30-Day Writing Challenge: The Guide on How To Make More Content

Writing content for 30 days will help you produce more for two reasons.

• First of all, you want to demonstrate you can achieve the task. So even if there will be days in which you would have skipped, you keep going.
• And second, you want to demonstrate to other people that you can keep your word. So if you tell your friends or family about it, you have a social contract to respect.

A writing contest also means you produce more than usual. And if you succeed, you will have more content to publish.

This means you can build a content buffer that allows you to have more time to work on other projects for the next month, for example. So in the meanwhile, you can produce side content for your hustle and increase your reach.

Content creators usually have one root. They either love creating, or they love hustling . And in the beginning, it is impossible to excel at both.

If you love writing and exposing your thoughts, hustling will always be painful for you. But a challenge allows you to produce enough content that you have time to take care of your marketing or SEO strategies. Which you would have otherwise neglected.

A surplus of articles, or content, also gives you a scheduling advantage. Because if you already know each piece you produced, you can schedule them to focus on a specific keyword.

Near the end of the year, you could write articles on goal tracking and setting. And you could link them better to guide your audience throughout your blog and transform them into customers.

How to set up for a 30-day writing challenge.

Many people start it without a plan. And they resist for a few days, thanks to creativity and habits. But it is almost impossible to complete the 30 days without giving up if you rely only on your habits.

Still, if you prepare a few tasks in advance, it will be easier to accomplish your long-term goal. So here are five actions you should take before any 30-day writing challenge.

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail,” said Benjamin Franklin.

And although many creators sustain that overpreparation ruins their creativity, it is also true that not preparing makes you create poor content.

So before starting your 30-day writing challenge, select from one to three projects you want to work on, and focus only on those.

Any challenge should have clear and measurable requirements. Otherwise, they would have called it things people do when bored.

Therefore, since it is a dare with yourself to enhance your productivity for a limited amount of time, pick a demanding daily requirement.

For example, if you used to write 500 words per day, make it 1000. Which doesn’t mean you have to double your productivity, but at least push it hard enough to make a difference.

3 — Mark every planned commitment.

Sometimes, I would like to stop time, produce as much as possible, and restart it. So I would never need to give up anything.

But we all have a social life, and finding 30 straight days without any planned commitments is impossible. No matter which period you pick, a friend will have a party, or a relative may celebrate his birthday, and you can’t skip it (as much as you may want to).

So when you plan your 30-day writing challenge, consider that these activities may take you more time than expected. And if you go to a night party, you can’t wake up early the day after to work on your challenge.

Now that you selected your working projects and minimum requirement, you can distribute tasks based on your commitments.

With a requirement of 1500 words per day, for example, you can write 1000 for articles and 500 for social media. Or you could focus only on one project and switch to one of the others the next day.

To give you an idea, in March 2022, I also made a challenge. Here is how I planned it by building a content roadmap.

5 — Use buffering days.

Besides planned commitments you cannot skip, you may want to add a few buffering days to your challenge.

As I said before, writing challenges are simple in the beginning when you rely on your creativity. But after a while, your productivity will drop, and you will fatigue to reach the threshold every day.

For this reason, you can plan a few buffering days to help you recover from productivity slumps. In those days, you don’t have any requirements. And if you wrote enough in the previous days, you can take a day off. But if you didn’t, you need to recover.

Once you understand how to set up a 30-days writing challenge, you may want to draw your own. Or you can download the 30-day writing challenge printable.

• The symmetry-related  plan is more symmetrical and gives you a free day every six days. It is easier to follow if you don’t have any other commitments. And it gives you the correct balance between productivity and days off.
• The duties-related plan suits better creators with a job who can’t set a buffering day during a workday. So to align with their duties, this plan puts a buffering day each Sunday when you have more time to recover.

1. Use a productivity system.
2. Micro-manage tasks.
3. Control your motivation.

• 5 Seconds Rule: From the homonym book by Mel Robbins, the 5 seconds rule is the fastest productivity system. So if you don’t have any other systems, you can use this one.
• 12 Week Year: Even this system is presented in a book by Moran and Lennington. At its core, the 12WY is a planning strategy. But it also deals with productivity.
• Getting Things Done: Davide Allen, in his book, described a productivity system where the only thing that matters is getting thoughts on a paper, organizing them into tasks, and finishing them.
• And many more.

Another thing you can practice to maintain high productivity is to micro-manage tasks daily.

Even if you have a content plan for the 30-days writing challenge, it helps to review each task in the morning and evening. Your mind already thinks about the content you need to produce and works on the idea. So when you sit down to write, you don’t have to start from scratch, and you finish faster.

I did many 30-day challenges in the last year. And every time I failed was because of motivational slumps. No matter how hard I try, sooner or later, I stop feeling motivated, and I skip writing for a few days.

So here are a few suggestions to deal with motivation:

• Don’t crush your goals.  If you work more than you should every day, your willpower could crumble.
• The less motivational power you use, the more you will have when you need it.
• Even if writing is your goal, pair it with some reward.
• Deal with failure.

As a creator, you should try a 30-day writing challenge at least once in your life because it teaches you so many things about your productivity and your character. To complete it, you need to work at high peace for a while and keep everything under control.

You need to learn how to deal with unexpected events if they show up. And also build a stable productivity system that allows you to stop procrastinating and get to work.

No matter the benefits, you should never exaggerate. Your body can only support so much effort. And even if you fail, give yourself time to recover before starting again.