Are You a Word-Wrangler or Chef Idea Officer?

For most of my 30s, I worked as a Word Wrangler. I woke every morning at 6 am and spent an hour or two gunning for a set word-count.

Fueled on coffee and house music, I pushed myself to write until I reached the magical 1,000/1,0000 words in apps like Scrivener. I also tracked my daily output in a fancy Google Sheet and gave myself fun little writing challenges to beat each week.

Hit 10,000 words this week? Congrats Bryan, you can buy a gadget from your Amazon wishlist. Missed it? No Bose headphones for you.

My word-wrangling early morning writing routine worked nicely for a few years. I published over 1,000 blog posts and wrote half a dozen books, all while working a corporate gig. My blog posts attracted eyeballs from Google and I built a nice little business on the back of the mighty display ad with a sprinkle of affiliate revenue as a bonus. I sold thousands of books, too.

I was hardly the only creative who earned or hit a goal based on an arbitrary daily word count. The now-defunct NaNoWriMo showed many creators they could knuckle down and write the damn book.

Writing the damn book is hard. Everyone says they’ve got a great idea for a book; far fewer get the words out. But writing a book isn’t so hard if you wrangle out a few words every day. Anyone can wrangle a few words a day. I even coached a group of aspiring authors at one point about a concept that word wranglers love:

On Little Writing:
Write a little every day.
Turn up early and often.
You only need 15 minutes to write 300 words.
300 words a day equals 2100+ words a week.
Some days you’ll write more, some days less.
You can take Sundays off.
That’s 8000+ words a month.
That’s 50,000+ words in six months.
And that’s a draft for an entire book.
All from 15 minutes a day.

Word-wrangling and little writing still work. If you want to create like this, here’s the word-count tracker my clients and I used. No charge.

Creating this way today is like mounting a horse while the person next to you climbs into a Ferrari. AI is changing how creatives are tearing around the online world.

I don’t gun for a daily word-count today. And, with a few exceptions, nor should you. Large language learning models like Claude and ChatGPT can generate words faaaaar faster than anyone can speak, let alone type.

They only take a microsecond to predict that banana follows apple… Magic! Love or fear them, LLMS are forcing creatives to rethink how to get from A to B. To say otherwise is to ignore the revving Colombo engine next to your prize stallion.

But…

AI often spits out content that’s boring, generic or flat-out wrong. Think of using AI as like nerdy friend who’s read every book but never actually cooked a meal.

The quality of an LLM output depends on your prompts and ideas. Unlike creators, LLMs can’t experience the moment you held your first child or what an atom-splitting hangover. You say 5 pints of Guinness and your fav LLM is unlikely to spit out 400mg of Ibuprofen.

Enter the Chief Idea Officer.

They don’t care about daily word count or plugging numbers in a spreadsheet. Instead, they document stories from their personal life or businesses. They document their ideas, experiences, and how they help customers and clients. They use these as fuel for creative work.

A Chef Idea Officer cares more about the quality of their ideas and offers than an arbitrary word count. Once they know the route, they’ll employ AI to get there x100. They won’t accept everything AI says, but they will use it to hone their best work.

Now, the Chef Idea Officer role isn’t for everyone. If you enjoy hammering on a keyword and creating something tap by tap, stick with word wrangling. AI isn’t for you if you’re writing literary fiction or poetry. I’ve read a few short stories generated by AI and their pastiche trash.

But if you’re in the business of turning ideas into products and helping clients, slip into the Chef Idea Officer role. Chances are you’ve a limited amount of white space every day, so why not use AI to accelerate what you come up with? You create far more in a month than was possible in a year. You’ll serve more clients and customers, too.

Here’s one example from my business. As a Chief Idea Officer, I can outline, draft, and polish a 2,000-word article in under an hour, compared to spending a day or two acting like a Word Wrangler. That frees me up to work with clients and earn more… or take the rest of the day off to train for personal goals like a personal best in a marathon.

If you want to become a Chef Idea officer, check out PromptWritingStudio. Inside, I teach proven frameworks and prompts you can use to free yourself from word wrangling.