How I Write on The Internet While Working a 9–5 Full-Time Job
Plus running 2 publications on Medium with 2 kids and a wife + Substack (updated for you)
For now, I don’t have a life that I can control, I sleep at 3 am like I ran out of batteries.
I don’t even need an alarm clock because I’m fully charged at 8:30 am.
I get ready for my train ride, masterpiece, and publishing articles. The first thing I do in the morning is to open my Substack app and make sure that the person who DM me about not wanting to live is still alive.
I try my best not to impact myself, but I always go take a peek. Yet, that wasn’t part of this article.
This will all be in my time zone in NYC, EST. The entire train ride is about 50–60 minutes.
Let’s go right into what I do on the train. I spend about half of the time publishing articles from 3 am to 9 am on the train, and the other half writing my daily challenge article in less than 30 minutes.
My work schedule is actually 10 am to about 7 pm. Used to be 9–6, due the having to take the kid to preschool, I request a change.
Of course, I know you want to know how I manage to write on the internet while having all these life tasks and responsibilities that I have.
There’s no secret that I have to cut sleep hours for publishing an article and writing up after midnight. Sometimes, I do feel that only about half of the time, I’m actually productive because of me feeling tired when staying up late for so long.
Once you have kids, the 8-hour sleep thing you can throw out the window.
The things that I do throughout the week:
My new schedule in September
Monday — Friday
Taking the kid to preschool
Morning 1-hour train ride
10 am to 7 pm job (use all my breaks and part of lunch time to publish articles)
Returning home, another hour train ride
8 pm to 12 am family time with 5–15 minutes breaks for me to publish your articles
Writing after midnight for about an hour
30 minutes of replying to comments or going out and reading something on different platforms.
The time I have left, I will still go and publish more articles.
Whenever I really have extra time, I would go learn something new on YouTube, or wherever I can.
Weekend
80% is family time, sometimes there are doctor appointments, other times, we go on a short trip.
The rest is laundry and other house chores, including supermarkets and cooking sometimes.
As far as writing goes, I would write one after midnight as well, and sometimes, I do not have time to write one in the morning, depending on what is planned for that weekend.
Oh yes, whenever I get to take a break, I go to publish some more articles in the publications.
I might have missed something; it’s probably not that important.
My Substack
Of course, the original article did not include the details about how I manage my Substack, as readers on Medium are less interested.
I start with how I publish my post and go from there. (Normally, I don’t edit it much, but for this one, I did need to add this entire part)
My Substack timeline looks like:
Repost articles around 1 am EST because it will appear or print as the same day on the article. (I used to repost a lot about Medium, but lately it’s more about writing and part of life)
Managing communication on Substack is something I’m not doing very well with, as you can see, I rarely use the group chat and barely respond to DMs, unless you ask me how to grow on Medium. (I can only support in what I know best; other stuff, you can find someone who is spending their time on it) I meant, it will take me a while to reply, sometimes no reply, too or too late.
For Notes, I mainly use it to attract new readers and engage with existing friends or some writers that I see often. Most of the time, the feeds are filled with who I know, which is great, so I don’t have to spend more time looking for them. (for more details, I might have to write a separate article about my current progress on Substack)
As far as time goes, I spend little time writing because most of my writing is done beforehand on Medium, which means I don’t really write about Substack that much. Even some of the notes, I would pick out something I wrote the day before, or a couple of articles that I didn’t really get to share the details on.
This does mean that I have a lot more to say about Substack, but I just haven’t had the time to write about it.
Mainly because I’m growing steadily, so there isn’t any news for me to showcase any pops or drops in growth. Which is what I also like about Substack.
Most of my time is spent reading random posts and notes, which helps me stay focused and know this is a long game, and the growth is endless if I can stay long enough.
I often tend to mess around with the writers I know and say hi to a few new ones when I can. Other than that, I’m using Substack the same way you’re using it.
For Substack, I can chip in time and do not have to stay there for a very long time, so it does fit into my time of not being able to have a long period of time to stay focused on doing one task, or to complete a longer one.
Many have asked me about how to grow a publication on Medium
Since they think I might have some secret sauce or something. You can see for yourself that most of my time is spent on publication articles, for which I do not even have an exact time on how much time I really spent.
Usually, I try to keep it about the same time I spent writing, but often it does go over because of the number of submissions there are. I know a few writers were kind enough to ask if I need editors to give a hand on this.
The answer is yes, soon, but I normally like to do it until I really start to see something is about to break, or I’ll keep pushing myself.
Just for your context that editors do not get paid or even get recognized most of the time. I really thank them for the effort and support, even if I can’t really tell who is helping.
Among both publications, Write A Catalyst (WAC) and Activated Thinker (AT), we are seeing more than 100 submissions within any given 24 hours.
There are times frames where AC’s submission exceeds WAC.
Exciting, but what is more exciting is seeing many old friends coming back on the same day, submitting to the same publications.
Thanks for reading and supporting our publications
This story was originally published on [Medium] and is cross-posted here for a wider audience.
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Your an animal!
You sound addicted.