A Note from Julie, the Greenhouse Curator:

I don’t usually share many details about my family in The Leaflet, but this week I’m making an exception.

 

My son celebrated a milestone birthday last week. For his party, I printed photos from many of his birthdays over the years and taped them up around the house. He was a little embarrassed, but I think he liked the attention.  

 

After the party, I put all the photos on the refrigerator. I knew he'd changed over the years, but seeing those milestones gathered in one place made the changes much easier to notice.

The same thing happens in our proofreading or editing work.

 

Much of our growth happens gradually. We finish a project, answer an email, send an invoice, adjust a workflow, raise a rate, learn from a difficult job, and move on to the next thing.

 

Individually, those moments may not feel like much. But when we keep track of them, we can see the progress.

 

The problem is that we often don’t gather them in one place. Our progress is scattered across emails, invoices, calendars, client notes, and spreadsheets. So during a discouraging week, it’s easy to feel like we’re not getting anywhere.

 

That’s why tracking milestones can be helpful.

 

I don’t mean you have to track everything using a complicated system. But keeping a simple record of business milestones can help you see growth that would otherwise be easy to miss.

You might track things like:

Your growth isn’t just about how many months or years you’ve been doing this. It’s also in the moments when you realize something that used to feel hard now feels manageable.

 

A simple monthly “wins” document can work well. So can a notebook, spreadsheet, or folder where you collect reminders of your progress. The format matters less than the habit of putting the milestones somewhere you can find them again.

 

When those moments are scattered, they may not feel significant. But when you bring them together, you can start to see the bigger picture: You're not the same proofreader or editor you were when you started. 🪴

 

What’s one business milestone you could start tracking? Reply to this email and let me know.

Here are three posts I enjoyed reading on LinkedIn recently. Click the links below to read them.

I'd never encountered this phrase until I started proofreading transcripts of legal proceedings. Now I see it occasionally. Try saying “cast dispersions” to yourself and notice that it sounds similar to “cast aspersions.”

To cast aspersions on means to say something that makes people question someone’s honesty, character, or reputation.

Catch of the Week screenshots come from my transcript proofreading. I can't change what a person said, but I can make sure words are spelled correctly and punctuation marks are in the right spots. If you're interested in learning more about transcript proofreading, I wrote an article about it here.

Lauren Bray Editing

 

This mandevilla plant on my back deck needs six hours of full sun to produce maximum blooms. It’s a good reminder that growth often depends on having the right conditions. ☀️

Let's keep growing together!

What did you think of today's email? I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions, or feedback. Email julie@theproofreadergreenhouse.com

 

If this newsletter was forwarded to you or you found a link to it online, why not get The Leaflet delivered straight to your inbox? ✨ Subscribe now ✨ for grammar tips, tricky word pairs, client strategies, and helpful online tools.