CrossFit for Writing: The Magical Way to Get Writing Without an Idea

I used to both dread and love Saturday mornings. 

When I swam competitively, Saturdays meant getting up at 5:30 a.m. for 6:00 a.m. practice. 

I would always wake up pissed. I couldn’t believe I was spending my Saturdays grinding it out in a cold pool in the dead winter. All the while, other kids were sleeping in, snuggled up in their comforters.

But I secretly enjoyed coming home 3 hours later, having already started my day. Regardless of how I woke up, by 9:00 a.m., I would (usually) come home with a smile on my face, ready to take on the rest of the day. 

The process I’m about to show you is like having swim practice on a Saturday morning. 

I can’t tell you how many guilt-ridden Saturdays I’ve spent scrolling through memes on my phone, even after I told myself I’d take the day to read. Or journal. Or just take a walk. 

Activities that actually helped me recover from the past week, and helped me mentally prepare for the week ahead.

Instead, this process — CrossFit for Writing (CF4W), as Write of Passage students call it — kickstarts my brain into a healthy, productive gear. It lets me come up with a draft that’s 70-80% done, without the pressure of a looming deadline or an obligation to publish right away.

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CF4W takes between 90 minutes to 2 hours, depending on how much time you actually take on each step.

Personally, after 2 hours of CF4W on a Saturday, I’ll have achieved a few things:

• My subconscious is primed to work on the ideas and the essay over the weekend

• I won’t be worried about publishing because I already have a week of writing all ready to go

• I’m in a productive state of mind so I spend the rest of my day doing deep rest, like reading or letting myself get lost in Brooklyn 99

Here’s a visual outline of the entire CF4W process, courtesy of my fellow WoP student Andrew Yu:

Here’s all 8 steps, laid out.

1. Find one note that resonates with you (2 min) 

2. Choose five notes that relate to your first note (3 min) 

3. Bold/highlight your six notes (2 min) 

4. Put the notes in a sequence that makes sense (2 min) 

5. Supplement your idea with additional notes (4 min) 

6. Create a short outline of your piece (5 min) 

7. Write a three paragraph abstract of your piece (15 min) 

8. Get writing (25 min)

Let’s go into detail.

Step 1: Find one note that resonates with you (2 min)

You can pick a highlight from your notes in Evernote, OneNote, Roam, Notion, etc.

Whichever note-taking app you use. 

Personally, I’ve found it challenging to dig through notes and find one to use within 2 minutes. So I use Readwise to get that first note. Readwise is an app that aggregates all my notes from books, articles, podcasts, and Tweets. It sends me a daily digest of 5 highlights. 

For CF4W, I go through that day’s daily digest, find a highlight that catches my eye, and copy it to a fresh Evernote note. (Here are my favourite notes, if you’re curious.) 

Step 2: Choose five notes that relate to your first note (3 min)

Readwise syncs all my highlights to Evernote. I also take down thoughts and ideas I come up with day-to-day in a daily note (Roam Research users will be familiar with this concept).

I search up related terms and ideas in Evernote. I see what notes come up, then copy related snippets to my initial note, along with the internal links to the notes I found. 

This gets me to a total of 6 notes now.

Step 3: Bold/highlight your six notes (2 min)

I go through each of the 6 notes and bold/highlight parts I can use for the essay. I copy over any additional related snippets I find.

Step 4: Put the notes in a sequence that makes sense (2 min)

I’ll condense the snippets into the main idea of the essay and come up with a summary, thesis, or abstract. Here’s the difference between the 3:

• Summary — What the best bits/takeaways of the essay are 

• Thesis — What the essay is trying to prove/disprove

• Abstract — What the essay is about

That main idea will be the North Star I’ll use to keep my writing in scope as I expand on each point.

At this point, if I’m doing this with other people, I’ll share and get feedback on the main idea. For this first round of feedback, I want to know how compelling my ideas are and which ones are more compelling than the rest.

Step 5: Supplement your idea with additional notes (4 min)

I’ll look for another 1-2 notes to support each of the previous 6. Now I have 10-12 notes in total. 

Step 6: Create a short outline of your piece (5 min)

I re-organize the snippets into an outline. The outline is made up of 3 questions, sub-ideas, or arguments that support the main idea. I get feedback again, this time to vet how well I organize and deliver the idea to the reader. 

Step 7: Write a three-paragraph abstract of your piece (15 min)

I write 50 words for each of the 3 sections in the outline. That’s a total of 150 words for a 3-paragraph outline.

Step 8: Get writing (25 min)

At this point, I have…

• A clear idea of what I’m writing about

• An outline with all the notes, stories

• A list of supporting arguments I want to cover

• Feedback from peers to guide the angle of the essay. 

I spend the rest of the 2 hours coming out with the meat of the first draft. Finally, I copy whatever I have to Ulysses — my writing app of choice — and work on the piece there. 

CrossFit for Writing: The Balance Between Creativity & Structure

CF4W is a process of curious discovery. It strikes the perfect balance between creativity and having boundaries on that creativity. Like magic, you start with nothing and 2 hours later, end up with a draft that you can tweak, rewrite, and get feedback on for the rest of the week.

To publish 1 article or newsletter a week, all you have to do is go through the CF4W once a week. If you do this idea-generation on the weekend, then your limited weekday writing time is spent typing words on the screen, not stressing about what you want to write about.

For the perfectionists and obsessive optimizers out there, let me be clear: there’s no obligation to come up with a first draft. The process is meant to be a free, fun, and playful start to the writing process. It’s the best way to stress-test your note-taking system to see if you’ve taken enough notes during the week or not. It’s also a built-in review of your personal knowledge management to spot patterns, resurface ideas, and revisit notes.

And the best part? You don’t ever have to worry about having no ideas ever again.