I Wrote 5 Articles a Day for 6 Months
Courses won't save you. Books won't save you. The only shortcut is the one everyone ignores.
Five articles a day.
Every day.
For six months.
Completely unpaid.
No AI.
No templates.
No shortcuts.
That's 900 articles in 180 days.
Most people don't write 900 articles in their entire lives.
I did it before I turned 21.
This isn't a humblebrag.
I'm not going to tell you it was fun or inspiring or that I felt like a creative genius every morning.
Most days it sucked.
Some days I wanted to quit.
But I showed up anyway because I'd figured out something most people spend years avoiding.
Volume is the only shortcut that actually works.
By the time I was done, I was a full-time tech journalist.
I interviewed people in Silicon Valley.
I wrote stories that caused actual Google employees to stop work for two days.
I sat in White House press briefings taking notes next to reporters who'd been doing this for decades.
And none of it would have happened if I hadn't spammed some British tech journalist's Twitter replies until he thought I was funny enough to hire.
How to Get an Internship: Be Annoying
I didn't have connections. I didn't go to journalism school. I had a laptop and too much time.
So I found a tech journalist in the UK whose work I liked and started replying to everything he posted.
Not obnoxious stuff.
Just funny observations, relevant comments, the occasional well-timed joke.
I did this for weeks.
Eventually, he noticed.
We started talking.
He mentioned he needed help over the summer.
I asked if I could intern remotely.
He said yes.
That's it.
No resume.
No cover letter.
No formal application process.
Just consistent presence until I became impossible to ignore.
The catch was that this wasn't a hand-holding situation.
He needed content.
A lot of it.
Tech news moves fast, and his site needed constant updates to stay relevant.
If I wanted the internship, I had to produce.
Five articles a day.
Minimum.
I said yes before I really understood what I was agreeing to.
The First Week Was Hell
Day one, I sat down to write my first article and realized I had no idea what I was doing.
I'd written before.
School essays.
Some blog posts.
Nothing serious.
But writing five publishable articles in a single day is a completely different beast.
Each one needed to be researched, structured, edited, and posted.
And they had to be good enough that people would actually click on them.
The first article took me four hours.
The second took three.
By article five, it was midnight and I was staring at a half-finished draft about some Android update I barely understood.
I published it anyway.
The second day wasn't much better.
Neither was the third.
But by day seven, something shifted.
I started recognizing patterns.
I knew which sources to check first.
I could spot a good headline faster.
My fingers moved quicker across the keyboard.
I wasn't good yet.
But I was less bad.
What Volume Actually Does
Here's a universal truth I want you to internalise.
The first hundred reps don't make you better at the thing.
They make you better at showing up to do the thing.
That's the real skill.
Not writing.
Not sales.
Not design.
The skill is sitting down when you don't feel like it and doing it anyway.
After two weeks, writing five articles a day wasn't physically painful anymore.
My brain stopped fighting me every morning.
I'd built the habit.
And habits don't require motivation.
But somewhere around week six, something else happened.
I started getting good.
Not genius-level.
Not award-winning.
Just competent.
I could take a press release, find the actual story buried inside it, and turn it into something people wanted to read.
I could write a headline that worked.
I knew how to structure an article so it didn't fall apart halfway through.
Research backs this up, by the way.
Deliberate practice.
The kind where you're constantly working at the edge of your ability with feedback.
Actually Improves performance faster than any other method.
One study found that just two extra hours of structured practice improved coaching competency by 22% compared to people who only attended workshops.
In another analysis across multiple domains, high-volume deliberate practice accounted for significant improvements in skill, though the effect varied by field and experience level.
The key word is deliberate.
I wasn't just writing five articles a day.
I was getting feedback, fixing mistakes, and immediately applying what I learned to the next piece.
Every article was a rep.
Every rep made the next one easier.
By month four, I could write a solid 500-word article in under half an hour.
Not because I was smarter or more talented.
Because I'd done it 600 times.
The Results Nobody Expects
At 21, I became a full-time tech journalist.
This was despite the fact that I was still in college studying journalism at the time.
I didn’t get the job because I had a degree or because I knew the right people.
I got it because I had a portfolio of 900 articles and nobody could argue I didn't know how to do the work.
I started interviewing founders in Silicon Valley.
People building companies worth millions who were willing to talk to me because my articles were good enough to matter.
I wrote a story that exposed policies inside Google that employees were so pissed about, the company held internal town halls to address it and shut down work for 2 days.
Two full days of internal panic and shutdown because of something I wrote.
I sat in the White House press room.
Took notes next to journalists from the New York Times and Washington Post.
Asked questions at briefings.
The whole surreal experience.
None of that happens if I spend six months taking a writing course.
Or reading books about journalism.
Or watching YouTube videos about how to pitch editors.
It happens because I wrote 900 articles.
Why Everyone Ignores This
People love the idea of shortcuts.
Courses promise to get you rich beyond your wildest dreams in a matter of weeks.
Books claim to reveal secrets that will change everything.
Productivity systems offer to optimize your way to success.
And they all skip the same uncomfortable truth.
You can't think your way into skill.
You have to build it.
Rep by rep.
Day by day.
Through work that feels tedious and pointless until suddenly it doesn't.
Most people spend months "learning" and never start doing.
They watch courses and “motivational content” and feel productive without producing anything.
They read books and confuse understanding concepts with having ability.
I'm not saying courses are useless.
I'm saying they're not a substitute for volume.
You don't get good at sales by studying techniques.
You get good by making calls until you stop sucking at it.
You don't get good at design by watching tutorials.
You get good by designing 100 mediocre things until you finally make something decent.
You don't get good at writing by reading about writing.
You get good by writing a thousand bad sentences until you figure out how to write good ones.
The work itself is the teacher.
Everything else is just commentary.
What's Your Version?
My thing was articles.
Five a day.
Six months.
That was the volume that built my skill faster than anything else could have.
What's yours?
Maybe it's sales calls.
Twenty a day for 90 days.
By the end you'll know exactly how to open, handle objections, and close.
Maybe it's content.
One post every morning before work.
Three months of daily reps until your voice gets sharp and your ideas get clear.
Maybe it's outreach.
Fifty emails a week to people you want to learn from or work with.
Most will ignore you.
Some won't.
The ones who respond could change everything.
Maybe it's code.
One small project every weekend.
By the end of the year you'll have 52 projects and skills most developers spend five years building slowly.
The point isn't the specific number.
It's the commitment to volume that nobody else is willing to match.
Do This Next
Pick one skill that actually matters to where you want to go.
Not something that sounds impressive.
Not something you think you should do.
Something that will directly move you toward the outcome you want.
Decide on a daily number.
Make it uncomfortable but not impossible.
You should finish most days feeling tired, not destroyed.
Commit to 90 days.
No skipping.
No excuses.
No waiting until you feel motivated.
Track it somewhere visible.
A spreadsheet.
A calendar.
Wherever you'll see your streak and feel the weight of breaking it.
Then start.
Today.
Not Monday.
Not after you finish your current project.
Not when things calm down.
Today.
The only shortcut is the one everyone ignores.
Volume builds skill faster than anything else.
Now go do your reps.