Editing Openai/6974a60e-e638-800d-99db-5cb22e482a86 (section)

=== User: I want you to write 1000-word blog titled "How to Make Readers Scroll Till the End of Your Blog." Here's the reference … ===
I want you to write 1000-word blog titled "How to Make Readers Scroll Till the End of Your Blog." Here's the reference for style and tone.
While you were on your morning walk, working out in a gym, or having your first coffee of the day, an idea clicked in your mind.

You turn your laptop on, thinking you’ll write something people will go bananas for. You type, edit, end up with a killer piece, and hit “Publish,” only to find out that nobody read it. This leads you to start questioning your writing skills.

Do I have that flair? Am I good enough? Even an AI writes better content than me. I should’ve worked as a stocking associate.

So, you start Googling “How to write better.”

The most common advice there?

Write every day. 500 words. 30 minutes. A quick paragraph. Just write anything.

Bullshit.

I’ve been working as a content writer for over 6 years. And for the last couple of years, I’ve been hitting the 2500-word mark every single day.

Blogs. Guest posts. Landing pages. And whatnot.

Did it make me Ernest Hemingway or even a watered-down version of the legendary author? Nope.

Did my writing craft smash the roof of creativity? Not at all.

It just made me realize that spurting words every day on a doc can never sharpen your writing brain.

Writing Every Day Sucks
The idea comes (and gets validation) from sacred cows like Stephen King and Anne Lamott.

Here’s what Anne writes in her amazing book “Bird by Bird”:

You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day.

Stephen, in his book “On Writing,” takes the notion even further by saying:

I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That’s 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book.

Now I’m not questioning these writing geniuses. They’re great. But their advice is directed to (aspiring) full-time writers. Those who are privileged enough to write every day. Those who want to publish a big fat novel next year.

But for a Doordash delivery guy, a side-hustling MBA student, or a moonlighting coder, this is a bit far-fetched.

And that’s not the worst part.

The problem with a rigid schedule is that it soon turns into a streak-maintaining endeavor. When this happens, your creativity takes a nosedive and you end up learning nothing.

Here’s a real-life example: I’ve been using Duolingo to learn Japanese for over a year now. There was a time I was doing the same, super quick lesson, that takes around 30 seconds, again and again, every single day just to maintain my daily learning streak. So my streak remained intact. But did it help me in any way? Absolutely not.

Productivity guru Cal Newport also calls the “writing every day” advice a sham. He argues that sticking to a rigid schedule can soon backfire. A single non-writing day can put you on a guilt trip. And since it’s not tied to a bigger goal like finishing a novel, you soon start procrastinating or writing just for the sake of it.

The point is, “Write every day,” “Write 1000 words,” “Write whatever you like;” these are some oversimplified statements.

You should only follow them if writing earns you bread and butter or if someone pays you for the number of keystrokes.

My 12,480 Hours (and counting) of Writing
While looking for the tips to improve writing (or any other skill), you might’ve stumbled upon a concept of practicing something for 10,000 hours to master that art.

Malcolm Gladwell, an award-winning Canadian journalist, proposed this idea in his book “Outliers.” He writes, “10,000 hours of deliberate practice are needed to become world-class in any field.”

I want to confess something here: I’ve already crossed this threshold. And tbh, I still suck at writing. You can also give me feedback about my writing in the comments — some AI detectors rated my content too but it was more like gaslighting.

Become a member
The thing is, I’ve been working as a full-time content writer for a marketing company for more than a couple of years now. In total, I’ve been in this domain for over 6 years. And here’s my calculation:

5-day workweek = 40 hrs/week

40 hrs x 52 weeks = 2080 hours

2080 x 6 = 12,480 hours

You see how I’ve gone past the benchmark of excellence. But I’d still call myself an average writer. Why? Because in the corporate landscape, writers usually don’t write; they produce content.

I’m not questioning all the corporations out there helping you earn bread and butter. It’s just the nature of these jobs and even they can’t help it.

The reality is, there’s no set hour limit you have to cross to become a writing wiz.

It’s about improving instead of just writing.

Gladwell’s benchmark of excellence is an oversimplified statement too.

But here’s what those 12K+ hours actually taught me: passive effort doesn’t move the needle. I mean you don’t turn into Zadie Smith just by binge-listening to writing podcasts overnight. Mechanically hitting a daily word quota just doesn’t cut it.

My real growth came from the tiny slivers of time I spent on intentional practice. The late-night Medium drafts, the weekend experiments on my personal blog, studying story beats, rewriting one paragraph until it breathed.

Those micro-sessions, even though they were far fewer than my corporate writing hours, sharpened my skill 10x faster.

Gladwell’s “10,000 hours” sounds sexy. Plausible. Easy-to-reach.

But research by Anders Ericsson (the guy Gladwell actually based the idea on) makes it clear: mastery comes from deliberate practice. Targeted drills. Focused rewriting. Pushing your weak spots. Not mindlessly grinding out content like a keyboard factory worker.

It’s like passively listening to a podcast during bedtime. It makes you sleep and you wake up the next morning, only to find out you remember nothing of it. But if you actively listen to the discourse, it’ll keep you awake and you’ll grasp most of the things.

In short, clocking hours and passively writing won’t make you Hemingway. But mindful practice with intention might.