Hello Reader,
I'm looking out the window of my hotel room and all I can see are the buildings within half a block of where I am. Everything else is wrapped in fog, and it's hard to imagine what's behind that thick white barrier.
Every so often I get to tag along to one of my husband's work conferences. Right now we're in Devonport, Tasmania, a place I've never been before.
I used to go to plenty of conferences of my own when I was a Chief Information Officer, and they were often exhausting. Lots of people, lots of meetings and presentations, always a ton to absorb in a very short space of time. I'd try to plan ahead so I knew which sessions to catch and who to find. But I always left room for serendipity too, the unexpected chat in the lunch queue or with whoever sat next to me as the room filled up. I enjoyed those moments, and I was always glad when it was over.
These days I get to skip the meetings. I'll work in the morning from the hotel room, then head out in the afternoon and explore. Over the years I've found that wandering a neighbourhood on foot, or catching a local bus, is the best way to get a feel for a place. Ripping through in a car, means that you miss all the nuances of the place.
So in a couple of hours I'll want to go out and look around, but there's this fog. However I choose to nosy about, I'm going to see less than I normally would.
And it can be like that with your writing business too.
When there's too much on, a deadline here, an invoice there, three pitches half-written, you can only see as far as the next task in front of you. Where you're heading, what could be easier, the second income stream you keep meaning to build, all of it disappears into the fog of just keeping up.
You don't clear that by trying to see everything at once. You clear it one patch at a time. You take the one job you do over and over, the one you could do in your sleep, and you hand it to a system so you stop carrying it.
So this week, name the one task you'd hand off first if you knew how. Just the one. The onboarding email you retype for every client, the invoice you rebuild from scratch, the follow-up you keep meaning to send. Notice how often you do it and how much of your time it quietly eats. That's the first patch of fog to clear.
Start with one patch
Here's a small one to begin with. Take the three emails you send most often, the onboarding note for a new client, the project kickoff, the gentle invoice nudge, and save them as templates in your inbox. Gmail and Outlook both do it for free. Two minutes to set up, then it's a click instead of a rewrite, every time.
In Gmail, go to Settings (the gear icon), then See all settings, then Advanced, turn on Templates and Save. Open a new email, write the one you send over and over, click the three dots at the bottom right, choose Templates, then Save draft as template. Next time it's three dots, Templates, click.
In Outlook, open a new email, click Apps (or the three dots) and choose My Templates, then the plus to add one, write your email and Save. After that, one click drops it into any message.
That's one job off your plate and out of the fog. Once it feels normal, pick the next patch.
Highlight of the week
This week's episode is "Self-Publishing Success: A Practical Guide for Aspiring Authors," with Dr Rhonda Lawson. If you make your living with words, a book of your own is one of the clearest ways to turn what you already know into an asset that keeps earning. Rhonda covers the practical side of doing it yourself, what's actually involved, what to expect, and where people tend to get stuck. Worth a listen if a book has been sitting on your someday list.
Have a listen here.
And that's it for this week.
Hope you have a lovely weekend.
Trudy (and Treasa)
P.S. The hardest part of handing work off isn't the tools, it's knowing where to start. That's the foggy bit.
Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz (affiliate link) is the book that helps you see through it. It walks you through which jobs to offload or automate first, so the work keeps moving without you touching every piece of it.
For a writer that means hours back, the ones you can put towards the writing that actually grows your income. Practical, easy to read, and the sort you'll act on before you reach the end.
