Welcome to Notes From Natty - our standing Friday morning coffee date (inbox style of course) where you get a weekly writing tip, a round up of the latest at Natty Writes and Friday Finds and Faves that I simply canāt gatekeep. Grab your cup (Iāve got mine āļø) & letās dig in ā¬ļø
Hey hey, First name / friend!
As youāre reading this, Iām vacationing in Cabo and one of my besties gets married tomorrow (EEEK!) so naturally my celebration heart is at a level 10, but being on vacation reminded me of something I overheard while working at my co-working space last weekā¦
I was working away, just doing my thing when I overheard a girl that works at a cruise line calling customers to confirm bookings for 2024.
And Iām not talking early 2024 - some of these were for summer and beyond.
I love to vacation and I would consider planning extensive trip itineraries as one of my personal hobbies, but I donāt think Iāve ever planned a vacation more than a year in advanceā¦ except maybe for my destination wedding.
It made me think though that people intentionally plan vacations YEARS in advance, but when it comes to business or our careers, we donāt always hold the same mentality.
Why is that? Iām not sure that I have an answer, but it made me stop for a minute and reconsider the way that I think about my business and how I want to plan for it.
I donāt want the things that I accomplish to happen by chance, so I decided to take inventory of the things I wrote down in January and actually create a PLAN for them.
Too often, weāll create big goals for ourselves at the beginning of the year, but when life gets busy, itās easy to get caught up in the day to day without looking up to make sure youāre taking daily action on the right things.
The story goes like this:
āYou can quickly grasp the important difference between the two if you envision a group of producers cutting their way through a jungle with machetes. Theyāre the producers, the problem solvers. Theyāre cutting through the undergrowth, clearing it out.
The managers are behind them, sharpening their machetes, writing policy and procedure manuals, holding muscle development programs, bringing in improved technologies and setting up working schedules and compensation programs for machete wielders.
The leader is the one who climbs the tallest tree, surveys the entire situation, and yells, āWrong jungle!ā
Youāre the leader of your life and you have to be able to identify when youāre in the wrong jungle!
And the only way you can do that is if you slow down long enough to look up and make sure that the things youāre working on are aligned with who you want to become and what you want to accomplish or achieve.
So, I invite you to join me in taking inventory of your goal or growth list for the year and make an intentional plan to get there. ā”ļø
