The Ultimate Hack: There Are No Hacks

I think one of the most evergreen content topics is the convergence of productivity hacks, tech stacks, and using AI to “enhance” your content ideation, production, and even editing.

Well, it is time for me to weigh in on this. As a full-time content writer with hundreds upon hundreds of published articles under my belt (I really need to get a solid count), I am as reputable a source of information as anyone. And unlike the guys who blast your inbox and call you bro or bruv, I actually make money on the internet.

Here’s the cold, hard truth: there are no hacks. None. Sure, there are a few simple systems to help you catch major errors, but that’s about the extent of it.

Why Is Everyone Looking For A Shortcut?

Okay, so why is everyone always looking for a shortcut?

To be brutally honest, they are looking for shortcuts because they don’t want to actually do what it takes to be a creative, which is creation. And creation is a messy business.

See, people aren’t really interested in doing things that will make you think harder, work harder, or really challenge yourself.

No, they want to game the system by creating shoddy trash that is either just good enough to suffice or appears good enough to con the gatekeepers.

What do I mean by this?

The gatekeepers are anyone who is the party responsible for being a threshold to entry for whatever it is you want to do. It might be the marketing director. Or the CEO. But there is always a gatekeeper. And you can probably fool them once or twice, depending on how busy they are. See, these busy types are really looking for one thing above everything else: time.

They need someone to create a little more margin in their life. This is how you can really rake in the fat paydays if you understand this and are willing to capitalize on it.

But you have to be good enough to demand those fat stacks. If you suck, you will be found out and replaced.

And here’s the deal: we are all greedy to some extent. Adding clients is like a drug. It is easy to get hooked, and it is really easy to overextend yourself when the clients are rolling in. So creators will get overextended and look for ways to ease the burden and maintain their entire swelling client load. Guess what: they can’t. And they are headed for disaster by adding more work to their plate and relying on hacks to compensate.

My Own Experience With “Productivity Hacks”

The beauty of this article is that I come to you from a place of personal experience. I know about the bogusness of hacks and hacking because I have tried them. Here are a few personal anecdotes.

Voice Dictation

Okay, so voice dictation was one that I wanted to work out so badly. And there for a while, I really thought it would. See, it usually takes me a good 3-5 hours to hammer out a rough draft, depending on how technical it is and how much research is involved and needs to be annotated.

Google Docs has a handy voice dictation feature that works especially well on the mobile app when coupled with earbuds. Okay, well, let’s quantify what “works really well.”

It works really well in the sense that it puts a lot of words and letters down on a page. But as to whether they were the correct words and letters? That is a total crapshoot.

My thinking was that it would take my draft time down to about an hour (it did), and then I could just double up on proofreading. The problem was that even after two or three proofreading sessions, it was still full of errors. And I got called on it a couple of times by clients who were not complainers.

Ideation And Outline Work With AI

This is one of my favorites. See, I thought that I could just use it to come up with some ideas for my content calendar. Then I thought, “Hey, these aren’t terrible. Let’s have it write up an outline for a blog post. After all, AI won’t be doing the actual writing. I am!”

It was awful. Like, really awful. My editor, who is really great, was like, “Hey, if you are going to use AI for the headings, can you at least massage them to sound better.”

Just like the voice dictation disaster, using ChatGPT to build article outlines flopped terribly.

And why?

Because they sound just like a robot wrote them. They are flat and sound like a non-human was doing creatives. And that is correct.

Look, maybe for some small things, it is a valuable tool, but its voice and tone are awful. Just admit it: after a couple of months of using it out of curiosity, you knew it wasn’t living up to the hype.

ChatGPT Isn’t Taking Your Job Unless You’re Bad At It

Here’s the good news: ChatGPT will not take your job unless you suck at it already. But what it is doing is tempering with your skills as a writer. See, every time you outsource your thinking skills to a machine, they atrophy just a little bit.

Do you remember Sandler’s movie “Click”? Where he has a magic remote control and starts fast-forwarding through the parts of life that he thinks are benign?

Well, in the end, his wife leaves him, he destroys his relationship with his loving father, and his children despise him because he skipped through so much of his life. He was living on autopilot, and it bit him on the butt in the long run.

That’s exactly what’s happening with your brain when you rely on AI to come up with endless content prompts or edit your work.

And here’s a hot take: the same with Grammarly. Yep. I have used Grammarly Premium for the past three years, thinking I was investing in myself. Nope. Instead, I was relying on it as a crutch to replace my own skills. And you know what? When you follow the same suggestions as everyone else, your writing sounds like everyone else.

Parting Thoughts

I was initially hesitant to use ChatGPT in my work, and I’m glad of that. But over time, I got busy, and I got sloppy. I start to use hacks like AI and voice dictation to optimize productivity. Instead, it just watered down the quality of my work, and I ended up taking more time to fix it all than what it would have taken just to do it right the first time.

Many such cases.

So, there are no hacks. But here’s where it gets good: your competition is probably lazy. If you are willing to put in the work, you will just outlast them. It’s not easy, and it’s not fast, but it will happen. Force of will is a powerful thing, so just accept it, embrace it, and do it.

Like what I have to say? Need to nail down your long-form game? Or have a blog that needs work or is performing poorly or outdated? Smash that Calendly link, and let’s talk.