Publishing one post at a time, from blank page to live article, every single time, is exhausting.
You sit down to write. First you need to do the research. Then you realise you haven’t got an outline. So you outline it. Then you write the draft. Then you need images. Then you format it in WordPress. Then you remember the meta description. Then you find the internal links. By the time you hit publish, you’ve switched tasks about eight times and you’re too tired to start the next one.
It’s exhausting just talking about it.
What does batch writing actually mean?
Batch writing means grouping the same type of task across multiple posts, rather than taking each post from start to finish before touching the next one.
Instead of: research post 1 → outline post 1 → write post 1 → edit post 1 → publish post 1 → repeat.
You do: research posts 1, 2, 3, and 4. Then outline posts 1, 2, 3, and 4. Then write all four drafts. Then edit and publish.
Same amount of work. Completely different experience — because your brain stays in one mode at a time instead of constantly shifting gears.
Why task-switching kills your output
Every time you switch from one type of task to another, your brain needs time to recalibrate. Researchers call this “task-switching cost” — the mental lag between finishing one thing and properly starting the next. Studies suggest it can eat up to 40% of productive time.
For bloggers, this plays out constantly. Research mode and writing mode use completely different mental muscles. Editing mode and creative mode are almost opposites. Formatting is pure admin. Trying to do all of them in one session isn’t just inefficient — it’s the reason sessions end with half a draft, a half-researched keyword, and a vague sense that nothing got done.
When I was building Planet Houseplant in 2019, I stumbled onto batching by accident. Some weeks I’d spend a whole session just going down keyword research rabbit holes. Other weeks I’d sit down and write three drafts back to back. I didn’t have a name for it. I just noticed those sessions felt better — more flow, less friction, more words at the end of them.
Eventually I started doing it deliberately. Batching by task type became the default, and it’s stayed that way ever since.
The various phases of a batch writing workflow
Do these in whatever order you like. Even publishing. Sometimes articles just wander into my head, so I write them, publish them (may as well let them rank) than go back and optimise later.
What can (and should) be batched will vary depending on where you’re at with your site.
Research
This is keyword research, competitor checks, People Also Ask mining, and populating your article notes. You’re not writing anything yet — you’re just gathering. Do this for a batch of four to ten posts in one go. Hell, do the entire site.
I use my Notion content database for this. I can click the title of the article and it brings up a page that I can dump random thoughts, notes and links into. There are separate fields for keywords, links, all that stuff. I adpat it as i go – when Claude first built it it had WAY too many fields. I can always add more as I need them
If you love to plan, this is a great activity because you get all the dopamine from planning whilst also building your article.
Outlining
Take your research notes and turn them into structured outlines — H2s, H3s, the rough shape of each article.
I do these directly in WordPress and it’s my least favourite but my god it’s awesome for productivity.
Before a sprint, I get titles, meta descriptions, slugs, H2s and 3s all in the article. I’ve accidentally published them, and had them rank. That’s not a tip or a hack, just a…something that’s happened.
Writing
Now you write the drafts. Just the words — no formatting, no fussing with images, no stopping to check if the slug looks right. Your only job is getting the content down. First drafts are supposed to be rough.
Images
When I’m writing about houseplants, I tend to get photos as i go along. If I realise I need a picture of an aerial root attaching to a moss pole I juts quickly get up and snap it, air drop to my Mac, add to Canva, resize, export, import, done.
It takes no more than five minutes and is fine for certain articles. However, when you’re starting out, go and take a load of relevant pictures. Before starting my Pothos site, I went and took a load of pictures of my pothos, got them all in Canva, exported, import to WordPress, ready to grab whenever.
Take a look at your content plan and take 50 photos that may be useful. If you’re thinking ‘there’s no way I can think of 50 shots’ then we’ll go to 30. Find 10 things you can take a photo of, and take a close up, medium, and far away picture. Done.
How to run a batch writing session to prepare for a sprint in practice
Let’s assume you currently don’t have a website but have a niche. This is how I would get from 0 to 30 posts batching content
Start with a day off and get this ticked off:
Then we work in these batches:
- Monday: Research and outline 5 posts. 20 minutes per article
- Tuesday: Write 3 articles
- Wednesday: Write 2 articles
- Thursday: Add images and relevant internal links (I do external links as I write)
- Friday: Finish off what you didn’t complete
Repeat 5 times.
When I’m starting a new website, I typically do a few hours on a weekend too, but I appreciate that I’ve been doing this a long time and have a lot of free time.
For more on structuring your sessions, How to Build a Blogging Routine That Actually Works covers exactly how to assign tasks to time slots so you’re never sitting down without knowing what you’re doing.
What to batch beyond just writing
Writing is the obvious one, but batching works across almost every blogging task.
Featured images: Create your Canva template once, then duplicate it and swap the text for each post in the batch. Takes a fraction of the time it would take to design each one individually. (This is exactly how the featured images on this site are made.)
Meta descriptions: If you hate writing meta descriptions — and most people do — do them all in one go at the end. They’re much easier to write when the article is already done and you can just summarise what’s in it.
Internal links: Once a cluster of posts is published, go through and add internal links across the whole group in one pass rather than hunting for link opportunities every time you publish something new.
Pinterest pins: Rather than creating and scheduling pins post by post, batch them once you have four or five articles published. Design them all in one Canva session, write the descriptions in one go, and schedule them together.
None of these individually save enormous amounts of time. Together, they add up significantly — and more importantly, they remove the mental overhead of constantly switching between types of work.
How many posts should you batch at once?
There’s no single right answer, but a practical upper limit is around ten.
More than that and your WordPress drafts page starts to look chaotic, it gets harder to keep track of where each post is in the process, and the whole thing starts to feel overwhelming rather than efficient.
I work in batches grouped by category. Writing all the articles in one topic cluster together means the research overlaps naturally, you’re thinking about the same subject across multiple posts, and internal linking at the end is much easier because you already know what exists.
If ten feels too ambitious, start with three or four. The batch size matters less than building the habit of thinking in phases rather than post by post.
The one thing that makes batching possible
A content plan.
You can’t batch-research four posts if you don’t know which four you’re writing next. You can’t batch-outline a cluster if you haven’t decided what the cluster is.
This is why content planning comes before everything else — and why, if you haven’t built yours yet, How to Build a Blog Content Plan is worth doing before you dive into batching. The content plan is what turns batching from a vague good idea into something you can actually execute this weekend.
What about when you just want to write one post?
Batching is a tool, not a rule.
Oh my god…is that going to be the title of my book? Wow, you heard it here first.
Some days you’ll have one specific article you want to write and you’ll just write it. Some days you’ll be in a flow state and batch three drafts without planning to. Some days you’ll do fifteen minutes of keyword research and call it a session.
All of that is fine. The point of batching isn’t to lock yourself into a rigid system — it’s to reduce friction and make the most of the time you do have. Use it when it serves you. Don’t when it doesn’t.
What it’s especially good for: early on, when you need to build a content bank quickly and momentum matters more than perfection. A 30-day sprint in the early days — batching your way through as many articles as you can — will do more for your blog than a year of one-post-at-a-time publishing. You can always go back and improve articles later. You can’t get that early traction without the content being there first.
Frequently asked questions
What is batch writing for bloggers?
Batch writing means grouping the same type of blogging task across multiple posts — doing all your research at once, then all your outlines, then all your drafts — rather than taking each post from start to finish before moving to the next. It reduces task-switching and makes sessions more focused.
How many blog posts should I write in a batch?
Anywhere from three to ten is a practical range for most bloggers. Fewer than three and you don’t get much benefit from the batching. More than ten and it gets hard to keep track of where everything is. Start with a batch of four if you’re new to it.
Can I batch write if I only have short windows of time?
Yes — batching actually suits short sessions well because each phase is contained. A 30-minute research session, a 30-minute outlining session, and two 45-minute writing sessions will get you a finished draft without ever needing a long uninterrupted block. See How to Find Time to Blog With a Full-Time Job for more on making short sessions work.
Do I have to publish posts in the order I write them?
No. Write in whatever order feels natural or logical for research purposes, and publish in whatever order makes sense for your content plan and internal linking. They don’t have to match.
Is batch writing the same as a content sprint?
Related but slightly different. A content sprint is a concentrated burst of output — writing as much as possible in a short time. Batch writing is a method for how you work through that output efficiently. You can do a sprint without batching, but batching makes sprints much more productive.
→ Next up: How to Deal With Blogger Burnout Before It Happens — because producing a lot of content fast is great, right up until it isn’t.