23 content hacks I swear by. Steal my secret list.

_{Day 121/100}

Hey—It's Tim. 

My brain’s leaking shortcuts.

Twenty three of them.
None polite.
All field-tested on my own keyboard, wrists, and ego.

Skim, steal, ignore, remix.

Just promise me you’ll try at least one before lunch.

Research & Idea Mining

• Swipe Blind. Once a week, scroll your Chrome history backwards. Mine the pages you forgot you visited. Past-you was curious for a reason; present-you just found a fresh angle.
  

• Podcast Answer-Hunt (Rebuilt)
  Drop your target keyword into Podscribe’s search. It surfaces exact moments guests answer that query. Clip their wording, react to it, embed the snippet—instant expert seasoning.
  

• Slack Grave-Digging
  Search in:random "how do we" across your company Slack. The half-answered employee questions are gold-dust topic starters consumers also Google—but nobody’s published.
  

• Google Lens Roulette
  Snap a trending meme with Lens. Follow the “visually similar” trail until you land on a niche blog using the same template. It’s a great way to find new sites, and new inputs.

Drafting & Writing

• Two-Tab Drafting. Tab 1 = where you write. Tab 2 = nothing but the delete key pressed down. Copy-paste any sentence that feels safe into Tab 2 and watch it vanish. The leftovers are spicy enough.
  

• The “Ctrl+F Liar” Test. Search your draft for “very”, “really”, “actually”. Each one marks a sentence that doesn’t believe itself. Re-write or kill it.
  

• Dictate at 1.25x speed. Talk too fast for comfort, transcribe, then edit. Your brain outruns self-censorship and weird phrasing sneaks in—exactly what makes it human.
  

• Metaphor Roulette
  Spin RandomWord.com, force-fit that word into your concept. Example: yesterday “pollen” → “SEO spores—light, sticky, built to travel.” Readers remember metaphors; algorithms remember nothing.
  

• Guilty-Pleasure Draft Break
  Read your doc backwards to catch weird wording. You read the words forward but the sentences backwards. Trust me on this. It helps.

Editing & Polish

• Keyword Karaoke. Read your piece aloud, but every time you hit a primary keyword you must sing it. Feels dumb; exposes stuffed phrases faster than any plugin.
  

• Whitespace Tax. Add an empty line after every 40 words, then remove lines that don’t earn the breathing room. Strips padding, keeps pace.
  

• Emoji Red Pen. Swap traditional inline comments with one emoji:
  💀 = delete,
  ✂️ = trim,
  🔥 = keep.
  🌶️ = spice this up.
  Faster feedback loops keep momentum.
  Feedback stays visceral, revisions stay high-tempo.
  (I’m thinking about adding this as an editing mode in the new Penfriend editor. Thoughts?")
  

• Screenshot Shrink-Test. Zoom out to 25% and capture the page. If the layout looks like a legal doc, redesign before readers bounce.

Distribution & Engagement

• ‘Wrong Platform’ Teasers
  Post a carousel chopped into one PNG on Twitter—rage comments about “can’t swipe on X” juice reach. First reply links the real thing.
  

• Inbox Easter Egg
  Mid-email: “P.S. Reply with ✨ for a surprise.” Anyone who does gets a quick reply to any content question.
  Replies train spam filters + builds superfans in 15 sec. You should do it. Be a super fan.
  

• 5-Day Subject-Line Encore
  Resend the email after 120 hrs to non-openers, but swap the subject to its opposite emotion (curiosity → fear, fear → hope). +10–15% net opens for free.
  

• Content-Debt Wednesday
  Block 30 min every Wednesday to update one high-traffic post’s stats or screenshots.
  Tiny habit; compounds into evergreen authority while others let posts rot.
  

• Dead-Link Harvest
  Run Ahrefs broken-links report on sites linking to outdated sources in your niche. Offer your fresh post as the replacement same day. Conversion rate > cold outreach because you’re fixing their UX.

Automation & Workflow

• Kitchen-Timer
  Keep a cheap, ticking dial timer on your desk. Just have one.
  For me, at least, a physical thing I can hit when the timer is done is so much more satisfying that an app.
  

• Analog Clicker Dopamine
  Those hand-held tally counters bouncers use? Click once every time you finish a micro-task (paragraph, Loom reply, bug ticket). The ca-chunk sound is a cheap serotonin dispenser—and a physical log you can’t ignore.
  
  Mine is at 28 today. It’s been a good one.
  

• Chrome Combo: Copytables + Sheets
  Install Copytables → right-click any web table (SERP features, pricing grids, Reddit polls) → paste straight into Google Sheets. Raw data turns into chart-ready hooks before competitors even notice the numbers.
  

• Chrome Booster: Video Speed Controller
  With this extension every YouTube, Loom, or course player gets 1.1×–3× hotkeys. Consume three “industry webinars” on your lunch break, mine them for quotes, ship a recap thread before happy hour.
  

• Chrome Shortcuts: Auto Text Expander
  Program five keystroke macros: ;pov pastes a POV tweet template, ;cta drops your newsletter footer sans links (avoids spam filters), ;bk spits a backlink-request skeleton. Saves hours, feels like cheating.

That’s the toolbox. If a trick saves you ten minutes, buy yourself a pastry and tell me which one did the damage.

If a trick backfires, tell me faster - I’ll rim-shot it off the list.

Screenshots of clickers, timers, or Chrome set-ups are extremely welcome.

✌️ Tim "Ca-Chunk" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

Same brain, different platforms: X, Threads, LinkedIn.

P.S. That easter egg one is real. First 10 get videos.

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