A while back, I took on a blog writing challenge. I decided to write a blog and publish a blog post every single day for three months. I called that challenge the 90,000 Words in 90 Days Challenge.

1. Blog Writing: The Challenge

The premise of my blog writing challenge was fairly simple: write a quality blog post on any area within the discipline of personal development and post it on this blog before midnight – and to do so every single day for 90 days.

I planned for each article to be no less than a 1000 words. And if everything were to go as planned, I would have 90,000 words of content – or 90 blog posts – on this blog.

As you may have already guessed, this was a tremendous challenge. In fact, if you were to ask most writers or bloggers about writing and publishing, they’d tell you it’s nearly impossible to consistently produce quality articles every single day, let alone lead a balanced life while doing so.

But I beg to differ. (Read on to see what happened).

To start a blog, you need a hosting provider + blogging platform -disclosure: I will receive a commission if you use my links. The combo I recommend is Bluehost + WordPress. For my 4-step method to start a blog in 2019 (with pictures), see my post on how to start a blog.

2. Why Write a Blog for 90 days?

Here are my 6 reasons for taking up this challenge.

1. Results. I initially wanted to write 30 blog posts in 30 days, and although taking action every day for 30 days can do great things to your goals, I nevertheless want people to realize that to see concrete results in their health, finances, business, or writing, they need to practice their craft consistently, so 90 days seemed more appropriate.
2. Length of a season. 90 days is the length of a season. It’s a whole summer. And it’s a reasonable length of time for anyone to make substantial and measurable progress on any goal. In fact, in his famous book; On Writing, Stephen King writes, “The first draft of a book—even a long one—should take no more than three months.”
3. It’s hard. Is it possible to work on a goal consistently for 90 days? Statistics show that 25% or a quarter of people who chose to work on a target goal this year quit within the first week. More astonishingly 92% quit before achieving their goal, and only 8% of people who started on a goal achieved that goal within the year. So it’s really hard for the largest majority of people to stick to their goals and achieve them. This is what drove me to create systems that automate behavior, and I put them to the test in the next 90 days.
4. Grit Test. Speaking of tests! 90 days is an amount of time during which an awful lot of distractions can happen. If I don’t handle them intelligently and rely on the system I devised to work around those distractions, then I will get off track and miss my deadline and in which case I would fail at the challenge. So if you really want to test a system, give it 90 days, and you’ll know what it’s made of.
5. SEO. After reading a lot of SEO material and realizing that high traffic is correlated with publishing a lot of high quality content frequently (5 times a week), I thought that his challenge would help this blog rank on google and become easily available to those who search for self-empowerment and personal-development related questions. Keep in mind that when I took on this challenge (about 5 years ago) this blog was new; about a month old, and it didn’t yet have enough content (and was not indexed yet by google). So this challenge made sense from an SEO perspective too. See my 8 must-have blogging tools every blogger needs to use.
6. Inspire. Finally, by taking on this challenge, I wanted to inspire those who are struggling with writing a blog, or those who have even abandoned their blog. I wanted to encourage them to pick up their writing goals and give themselves a second chance.

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas A. Edison

One tool that could totally help you write effortlessly is Grammarly –disclosure: I will receive a commission if you use my links. Grammarly is a wonderful writing assistant that helps you compose bold, clear, and concise sentences. It checks the styling and structure of your writing to help you produce great material. I recommend them.

3. How did I Write a Blog Post Every Day?

This is how I wrote a blog post every day for 90 days without becoming a hermit:

• The night before: do the necessary keyword research so that my articles are optimized for both my readers and the search engine. I did this manually back then without the use of the software. I now use and pay for KWFinder – disclosure: I will receive a commission if you use my links.). To be honest, I wish I had used it back then. See my blogging resources for all the tools you can use if you want to write a blog.

• Daily routine: To be able to write consistently, I sat down to write three times per day as follows:

The first working time block was roughly two and a half hours starting at 5:30 am and usually lasted till about 8:00 am. This was followed by a second two-hour working time block around 10:30 am, and one last working time-block for an hour and a half in the afternoon.

My total work time was about 6 – 7 hours a day and amounted to about 40 – 45 hours a week. .

I should disclose to you that I have gone through extreme phases of writing in the past. See my personal story. But this is a unique challenge for me because I never had a deadline every single day for 90 days straight. So while I had to write a lot in my past writing assignments, I knew I could always get an extension if I really needed the extra time. But with this challenge, I don’t have that option. In this way, this is a completely new challenge for me and my plan was to take it day by day. I didn’t have all the answers but what I did have is a system I believed in.

Did I complete the challenge?

OF COURSE, I DID!

** For my tips on how to write a thesis in college, see my 8 tips for how to write a thesis in 30 days (bonus tip included).

4. What did I learn from Writing a Blog Post Every Single Day?

Here are my three key lessons.

4.1 Use The Right Blogging Tools from Day ONE

Let me first say that I estimate to have written a total of approximately of 120,000+ words in 90 days (and not just 90,000 words). To put this in perspective, consider the following average word count for:

M.A thesis: 50,000 words

Ph.D dissertation: 80,000 – 100,000 words.

Novel: 40,000 – 80,000

Yes. I’ve done a lot in 90 days. I’ve conquered this challenge. And I am not saying this to impress you. I am saying this to tell you that you too can take on massive challenges and conquer them.

The good:

My traffic spiked, my reader engagement went through the roof, and I had a lot of new subscribers. (For a tool that can help you grow your subscribers, and stay in touch with them through an amazing email platform, check out ConvertKit – disclosure: I will receive a commission if you use my links.)

Best thing about it, I was able to help others see that they too can take on massive writing challenges and conquer them.

The bad:

While I built a strong foundation for this blog, I later discovered that some of my posts were not fully SEO optimized. This is because I did not always use the proper keywords. And I didn’t use the proper keywords because I was writing for humans and not search engines…

If I were to go back, I would use a keyword research tool. It would have allowed me reach more people and increase organic traffic. I now use and pay for KWFinder (disclosure: I will receive a commission if you use my links).

4.2 Write Every day to Get in the “Zone”

To write prolifically, you need to practice your writing muscle. The more you get to write, the easier writing becomes.

To give you an example of this, let me share this quick story.

In the beginning of my writing career, I never thought that words could “flow” on a paper. I thought the word “flow” was just a nice poetic word to use to describe the process of writing, nothing more and nothing less. But having written a blog post every day for 90 days, I totally see what other great writers mean by “flow.”

See, once you train your writing muscles every day (and you get in the habit of writing), that muscle is now primed to be in the “zone” and do the heavy lifting. And it will take you less time to start feeling the “writer’s high” – so to speak.

The key thing is to do it every day until it sticks.

4.3 Use Systems to Automate the Writing Process

Many people drastically underestimate what they’re capable of accomplishing.

Les Brown says that “the richest place on earth is the graveyard. That’s where you will find unrealized dreams, talents, abilities, and goals.” And you can choose to take your dreams there…

The reality is that we can’t even begin to imagine how much we can actually do. The reason why we don’t always perform at our best is not because we don’t have what it takes, but because we are afraid. And the best way to overcome fear is to use systems. When you use a system, you know you need to take, let’s say, 5 actionable steps before the task is complete. And then all you have to do is go through the steps.

Your system need not be anything fancy. Your system can look like this:

1. Have coffee (or green tea) first thing in the morning and begin thinking about a topic – while sipping on a cup of coffee.
2. Recognize that there is no such thing as perfect writing.
3. Don’t create an outline. Writing is supposed to be fun. So just write.
4. Write a quick first draft.
5. Do some research, write some more, and put everything together.

For some of the strategies that I’ve personally tweaked and developed over the years and that I have used in this very challenge, see the following links:

• The Principle of No Thinking
• Energy Management System
• Cognitive Diffusion