How to build a writing habit (even if you’re a busy strategist)

Why strategists struggle with writing

You'd be surprised how often I meet senior, experienced and confident people in marketing who become a shadow of themselves whenever I ask them to write about what they think. That psychological shift intrigues me.

So I’d like to share what 15+ years of writing has taught me about, well, writing.

In my conversations with strategists, I’ve identified a few common reasons why they struggle to write: no time; no energy; nothing new to say; fear of judgement; not knowing where to start. All valid. All solvable.

The fix isn't a perfect and/or painful writing routine. It's a set of small, repeatable habits that fit around real working life. Below are a few that work for me.

The real value of writing: process over AI

A lot of people might ask whether they should just use AI to write everything. Short answer: use it to start, not to finish. Get Claude or NotebookLM to generate initial takes on your topic. Then riff on them, either by challenging them or crafting them like mad.

The thinking you do in response to AI’s output is where your actual point of view lives. Writing is thinking things through. When you write about something, you’re helping your body and mind know that thing a bit more intimately, and that allows you to develop the conviction you need to truly stand by your words.

The opposite of this is getting AI to write everything you do, and in the process learning or retaining nothing. There’s a difference between reading about the rules of a sport and feeling good at playing it. Writing is the exact same thing. Process precedes result.

Now, let’s get into some writing habits that any strategist can integrate into daily life.

Seven simple writing habits for busy strategists

1. How to build a writing habit when you have no time

“Where do you find the time to write?" is something people ask me. I don’t. I run a business. I have a family. I have me time. I don’t sit down to do 3-hour writing sessions.

There are no big rituals. Just loads of small ones. I write when I can. My process, like water, flows into everyday existence. I've written on my desk. On the bus. At airports. In coffee shops. On my sofa, after the girls have gone to bed. Watching TV. In silence.

I've written for 40 minutes straight. But also for 14 minutes. Sometimes I write a draft in three minutes, leave it, and pick it up again later. There are no rules. No grand design.

Just a relatively high alertness.

If I’ve got time to write, I do it. It’s like movement. You don’t need to become a gym-maxxing person to feel you’re moving. Just integrate movement in your everyday life.

It’s the exact same with words.

2. Why writing more is the fastest way to write better

It’s insane how often people assume that you need to write well, in order to write. I call bullshit. You need to write loads to write, and then over time the ‘well written’ comes out.

Quantity precedes quality. The more you do it, the more you feel used to doing it. And the more you feel used to doing it, the more natural it feels, which helps you build taste.

And once you do that, you start being more rigorous with what you put out. But only after you’ve done loads of it. Some people are naturally talented, and it just comes out brilliantly. I prefer to assume I’m not one of those people.

I’m fully conscious that 90% of everything I’ve ever written is probably not very good, but I had to go through that in order to get to the 10% that has made some small difference out there. That’s a ratio I try to remember every time I type some words.

Quantity is the soil you need to grow quality. This works best when you have feedback, but you can only get feedback if you put some words out there. So write un-preciously, share generously, and let the quantity eventually help quality emerge. It often does.

Example: this content system by Alex Smith, where his advice is to publish short quips here and there, which then become a bigger piece later on.

3. Stop writing ‘content’, document your work instead

I am convinced that everyone has good ideas somewhere in them. It’s just a case of getting them out, and giving them some expression and a broad sense of life.

But now that most people can write slop with AI, there’s a bit of nuance that is important to add here. Sure, everyone has good ideas inside their mind. But more importantly, everyone has good lived experiences that are worth turning into ideas.

Being able to express lived experiences is something no AI model can ever reproduce.

This is one of the least used tricks I see in the book. You’d think you need to sit down and write content and ‘lead thoughts’, but instead you can try something much simpler. Just document your work. This can be things like:

• Something your clients are asking you

• How you’ve reframed a difficult discussion

• A win, or a loss, or a win that also felt like a loss (or a loss that felt like a win)

• A memory of this one time you did something great with someone else

The trick here is that you’re not creating anything new, you’re documenting what’s already happening. Sometimes you have a chat with someone that blows your mind. Or you see the perfect analogy for another thing. Write about that. It’s enough to start.

A related point. The other day I was talking to a fellow newsletter writer, and we both concluded that our writing would suffer if we stopped being practitioners on some level.

Why?

Because we’d start noticing that our thinking got more conceptual, but less textural. Loads of ideas, but few stories about how we experience them. Leaps without life.

In crude terms, I’d much rather write about something I went through last Tuesday, and using that as a way to capture an idea, than simply writing about the idea itself, devoid of context. It’s not only more interesting, it’s also far more defensible, compared to AI.

So, if you want to write and are not sure what to write about, but you have spent time working on a project of any kind, then you 100% have a post in you about that project.

Tell us stories of the challenges you faced or saw others face, and how you or they dealt with them. It may feel obvious to you. It’ll be new for someone else. Promise.

Common pushback: you’re NDA’d. I get it. I’m not saying spill the beans on every detail of your client work. But you can tell a story about an exchange, a model, a reframe, that doesn’t give away any confidential details.

You can tell broad stories of how you worked through a question without giving away the full answer. We’re not looking to copy your homework. Just to witness a moment.

Example: Sarah Watson on LinkedIn. Every now and then, she shares questions that her clients are asking her, and how she’s working through them. There’s no actual client sensitive information, but we still take away a valuable lesson.

4. The texting trick that kills writer's block

The best answer to writer’s block is to start writing. The best answer to start writing is to not think about writing as writing at all. Confusing much? It’s simple.

Think of it as if you were texting. Yes, texting.

I’ve seen so many smart people send smart text-like messages, or email-like messages, with more insight than entire essays. You’ve probably seen it too. Try and aim for that.

Whenever I get intimidated by needing to write something, I just think of the tweet or text version of the point and go from there. All it takes is one good sentence after another. Before you know it, you got a series of good one-liners about the idea itself.

And through some intelligent re-arrangement, you can now re-organise some of those one-liners and boom. That’s a post. It’s one of the reasons I like writing lists and simple headings with sub-points. It helps me keep the narrative clean, without getting lost.

5. Why writing for one person beats writing for everyone

Don't think of 'readers'. Think of one reader. The person who hired you. The person you had lunch with. Your arch-nemesis. You, five years ago. They can vary. But aim for one.

We often stop ourselves from writing words, because we’re afraid of the invisible crowd who will punish us for being terribly wrong. Yeah, people don’t care. This is good news.

So, narrow the focus. Writing as if you were dedicating it to a single person. This is how I write every email in my newsletter. I think of a pal, client, colleague or arch-nemesis who might find this useful or relatable. And then I write them an email. That’s it.

The fact others are reading is a magnificent bonus on top of it all.

Example: Mara Dettmann’s newsletter. She documents what she sees on her feeds in order to make sense of things before they have a chance to become mainstream. The rest of us just happen to come along for the ride as well.

6. Turn your voice notes into your next piece

All of the above may still make you cringe at the thought of writing things that were in your head. This is ok. Try a different process. Try recording yourself talking instead.

Then, take that recording and get an AI tool to strip it back to the bare bones of what you’re saying. Now write those same points but in your voice. The writing block is gone, because you’re now editing. See how you just played your own brain with some tech?

7. Find your writing process and make it sustainable

There is no one style of writing, just like there is no one process of writing. The best starting point is to experiment with a few, and double down on what works for you.

Some of us like to have a broad structure we write to. Others like to riff until we see a structure emerging. Neither are better or worse, they’re just more or less useful to us.

I tend to be a “fuck around and find out” kind of writing person. I start writing, see what comes out, very stream of consciousness. And then I go back and edit it like mad. There’s no masterplan. There’s a lot of improv, and a lot of making sense afterwards.

This also helps ensure that you can keep the process sustainable. Don’t worry about what a perfect day of writing looks like. Think about the process you could embrace even after a difficult day. This is how you know that it will always feel natural to you.

Example: Helen Brain’s writing process on Substack. Helen spent years stopping herself from writing because she didn’t have all the data and correct arguments in the first place. Then she realised her experience, instincts and conversations, were good enough data, and this became her process.

The ultimate writing habit: personality, not perfection

Your writing will never be perfect. It cannot be. Perfect writing has no personality. It may be correct, or hooky, but it's in danger of feeling like slop. Fuck slop, go for soul. And so does the world. It’s also the sort of stuff you get hired for, so don’t lose it.

Only you can know the reasons why you write. But part of it, I’d imagine, is to build your own credibility and get people more familiar with your thinking. So ensure the real you comes through in some capacity, instead of a diluted version that feels AI-generated.