Lifestyle columns are forgiving to write. A slow morning, a wardrobe clear-out, a better approach to Sunday evenings — the material sits close at hand and the first draft usually reads perfectly well. That is the trap. A column can be warm, observant and completely useless, and nobody will tell you, because readers who learn nothing rarely write in to say so.
The checks below are the ones worth running before you file. They take ten minutes and they catch most of the padding while it is still fixable. Read them as an editor would, not as the person who wrote the thing.
Can You Name the Reader's Problem in a Single Sentence?
If you cannot say what the reader arrives with, you are probably writing a diary entry with a headline attached. Vague territory produces vague columns: "reclaiming your evenings" could mean anything. The hour between closing your laptop and cooking dinner, and the way it slips into scrolling, is something a reader can recognise and act on.
Try drafting the sentence in this shape: This is for someone who ______ and wants ______. If the first blank comes back empty, the column has no reader in mind. If the second is empty, it has no purpose. Neither is fatal at draft stage, but both need fixing before publication.
Is There Anything Here Only You Could Have Written?
The blunt test: could a competent writer assemble this piece from the first page of search results? If yes, the column is furniture. It fills space, it reads fine, and there is no reason for anyone to remember it.
Originality in a lifestyle column rarely means a new idea. It usually means a specific one. Not "we should all slow down" but the particular Tuesday you noticed you had eaten lunch standing at the counter three days running, and what you changed afterwards.
The swap test
Replace your name with another columnist's. If the piece reads exactly the same, it isn't yours yet. Go back for the detail only you would have noticed: the room, the time, the thing you tried that failed.
Does It Give the Reader Something to Do?
Not every column needs a five-step plan. Permission and reframing can be genuinely useful — telling a reader they are allowed to leave the washing-up until morning is a form of service. But the piece still has to land somewhere.
Ask what a reader could do differently by Thursday. "Be more mindful" hands them nothing. "Leave your phone in the hallway when you get in" is small, testable and specific. Small and testable beats ambitious and vague every time.
If the column ends on a feeling rather than a possibility, add one concrete thing: a question to ask themselves, a habit to try for a week, a sentence they could say out loud to a friend.
Does the Advice Survive an Ordinary Week?
Most lifestyle advice is written for a calm week, by someone having one. Test yours against a bad one. What happens on the day the reader is ill, skint, overtired, or facing three deadlines and a school run?
Advice that requires a good night's sleep, an empty calendar and a tidy kitchen isn't advice; it's a description of a life most readers don't have. If the habit depends on perfect conditions, say so, and offer the smaller version. "Do the ten-minute version when you're wrecked" is worth more than a flawless routine nobody can keep.
Have You Been Honest About the Costs and Limits?
Readers can tell when a column is hiding something. If the routine takes forty minutes, don't call it quick. If the experiment lasted a fortnight, don't imply it changed your life. What didn't work is often the most useful part of the piece.
Be especially careful with health, money and legal subjects. Describe what you did rather than prescribing what others should do, avoid presenting one person's experience as a rule, and point readers towards a GP, a qualified financial adviser or a solicitor where the stakes are real. A personal column is not the place for medical or financial instruction.
The Pre-Filing Checklist
Run through this with the draft open in front of you. Answer honestly. A single "no" is a note to yourself, not a reason to scrap the column.
- I can name the reader and the problem in one sentence.
- The opening paragraph contains a specific detail, not a generality.
- There is at least one idea here that isn't on every similar site.
- A reader could do something different within a week.
- The advice works in a bad week, not only a good one.
- I've said what the change actually costs in time, money or effort.
- I've admitted what didn't work.
- Any claim about health, money or law is framed as personal experience, with a nudge towards proper advice.
- The middle section earns its place; nothing is repeated in different words.
- The ending leaves the reader with something to hold, not a summary of what they have just read.
What to Do When a Piece Fails Several Checks
Don't panic, and don't publish it as it stands. Most failed columns can be rescued with one move: cut the first two paragraphs. Openings in lifestyle writing tend to be throat-clearing, and the real piece usually starts on paragraph three, with the detail you were nervous about including.
Then rewrite for one reader. Not "people who struggle to switch off", but a friend you can picture, with their week, their kitchen, their six o'clock.
Sometimes the honest answer is that the idea is a paragraph, not a column. Keep it in a notes file and let it grow, or fold it into something larger later. A column that does three small things well beats one that gestures at eight things vaguely.
Finally, keep a short list of the pieces you were proud of and ask what they had in common. That answer will serve you better than any checklist, including this one.
Photo: StockSnap / Pixabay
