When you don't know what to write
Sending Process Reports on Mondays just kind of happened. I sent the first one on a Monday, and it stuck.
Today’s Tuesday. I could blame my tardiness on the long weekend I took to New York, but that would be a half truth.
Here’s the whole truth: I didn’t know what to write.
The biggest developments in my professional life aren’t ready for public consumption yet.
So in a meta move, I’m sharing my process for figuring out what to write (or post or talk about in a podcast episode) when The Muse isn’t being particularly helpful.
Return to the why behind the what
As I’ve shared previously, I believe in starting each project or marketing channel with either a question I’m trying to answer or a clear intention.
When I felt stuck on what to write today, I returned to some of my intentions for this newsletter: documenting this full season of my professional life, sharing my process, and building credibility/thought leadership.
That’s all it took to spark the idea for this report, but I’ll still share a couple of other things that work for me.
Revisit past work
This is something I’ve been doing more and more with Inner Workout. I’ve publicly talked about self-care for nearly five years at this point. There’s rarely a need for me to start from scratch.
I’ll look back at old newsletters, podcast transcripts, and social posts as a jumping off point, asking myself these questions:
How can I make this topic feel relevant today?
What do I know now that I didn’t know when I first created this?
How have my thoughts on this topic shifted?
Answer a question
Respond to a frequently asked question about your business or your creative work. Publicly respond to something your clients have asked in more private settings. Share an interesting tidbit that people might not even think to ask you.
For example, my back-up plan for today’s report was to write something inspired by a question a client asked me last week about pivoting.
While going the venture-backed route isn’t my preference, I respect how shameless VC-backed companies are about pivoting. Their goal is to find product-market fit so they can create an ROI for their investors. That means they’ll pivot as soon as they realize something isn’t working. More lifestyle businesses need to adopt that mentality. I could say more, but I’m saving this topic for a rainy day.
So there you have it. I wrote a full Process Report without knowing what to write. 🤗