How to write an article in under 30 min

A common challenge for my leadership coaching clients is weak communication. Even among experienced leaders, I notice a high barrier when it comes to producing short videos and writing articles. Both are extremely relevant to effective communication.

I will take up the video topic another time. Today, let's take care of writing articles in less than 30 minutes, from a "blank slate".

It starts in your own head: for many executives, article writing is an unpleasant and energy-sapping task. The root cause is usually a lack of process and, related to that, the idea that writing an article takes hours or even days.

Building on my experience of writing now about 1000 blog and magazine articles, I have developed a process that allows writing a roughly one-page article (about 300-400 words) in under 30 min, starting from scratch.

Here is the 10 step process to article writing:

1. Pick a rough topic (e.g., "How can everyone make faster decisions?").
2. Determine the target audience: who exactly am I writing for? (e.g. executives)
3. Draft a headline (Attention: use less than 1 min!)
4. Describe the issue from the target group's point of view in 2-3 sentences. Important: Just start writing. Corrections can always be made later.
5. Describe three important points, hints, recommendations for action or solutions, each in 2-3 sentences. For longer articles, this part can be as detailed as you like.
6. Summarize and, if applicable, add a call to action in 2-3 sentences.
7. Finalize the headline.
8. Go through the whole text once for spelling mistakes and misunderstandable expressions.
9. Add a picture if appropriate (e.g. from unsplash.com).
10. Publish the article.

That's all. You can easily go through these 10 steps in 30 min. I have just done it for this text from scratch in 20 min. Prerequisite: you know the topic to a certain extent.

Additional tips:

• It helps to constantly maintain a list of relevant topics, adding to it whenever they come to mind.
• The most important thing about writing is to start writing. Therefore: just start.
• It's best to reserve 30 min at a time.
• Make a maximum of one revision! Relevance and content count, not perfection!
• The same process can be applied to the production of videos. In this case you even save the time for the writing process.
• Professionals save even more time by dictating their thoughts and having them transcribed by a service provider (Fiverr.com or similar).

So here you go: Schedule time and write articles! Practice is what leads to mastery.

If you want to benefit even more and bring your leadership to a new level, click ➔ here to schedule a brief session.