How To Use Design Thinking Principles For Writing

You don’t need a Magic Bullet. Follow a set process

You open the Mobile app or You open the Medium.com

Click on the + sign, Write a Story

And then… two things happen

1. Keep researching for the article you are about to write
2. A blank canvas and this stays blank for some time.

But, you don’t want both to happen. What you want is to Write, Write and Write and be in a flow state

One of the methods (I have been experimenting with many) that you can explore is “Bucketing”

1. Ideation

2. Research

3. Content preparation

4. Final Draft & Review

5. Publish

6. Engage with the Audience, Respond to comments which lead to Ideation

Let’s get into each of the buckets

Ideation :

Start listing down the idea you get. Or even better, dedicate time to sourcing all the ideas, and headlines you can write about.

Research:

Research the topic, read the book and try out the experiment or habit you want to write about. Journal this and identify the pattern

Content Preparation

With the research/experience you have, filter out the idea that you want to write about exactly. This is very important. Every day, when you sit down to write, there should be ideas already vetted, researched, and ready for writing. Until you reach this stage, your ideation and research process should continue. You may start with some 5–10 titles where it’s ready to write. Believe me, once you follow this process, you will have enough to write. Over a period of time, I had done this activity, you can see for yourself the solid output

Final Draft and Review

Once you prepare the content, get into the final draft mode as if you are going to publish now. This will help to get all the checklist items ticked off in terms of grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. If you have a mentor or a friend, or a fellow medium writer who can review the article, then share the draft link. Take review comments and work on that to hone your article.