200,000 words later
Over the last 12 months, I have published more than 50,000 words of nerd processors: data stories, musings about AI, and workplace reflections. But the weekly nerd processor newsletter is only about 25% of the words I have published over the last year.
Since March 2024, I estimate that I have published more than 200,000 words in the context of my professional life. This includes weekly nerd processors, email courses, research papers for Textio, blogs for Operator Collective, media pieces, social posts, and more. This is a lot of writing! This does not include 40,000 words of a book I have in progress, nor the uncountably many private messages I have written.
This week, I've run the numbers on all this writing: 1) what it takes for me to produce all this stuff and 2) what the words do for me.
An hour is worth a thousand words
Data collection and analysis aside, it typically takes me about 30 minutes to write a first draft for nerd processor, and another 30 minutes to make charts. I know this sounds fast (and no, I don't use AI).
It's true that I am a fast writer, but I'm also not too precious about my rough drafts. I count on a structured revision process to turn my crappy first drafts into pieces I'm willing to publish. For nerd processor, I typically spend about as much time revising as I do writing the first draft. In all, I spend about two hours actually producing the 700-1000 words of text and charts you see every week (again, not counting data work).
Not everything has to be at the same quality bar
For nerd processor, I spend about the same amount of time drafting and revising, but for other kinds of writing, the ratio is different. For LinkedIn posts, for example, I typically spend about five minutes drafting a post and 30 seconds doing a basic proofread before publishing. If I catch an issue later on, I'm more than happy to use the edit button.
For higher-stakes writing, I spend significantly more time revising than drafting. For instance, drafting Viral Data Stories 101 took me 18 hours in total. Since I charge money for the course, it's important that the quality is very high, so I spent another 70 hours revising the content before publishing, or 4x longer revising than drafting.
For the book I'm currently writing, so far I've spent 9x more time revising than drafting, and I'm not even close to done!
What are words for (when no one listens anymore)
I write pathologically. Given the choice between having a meeting and typing words back and forth over the internet, I choose the latter. When I was Textio's CEO, I sent way too many words to my team. I agree with what Steven Sinofsky has famously said: writing is thinking.
All this to say that I might be writing this much even if no one ever read it. But people do read it, or at least a good portion of it. Which makes me wonder, for everything I publish, what is it doing for me professionally? What opportunities is it creating?
Multi-touch attribution: A riddle for the ages
Some of my writing is on a bigger stage than the rest. When I write a major media piece or publish Textio's annual feedback research, thousands of people read it on day one. It drives huge follow-up coverage. I can and do quantify the impact of this work by answering questions like: How many Textio customers engage? How many new leads does it attract?
It's not just the big stuff, though. Everything I write in public has downstream impact on me personally. For instance, these are all things that have happened in the last 12 months as a result of my writing:
Sometimes people explicitly refer to one piece of writing when they reach out, like "I took your viral data stories course and I want to have a workshop for my team," or "I saw your nerd processor series on startup performance, want to talk about our COO role?"
But much more often, people reach out because they've come across my work more than once, like all these real examples from the last few months:
- "I read your Operator Collective blog and I subscribe to nerd processor. Would you advise my company?"
- "I loved the Textio ChatGPT Writes series and all the stuff you wrote about AI last year. Would you consider [AI product exec job] at [big company]?"
- "I follow you on LinkedIn and I liked your team success hacks course. Can I become a coaching client?"
In fact, of the last 50 people who have contacted me with a business opportunity based on my writing, 42 of them have cited multiple pieces of my work rather than just one.
The bottom line: Most of my business opportunities don't come from just one single piece of content. Rather, they come from the whole combination of stuff I publish. If you're betting on writing (or video) to build your professional reputation, this is likely to be true for you too. Assess the impact of your writing like it's a business, because it is.
Kieran
I've coached dozens of leaders on how to use content to build their professional reputations. Join my summer 2025 waitlist!
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