within minutes.

So how can you get access to your very own writing tracker spreadsheet (plus video instructions on how to set it up and use it in under 10 minutes)?

Simply enter your name and e-mail below and I’ll send you your free copy :).

How about you? What’s your experience with tracking your writing?

2019: The Year of Writing

By Primoz Bozic 2 Comments

Every year, I like to choose a theme that becomes my main focus for the year.

For example, last year my theme was “Don’t be an asshole”.

It helped me do things like:

Develop new programs that I thought of developing for a long time (like Work Less, Earn More BETA and Write More Every Day BETA, which later evolved into The Lodge).
Spread my message with more people by going on 20+ podcasts and summits throughout the summer
Come up with and share more of my own original ideas and concepts, rather than just passing on the experiences I got from working with my business mentors

I felt like it was a good theme, though if I had done anything differently than last year I’d make sure I have a good weekly review system to help me stay focused on it.

This year, while going through my 20-minute annual review, I also thought about my theme for the year.

While it took me a while to decide on the theme last year, this time it came to me in an instant, and it was a no-brainer.

2019 would be the year of writing.

Why The Year of Writing?

I decided to make writing (and sharing my ideas about writing) my main focus for the year because:

Writing is one of the best ways to spread your ideas and leave a lasting legacy. We’re still reading books from tens, hundreds (or even thousands!) of years ago, and I want my work to be remembered and easily accessible for years to come. I also want my ideas to be accessible to anyone on the internet, regardless of where in the world they live.
Writing is in my “Zone of Genius”. I’m not amazing at making YouTube videos, creating Instagram stories or writing short social media posts. But writing long articles and guides? That’s fun and enjoyable for me, and I feel like I’m pretty good at it as well.
I have so many ideas that I need to share with you. Lately, my head has literally been exploding with ideas and concepts that I’ve developed through my online programs and experiments, as well as working with my coaching clients. These are ideas that I’ve seen few people talk about on the internet. Now that those ideas have been thoroughly tested, it’s time for them to become public.

I feel like writing is still one of the best ways to spread your ideas, whether it’s through blog posts or writing a book (which I’m excited to do in 2020).

So in 2019, you can expect A LOT of it.

What can you expect from me in 2019?

In 2019, I’ll be sharing:

A lot of new content about writing: Through my 3-month writing experiment, we cracked the code to what helps entrepreneurs like you write more. I’ll share with you a lot of blog posts and guides about writing more, writing faster, building a sticky writing habit, creating better content, coming up with ideas what to write, creating a writing routine, outlining, editing, content strategy, and so much more!
Different experiments that I’m running: I’ll also share some of my favorite ideas and experiments and just general things that excite me that aren’t directly related to writing (like the 20-minute annual review I shared with you recently). That’s because I want to connect with you on a more personal level and just talk about everyday stuff we all think about and run into.
Access to my new writing membership: I’m in the trenches of developing my membership for entrepreneurs who want to write more, faster, better content. It’ll teach you all you need to know about writing, as well as create a community like no other for entrepreneurs, copywriters and writers to connect with each other and become better writers.

As you can see, a lot of my focus will be on writing, from writing myself, to talking about writing, to creating programs about writing.

It’s just something that I feel like is missing in the entrepreneurship world, and I’m excited to fill that gap.

How I’m writing tens of blog posts and guides this year

It’s one thing to say you’ll write. It’s another one to actually do it.

Last year, I wrote less than I wanted to, especially in the first half of the year, as I didn’t feel like I had the energy, focus and the mental space to do it.

I had coaching calls every day of the week which occupied a lot of my time and mental space, and I didn’t really know what I was writing about or had a deep purpose or excitement behind it.

This year, I feel like I have a REALLY good system set up for writing. Over the past week, I’ve written 3 blog posts (4 if you count this one) and created 2 very detailed PDFs that you’ll be getting access to soon.

The excitement of the New Year and the fact that I’m super recovered from my vacation probably has something to do with it, but I also know that I have a great system set up that will help me keep going.

Here’s how I’m writing tens of blog posts and guides this year:

I created the time and space to write: I reorganized my schedule and freed up 3 days plus 2 mornings every week (with the exception of customer research weeks) to dedicate to writing. This means no coaching calls, no meetings, no errands, no coffee dates or lunches on those days. Just the time and space to write and create.
I have a clear strategic focus in my writing: I’ll be focusing the majority of my writing on writing about writing (from coming up with ideas what to write, to going from an idea to a published post faster). I have a document with hundreds of things I could talk about related to writing already created from my writing experiment, so I’ll never run out of ideas what to write.
I’ll go with the flow: To prevent myself from feeling “locked in” to a specific theme (which I know I hate), I’ll let myself go with the flow and write about the things I’m excited about on a daily basis (for example, today I really wanted to write this blog post, so I just let myself do it). This helps me have fun with writing and mix things up, so I’ll never be bored with writing.

I won’t say that my system is 100% bulletproof and I know that I’ll have days/weeks when I don’t write as much as want to, but I do know that I’ll write more than I ever did before.

Join me in The Year of Writing (and download my favorite writing tool)

If you want to write more this year so you can…

Spread your ideas faster
Attract more readers, e-mail subscribers and paying customers to your blog
And leave a lasting legacy

Then I invite you to join me in The Year of Writing.

To get started, I’d like to gift you access to my favorite tool on writing that will instantly help you write more.

This is a tool that I use with my clients and myself to write thousands of words every week and to write more every day.

It’s called The Writing Tracker, and looks something like this:

The Writing Tracker will help you:

Keep and organize all of your writing in one place
Get automatic stats on how much you’ve written in a day / week / month / year, as well as how fast you write and more
Gain counterintuitive insights that will help you write more (that you’re sure to miss otherwise)

You can download The Writing Tracker through the box below – just enter your name and e-mail and I’ll send it your way, together with video instructions on how to use it.

What about you? What is YOUR theme for 2019?

How we Debunked The 3 Biggest Writing Myths

By Primoz Bozic Leave a Comment

In my last post, I took you behind the scenes of my 3-month writing experiment called Write More Every Day BETA where I worked closely together with 18 of my readers to help them write more.

Throughout the program, we analyzed over 2,000 writing sessions and exchanged over 418 e-mails to get to the bottom of what really helps entrepreneurs and copywriters write more.

Today, I’ll share with you the 3 biggest writing myths that we debunked during this program (as well as the data behind them) that will change the way you think about writing, and help you get started with writing more.

Let’s dive in!

Myth #1: “I don’t have the time to write”

Whether it’s client work, a 9-5 job, or simply wanting to spend more time with the family, there always seems to be something that pushes the writing to the bottom of the to-do list.

This means that we often have a never-ending list of ideas that we want to write about, but just can’t seem to find the time in our calendars to actually write.

To get over this obstacle, I gave my students from Write More Every Day BETA a simple challenge:

“Just for one week, focus on finding opportunities to write more, rather than reasons not to write”.

What happened during that week was fascinating.

My students started finding new ways to get writing done, some of them which I didn’t even anticipate.

Here are just some of the examples:

During the commute to work
During a kid’s swim class
Waking up 30 minutes earlier to write before work
While the kids are playing at a playground
When the spouse is watching TV
When waiting for the spouse to wake up
During a fresh block of time after a cancelled coaching call
During a long layover at the airport
…

It wasn’t just the opportunities to write that were creative – the ways in which my students wrote were interesting as well.

Some of them just took their laptop everywhere. Others decided to write on their phones (and even bought bluetooth keyboards that fit in your pocket), while others recorded voice notes that they then got transcribed and converted into blog posts.

We did more than that in our program to carve out more time to write and keep it , but this simple mindset shift of moving from reasons not to write to finding opportunities to write was a game changer for writing more, especially during the times when time was limited.

ACTION STEP:

For just one week, focus on finding creative opportunities to write more, rather than giving in to reasons not to write. You can use the list above as inspiration, but don’t be afraid to test your own ideas as well. See what happens!

Myth #2: “I can only write when I feel like it”

It’s easy to write when you’re full of energy and inspiration, and have a clear idea of what you’ll write in your head.

But what about when you don’t feel like it?

What about when you’re tired?
What about when you have a bad day?
What about when you don’t feel inspired to write?

In those cases, just sitting down to write can feel like pulling teeth.

Now here’s the problem.

If you ONLY write when you feel like it (in the perfect conditions, when all the stars align), you’re likely to have times when you write A LOT in seemingly no time, followed by dry-spells of no writing that can take days, weeks or even months.

And in the long run, you know that those dry spells will hurt you.

Ideas what to write about will keep piling up in your head, but they won’t be going out into the world, and they won’t be growing your business.

Then, a few months, you’ll look back at how much you’ve written and feel sick in your stomach, knowing that you could have written more.

Writing just when you feel like it or when inspiration strikes is not the best solution if you want to write consistently.

Because even if you do everything “by the book”, from getting enough sleep to eating well to having a distraction-free writing environment, there will STILL be times when you have a bad day, and won’t feel like writing.

To help my students get better at writing when they don’t feel like it, I encouraged them to adopt a professional attitude for a week.

Think of a professional basketball player who plays in the NBA.

They need to show up for practice every day, regardless of how they feel. If they have a headache, they still need to practice. If they have a bad day, they still need to practice. If they have to do a lot of media interviews, they still need to practice. If they’re tired from playing 3 matches in 3 days, they still need to practice.

They can’t just rely on practicing when they “feel like it”, as that probably wouldn’t make them very good basketball players.

Instead, they show up day after day and give it their all, regardless of how they feel.

And on better days when they’re full of energy, their all might be more than on days when they feel like they were hit by a bus. But those days that aren’t great when they keep pushing and moving forward ultimately help them become as good as they are.

If writing is a core part of our business, why would we treat our writing practice any differently than sportsmen treat their practice?

My thinking is that we shouldn’t. We want to show up every day and give it our all, whether our all on that day means writing a kick-ass blog post or a sales page, or writing some crappy copy for an hour that will never get published.

Here’s the good news (that almost nobody talks about).

As I paid attention to my own writing habits and analyzed over 2,000 writing sessions from my students, I realized an interesting phenomenon.

When we tracked out writing sessions, we always tracked 2 different metrics:

How energized we feel (measured before writing)
How focused we feel (measured after writing as we reflect on our writing session)

I expected these metrics to line up (for example, if I feel like my energy is 3/5, my focus should also be 3/5), but I couldn’t be more wrong.

By looking through the data carefully, I realized that:

If you are SUPER tired (energy 1-2), your sessions will indeed be shorter and less focused (though there ARE a handful of sessions when you’ll get in the zone and become super focused)
If you are TIRED (energy 3), you’ll have A LOT of very focused sessions once you just sit down and start writing, where your focus will be between a 4 and a 5.
If you are FULL OF ENERGY (energy 4-5), you’ll have a lot of very focused sessions, but also a handful sessions where you can’t focus for long because your mind keeps racing to other things.

We’ve seen a similar pattern across most of our students in Write More Every Day BETA.

This helps us come to a few conclusions:

If you’re SUPER TIRED (jetlagged, running on 2 hours of sleep, or after a 12-hour work day), it is indeed harder to get in the zone than if you’re less tired.
If you’re TIRED, just sitting down to write is harder than if you’re full of energy, and you’ll often get in the zone and forget that you’re tired ONCE you actually start writing.
If you’re FULL OF ENERGY, it is indeed the easiest to get started with writing, but you might have some sessions where the excess energy will keep your mind racing and distract you from writing for hours on end.

The biggest insight for me here is the #2 (that we can actually get writing done when we’re tired).

In fact, for 80% of my writing sessions, the energy levels are between 3 and 4, with my focus being between a 4 and a 5.

This tells us that “I don’t feel like writing” is really more of an excuse not to write than a real reason not to get started. What we’re really just saying is “I don’t feel like sitting down to write”.

That’s when we can use the professional attitude to sit down to write anyway, even if it’s just for 10 minutes – just to see what happens. Then, once we get started, the we’ll often forget that we’re tired, get in the zone, and let the words flow.

ACTION STEP:

I could tell you all about the data I collected, but what will REALLY help you see that you can write when you’re tired is experiencing it yourself.

Next time you feel “too tired to write”:

Write down your energy level before you start writing
Use the “professional attitude” to write for just 10 minutes
If you get in the zone, keep writing even after the 10 minutes
At the end, write down your focus during the session

If you go through this exercise a few times, you’ll soon see patterns emerging, and you’ll internalize that you CAN indeed have great writing sessions even when you don’t feel like writing.

Myth #3: “I’m a slow writer”

When I surveyed my readers in the survey I did about writing, I asked them what kind of a writer they best identify themselves as:

What’s interesting is that over 30% of the people who filled out the survey (maybe even more if you count the ones that said that they “can’t get themselves to write at all”) identified themselves as “slow writers”.

In Write More Every Day BETA, I decided to put that hypothesis to the test and see if people actually ARE slow writers, and more importantly, if we can learn how to write FASTER.

I’ve always considered myself a “fast writer”, but I didn’t think that was something I was born with.

I remember spending hours and hours on a computer in primary school playing a touch typing game that taught me how to type faster, which I knew helped my typing speed (which in turn helped my writing speed).
I remember that writing a 25,000-word Ultimate Guide took me 6 months the first time I did it, something I was able to replicate in less than 2 weeks the last time I wrote an Ultimate Guide.
I remember doing an experiment where I just wrote without editing and wrote 2,000 words per hour, while combining writing with editing lead to a measly 500 words per hour, or 4x slower writing.

That’s why I wanted to see if there are ways to help my readers write faster as well, and get to the bottom of what’s slowing down their writing.

In one of the earlier weeks in the program, I introduced the concept of “bottlenecks”.

My theory was that nobody is truly a “slow writer”, but that we all have some sort of a limiting factor that is the “bottleneck” that slows down our writing.

I decided to put that theory to the test by sharing 6 different types of “bottlenecks” with my students, and giving them tools to help them remove them.

I let them use these tools for a month, then looked back at the stats to compare how their writing speed changed over the course of a month (I compared their average writing speeds in September with their average writing speeds in October).

The results were fascinating:

Within a month, 73% of my students increased their writing speed
On average, the students wrote 28% faster
Some students increased their writing speeds by as much as 46-83%

This means that if my students spent 10 hours per week on writing, they could now write the same amount of content in less than 8 hours a week, saving 2 hours a week for more writing, other tasks in their business or simply to have more free time.

But that’s not where the story ends. The actual writing was just one of the bottlenecks of the writing process.

Throughout the program, we identified that two HUGE bottlenecks were:

Spending too much time in the editing phase
Combining the idea generation, research, outlining, writing, and editing into one process, rather than separating these processes into different tasks

By removing these bottlenecks, we were able to drastically cut down the time it took to go from an idea to a published blog post (many students reported speeding up their editing process by 30% or more, sometimes saving themselves WEEKS of editing time).

At the end of the program, I concluded that:

It IS possible to learn how to write faster, and it doesn’t require months of rigorous touch typing practice
Most people aren’t actually “slow writers”, they are slow editors or try to combine the writing process with editing, which drastically slows them down

The bottom line is that there’s really no such thing as being a “slow writer”, it’s more that we all have certain bottlenecks that slow down our writing. If we remove them, we can all learn how to write faster – and it’s easier than you think.

ACTION STEP:

If you consider yourself a “slow writer”, pay attention to which parts of your writing process feel exceptionally slow:

Is it just getting started with writing? If yes, could you create an outline of the article you want to write to speed it up?
Is it the actual writing? If yes, why? Is it that you’re a slow typer (can you learn how to type faster?) That you get lost and don’t know what to write next (can you create a more detailed outline)?
Is it the editing? If yes, how could you edit faster? Are there parts of your editing process that are very time consuming, boring or draining but don’t help you make your content 10x better? Could you trim down your editing process?

Start paying attention to which part of your writing process is the slowest, and start working on it – and you’ll find yourself writing faster and saving hours and hours each week.

Conclusion

Throughout my writing experiment in Write More Every Dat BETA, I’ve put many writing myths to the test in order to get to the bottom of what REALLY helps us write more, better and faster.

I learned that the “conventional wisdom” when it comes to writing is not necessarily true, and that there are a lot of things out there that many people never talk about (like that you’ll be tired most of the time when you write, but that won’t prevent you from being focused while writing).

Most importantly, I learned that it is possible to become a better writer in every single aspect of writing.

You can learn how to write better content. You can learn how to write faster. You can become more consistent with writing, even when you don’t feel like writing or don’t have the time to write.

I’m really excited about these findings because I feel like nobody really talks deeply about writing in the online business space and runs such detailed experiments, and I feel like I can really help you improve your writing game and put more of your ideas into the world.

What about you? Which writing myths have you discovered?

Behind The Scenes of my 3-Month Writing Experiment (2,000+ Data Points)

By Primoz Bozic Leave a Comment

I was always curious about writing:

How can we sit down to write consistently every day (even when we don’t feel like it or don’t have the time to write)?
Is it possible to learn how to write, edit and publish content faster, and if yes, how?
Do we have to be “born writers” to create great content or can we actually learn how to write better without decades of practice?

To find the answers to these questions, I ran a lot of writing experiments over the past few years:

I’ve written everything from 500-word blog post to 26,000-word e-books to see what it’s like to write different types of content
I wanted to see how much I was capable of writing and challenged myself to write 100,000+ words in a month, which I successfully accomplished (that’s the length of an average novel, or a 200-page Google Document)
I’ve gone through tens of books and courses on writing from famous authors like Stephen King, Malcolm Gladwell and others, as well as established copywriters

And over time, I felt like I had a pretty good grasp on my writing.

I began to understand what helps me write more, and which obstacles are the most likely to prevent me from writing.

I figured out when I can write fast, and when I’m destined to write slow (and how to work around it).

I also learned how to silence my “inner critic” that often made me feel anxious about writing and learned how to write regardless of the thoughts in my head telling me “my writing isn’t good enough”.

As I did that, writing all of a sudden became this fun and enjoyable way to share ideas again, rather than the thing I “had to do” that created a lot of pressure in my head.

I loved that because writing was my favorite way to share my ideas with the world and help thousands of people with my knowledge, and I would have hated for anything to come in-between that.

The unexpected results of my online course about Ultimate Guides

Then, as I created an online course on writing 20,000+ word Ultimate Guides, I faced another challenge: I had to help my students write content that’s 10-20x longer than anything they’ve ever written before.

To my surprise, this went way better than expected.

Sure, the writing itself wasn’t easy, but with the right amount of support, training and accountability, the majority of my students managed to successfully write and publish their ultra-long guides within a few weeks or months.

I also noticed how every single person that went through the program ended up becoming a much better writer at the end of the program, which I didn’t expect at all.

But when I dug into it, it all started to make sense. In the program, we talked about a lot of different aspects of writing (from finding ideas what to write about to outlining to editing).

This means that they got to practice all of these concepts on a much larger scale than they did before (as writing an Ultimate Guide is the equivalent to writing 10 really good blog posts over a 1-month period), and they got better with practice.

I also made it a point to review all of their guides and give them feedback on them to make them better, which was another big factor in helping them become better writers.

“Now what?”

But after we finished the program, I noticed an interesting phenomenon.

I realized that a lot of my students were left wondering “now what?”, and after publishing a huge piece of content, they lost the momentum to keep writing.

I could see how they attempted to write a few blog posts, but then many of them fell back into their old writing habits and stopped writing regularly.

That didn’t feel right to me because I wanted them to use their guides as a spring board to continue growing their business, not as a major project they accomplish, but don’t know how to move on from.

That’s when I decided to get to the bottom of this issue.

I would figure out a way to help entrepreneurs write more, no matter what.

So I buckled down and did more research.

It all started with a survey…

I sent out a quick survey on writing to my readers about their experiences and challenges around writing:

The 81 survey responses absolutely blew me away.

The first interesting data point came from the question “How important is writing in your business right now on a scale of 1-100?”

The average response? 77/100.

This response was supported by comments like:

That’s when I immediately knew something was there.

There was a BIG problem a lot of entrepreneurs faced around writing, and based on the research I did, nobody was solving it for them.

There are plenty of online courses on copywriting, BUT…

Sure, there are plenty of online courses on copywriting, and many of them are really good. But I couldn’t really find anything that would help entrepreneurs and copywriters write more, at least not in the shape I wanted it to be.

As I dug deeper into the responses of my readers, I’ve found many specific challenges they had about writing like:

I know how to write consistently, but I’m a really slow writer
The hardest thing for me is to sit down to write
I don’t know how to balance writing with client work
I have times where I can write thousands of words, but then I have months of “dry spells” when I don’t write at all
I feel like I’m sitting on a graveyard of unfinished blog post ideas
… (and a lot more)

I’ve found many of these responses fascinating and I wanted to understand what my readers were going through on a daily basis so I could begin to help them.

I invited the people who filled out a survey to a 1on1 call with me and performed 15 customer research calls which helped me get even clearer on the challenges many of us face when we write.

That’s when I felt like I had enough information to start sharing and testing my ideas with a small group of writers, and I silently launched a BETA program where I would help 18 of my students write more than they’ve ever written over the course of 3 months.

I called it “Write More Every Day BETA”.

Behind The Scenes of Write More Every Day BETA

As I created WMED BETA, I first had to decide how long the program would be.

Should the program be 4 weeks long? 6 weeks? 8 weeks?

I didn’t have a clear right answer right off the bat, so I thought about the RESULTS I wanted to help my students achieve with the program.

One of the things I wanted to test with this program was CONSISTENCY.

I knew from past experiences that it’s possible to write a lot over the course of a month, especially if you’re working on a very exciting project, but that doesn’t mean you’ll KEEP writing after the first month of writing.

I wanted to create a bulletproof system for writing that works beyond the first month, and thought that a good length to test consistency would be a period of 3 months.

Over the course of 3 months, you can’t just rely on writing one big project, and things are bound to go wrong. You might travel, get sick, or have life come in-between in one way or another.

Stretching the program over 3 months would make the perfect stress test environment which would help us identify the biggest roadblocks and obstacles that throw us “off track” and develop and test solutions to work through them.

The evolution of the course curriculum

I initially planned to teach 6 lessons on different parts of writing and have 6 Q & A calls in the second half of the program, but allowed myself to be flexible with my plan.

As we started working through the program and I kept asking my students what else they needed help with, as well as paid attention to the challenges they still e-mailed me about, I began to expand the curriculum into a 10-week curriculum.

In the end, we covered everything from how to create a writing habit, decide WHAT to write, come up with ideas what to write, research, outlining and editing, writing faster, writing when life gets in the way and even the mental game of writing.

Then, we wrapped up the program with 2 exciting “hot seat sessions” where we helped each other with any outstanding challenges we had around writing.

We delivered all the lessons in the program live, and I was surprised by how many people kept showing up to the calls week after week (we even had 3 students join the calls in the middle of the night!).

Then, through the weekly tracking and accountability e-mails, I could see what’s actually working and what isn’t, and make notes to further improve the program in the future.

We collected 2,000+ data points on writing

One of the coolest things we did in the program was that we used a dedicated “writing tracker” to track ALL the writing we did in the program.

This meant that more or less every single writing session was documented and could be analyzed so we could collect real data on what’s working and what isn’t.

We tracked things like:

How long the sessions were
How many words were in a session
When the sessions took place
The speed of writing (in words per hour)
The energy levels before writing
Focus during writing
…and more

This helped us see patterns and insights on individual basis (and group basis) that we wouldn’t see otherwise.

A nerdy spreadsheet with daily writing data, words per hour (month by month), and more…

We could see things like:

WHEN are the best times to write (and how these times are different for different people)
How energy levels impact our focus and how fast / how long we can write
Which specific habits, activities or tricks help us write more
What makes us write slow (or fast)
What makes it more difficult for us to have longer writing sessions
…and so much more

Altogether, we’ve collected data from roughly 2,000-3,000 writing sessions from our students that we can use to come to better conclusions in terms of what REALLY helps us write more.

A lot of the things that we learned were really counterintuitive and surprising, and I’ll be sharing some of those in my next e-mail, so stay tuned!

We exchanged (and analysed) 481 e-mails with our students

During this program, I experimented with a new accountability system that I hoped would help my students write really consistently, and identify any obstacles that came their way.

I got the idea from my nutritionist, who I pay hundreds of dollars each month to keep me on track with my diet. I e-mail my nutritionist 2x/week with my bodyweight, and tell him what’s working and what’s not working. Then, he helps me out with any obstacles in my way and adjusts my diet when necessary.

As this kind of accountability worked extremely well for me, I wanted to see how it worked for my students as well.

That’s why I asked my students to send me weekly updates on how much they’ve written and any things that worked well / didn’t work well last week.

Looking back, this was one of the best things that we could have done in this program.

Not only did a lot of the students absolutely LOVE the accountability, I could also see all of their obstacles they were running into on a weekly basis, and see patterns among them.

I could see exactly which techniques and strategies from our weekly calls worked, and what didn’t work – so I could improve them in the future. I would also often get completely new ideas for solutions from my students that I wouldn’t think of myself.

Throughout the 12 weeks, I exchanged exactly 481 e-mails with my students, which would serve as additional data points for helping us improve the program in the future.

We kept talking to our students throughout the program

Even though the program was working really well, I wanted to continue digging deeper and deeper into the topics we talked about.

I wasn’t satisfied with good results, I wanted to find ALL the possible obstacles my students were running into, no matter how minor, as I knew that even small details (like going to a coffee shop during lunch hour when a lot of people are loud and rowdy) could often get in the way of efficient writing.

Even though the research kept piling up every week, I wanted to get to the bottom of cracking the writing game.

That’s why I continued to talk to my students regularly.

I encouraged them to ask me any questions they had in the WhatsApp group we had set up for the program, I sent out 2 detailed feedback surveys throughout the program, and I performed 45-minute customer research calls with 15 students at the end of the program.

Slowly but surely, I could see more and more patterns emerge, and I could feel like I had a deeper and deeper understanding of what it really takes to write great content consistently and efficiently.

We created a 53-page Google Document with all the insights from the program

We collected A LOT of data points throughout the program.

From tracking the 2,000+ writing sessions, to exchanging 481 e-mails, to answering hundreds of questions on the live coaching calls and in the WhatsApp group, we collected a mountain of data on writing that I haven’t seen anywhere else before.

We organized all of this data into a 53-page Google Document that we keep adding to as we review all the customer research interviews and coaching call recordings from the program.

This is helping us find the “sticking points” in the program and find ALL the questions that our students ever have about writing (and make sure we answer these questions in a way that helps them get over their sticking points).

Why all of this hard work is worth it

This is a lot of data, and it can feel overwhelming to work through it sometimes. My assistant and I have spent tens of hours putting together this document, organizing it and analyzing the data.

But each day it feels like we’re getting a more and more complete view of the puzzle of what really helps people write more (and what doesn’t).

At the end of the day, we know that doing the hard work is worth it, as it will help us create an even better iteration of the program in the future (which we’re already working on, and I’ll let you know about soon!).

It’s also worth it because we keep running into new, surprising insights that feel like finding hidden gems, and help us completely change the way we think about writing.

And then, we can share these ideas with the world, and change the way we ALL think about writing.

Speaking of insights, I’ll be sharing some of my favorite unexpected insights I learned about writing from this program in my next blog post, and I know they’ll surprise you as much as they surprised me.

To make sure you get these, leave your name and e-mail in the box below (and get my free e-book that will help you write some of the best content online).

I’ll see you in the next post!

-Primoz