Organizing & Boosting Your Written Content with a Purpose-driven Schedule

Summary: As a freelance writer, it can be easy to think only in the short-term — Start utilizing a calendar the way big-name publishers do in order to consistently produce high-quality content for a more engaged audience!

Introduction: The Reason for Using a Calendar

When you want to get serious about writing and creating content, one of the more important principles to both sustaining quality and readership is consistency.

Loyalty from an audience comes from consistently publishing high-quality content, with the sheer amount of information available, it can be easy to lose readership when you lack proper planning and scheduling.

Stop being easily swayed by anything that’s in front of you. Start living a value-based lifestyle.

When you wake up in the morning and get out of bed — or even before you get out of bed — what’s the first thing that grabs your attention? Whatever it is, it’s going to be responsible for your first thoughts of the day. Throughout the rest of your day, you’ll be faced with a bombardment of distractions that will grab your awareness away from what you’re doing.

We live in an attention-based economy. Companies and people can only sell you products and services if they first have your attention, after all. This is nothing new, but with the rise of clever marketing statics (ex. Data-collection, branded content, personalized advertisements, etc.) most people are often being sold things without even realizing it.

[](http://medium.com/@brennanbrown)

Making Better Content & Reaching More People

Summary: The beginner on Medium must know that there are three things essential to a good piece of writing: 1) Purpose. 2) Visuals. 3) Community.

The new year has just arrived, how exciting! My very first post on Medium was about the New Year, and I also wrote out my Resolutions for 2017. However — after two years of writing on Medium, I wanted to instead focus on helping others with tips and tricks I’ve come across and have found helpful.

Despite Medium’s minimalist design, it can still be a bit overwhelming to dive right in. If anything, the fact that there’s only a blank page in front of you just makes things even more daunting!

Focusing on only the important stuff is the most valuable thing you can do for yourself.

Summary: This article details why failure is a powerful tool for reflection, and necessary part of life. It then goes on to outline a powerful method to plan for future success by cutting out anything that isn’t essential to your own values.

Failure is Important

Last month, I had the idea to write an article each day for the month. How long did that last? Only five days. No matter how you look at it, that is failure. And it’s not just about the fact I didn’t manage to beat the challenge, it’s more about the principle of the matter. The fact that I failed to keep a promise to myself and others. Why did I let this happen? I think more broadly, it needs to be asked: Why do people do this — so often — in general?

Before I get into that, though, let’s take a look at the bright side of the situation. I managed to write two longform articles that I’m proud of:

https://writingcooperative.com/my-writing-process-4868f986f97f
https://writingcooperative.com/my-writing-process-4868f986f97f

The only reason those posts got written was because, for the first time, I had to churn things out. Challenging myself to write each day for a month made me think long-term and plan out a schedule. It made me think of different topics to explore and ideas to experiment with. In the past, I’ve truthfully just written when inspiration struck.

Not only that, but I joined the Medium Partner Program last month as well, which means that I got paid for these stories. It’s the first time I’ve ever been paid for my writing. And seeing that was a wake-up call for me. I was shown that if I put effort into my work and plan things out, then I could make serious side-hustle out of Medium.