But, Why?
The inevitable question then becomes, "why? Doesn't it take longer to finish your work?"
Well, no.
And, I actually surprised myself when I looked at my work logs.
A Comparison - Analogue
On Sunday night I decided to start and finish a long-form direct mail sales letter. Something 4-5 pages is about standard.
I had already done enough research for the project, having written the landing page for the offer a fortnight ago.
Writing
I sat down at the desk in my office at 10:30 PM with my notepad and pen. I didn't leave my desk until 2:14 AM the following morning; "###" noted at the bottom of the the page of yellow legal paper signifying "there's nothing more". This, I know from experience, will be about 4 pages of typed copy.
So, the complete and fairly polished first draft took me 4 hours and 14 minutes from start to finish.
Typing & Editing
I then went to bed and got up about 3 hours later at 5 AM to drive my partner to work, and was back at my desk by 6:23 AM to type my longhand copy into a Word document.
While I type this up, I'm doing a structural edit at the same time. This takes about an hour, by which point I'm ready to do a thorough edit, word by word and line by line, with a few run-throughs read aloud.
At 8:20 AM I'm completely done.
The copy is ready to be sent to the printers, stuffed into mail merged envelopes, and mailed out to our list.
ANALOGUE - Total time spent: 6 hours 17 minutes
For those who aren't professional copywriters, this could be considered 'fast'. When I first started, something like this might take me 3 to 4 weeks.
I looked at other similar jobs I've done over the past year:
- ~ 8 hours
- ~ 7 hours
- ~ 14 hours
- ~ 5 hours
- ~ 6.5 hours
- ~ 12 hours
ANALOG: That's an average of 8.75 hours of writing
A Comparison - Digital
And looking at my work logs for the same kind of work, but done the 'normal' way - straight into the computer - here's what I found:
- ~ 14 hours
- ~ 19 hours
- ~ 19.5 hours
- ~ 32 hours
- ~ 51.5 hours (a bit of an anomaly, but I couldn't keep a train of thought and had to keep editing to a total of 8 revisions before a decent first draft)
DIGITAL: That's an average of 27.2 hours of writing (or 21.12 if we remove the outlier)
MUCH longer, as you can see.
What's The Point?
Micro
On a micro level, it's that I personally get into my 'deep work' zone via analogue means.
I'm 310% more productive doing it 'slower'.
My work needs far fewer edits. I have longer periods of uninterrupted work. I enjoy the work more.
I find I type faster than I can purposefully think ahead, so I'm bouncing all over the place when I work on the computer - word vomit.
I don't have a clear sense of what I'm wanting to say.
Whereas doing it 'slower' seems to give my brain time to 'think ahead' and keep my writing on track; concise. That's my theory at least.
Macro
On a macro level, it's posing a question to you.
Asking if you're working in the best possible way.
Have you tracked your actions over a period of time? Looked into how you could make your work more efficient, more productive, more enjoyable?
That's how I started writing longhand in the first place. I noticed everything was getting finished faster and I didn't edit while I wrote.
Some Details
- A fountain pen makes writing for several hours in one session easier and pain-free.
- The Palomino Blackwing 602 pencil is the smoothest I've used, comes with a replaceable eraser end, and the graphite doesn't transfer to other pages.
- Coloured legal pad paper helps with contrast so I can work outside and not have to squint from the glare; this is quite fatiguing, annoyingly.
- I learnt how to do editor's mark-ups so I could make note of formatting in the copy I was writing. This meant I could hand over my notated copy to someone and they'd be able to create a finished document as I'd envisioned if I didn't want to type it up myself - which happens on occasions where I'm travelling.
These are all conscious decisions I've made to help me produce the best work I can in the shortest possible time. This leaves me more time to think, conduct research and interviews, read, and study.
We've only got 24 hours each day, and we may as well make the most of them.
So, are you making the best use of your time?
