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Passive income basically boils down to making money doing nothing. You put some time in, generated some content (web or otherwise), and then you continue to reap the benefits from that content even after you have ceased working on it.

Passive production can be defined in the same way. Passive production is the art of working on a project without actually devoting any time exclusively to it. The pro’s of passive production are numerous, including the ability to get far more things completed in a day, since you aren’t dedicating any specific block of time to your project. Your odds of having a unique and interesting thought pertaining to the subject matter go up significantly as well, as much more time passes between the first line being written and the last.

Passive production can be accomplished in a number of ways, and in this article I will cover a few.

1. Jot and save
My personal favorite, and what I typically use; Jot and save is exactly what it sounds like. You write small tidbits throughout the day, either on an existing project, on a new one, or just general thoughts. You aren’t devoting any time exclusively to producing the content you are slowly assembling, so your labor hours effectively goes to almost zero. The only time you will have to spend is piecing all the ideas together in to one coherent chunk of material.

I find Wordpad works well for this, when I am near a computer. When away from my desk or laptop, I like to carry a stack of index cards in my pocket. Index cards work better than notepaper as you will be less inclined to attempt to write more than a thought or two on an index card. The idea is not to spend a lot of time, at a time, on the project. Just a thought, a quick jot, and move on.

2. Voice memos
I personally do not like using this method. I have known people that it has worked well for, but I find it more of a chore to listen back to my notes than to read them. The mentality is the same here, though, as jot-and-save. Keep your ideas brief, no more than 3-4 seconds. A technical note, if you are using an old microcassette recorder, make sure you leave a few seconds of blank air between notes. Neglecting to have any space between ideas can make for some difficult reviewing later.

3. Journalize
I have found this method to work well, but just be rather impractical. The idea is that you carry around a journal, a notebook of some sort, all day. You constantly write in it, organizing your thoughts in to separate sections or pages for separate projects or articles you are writing. The difference between this and jot-and-save is that you would want to write as much as you could at any given time. A paragraph, a page, even the entire article.

This would still be classified as passive production, though, because you aren’t physically devoting any time to the work. You’re writing while waiting for dinner, or in traffic, or at the bus stop.

That’s about it for my Introduction to Passive Production. I am relatively new to this myself, so I will likely be expanding this article in to a series as I have more ideas and experiences to share.