How I write these letters

I write these daily emails and publish on them my site every day.

Except, I have to be honest, I don’t do it every day.

I generally write a batch of five or maybe ten letters, then queue them up.

I do my writing whenever the mood takes me. I use Ulysses, which is an app for Macs and more importantly for iPads, that is fantastic for writing. It doesn’t bombard you with formatting options, or tables, or styling and colours. It’s almost like being sat at a typewriter with a blank piece of paper - especially on the iPad. So you just concentrate on the words.

I often leave the posts sat in Ulysses for a few days - I don’t have time to do anything else with them.

Then, a while later, I queue them up as “broadcasts” in Drip, which is how the emails get sent out every day. And I put them in as scheduled posts in Wordpress, which is how they get published every day. This is a good task for Friday afternoons, when my brain is fried and I can’t concentrate.

Generally, it takes me about ten or fifteen minutes per letter to write, then about quarter an hour to queue up five days’ worth. But the two tasks are very different - one is slow, creative and thoughtful work, the other is mechanical and can be done mindlessly and quickly. Which is why they’re done at different times.

Take action: How can you split out your creative and grunt work, so you can do each when you’re in the right mood for them.