Here’s a curious lesson I haven’t written about before which I spotted recently with my daily emails:

I started this newsletter after quitting my banking job and quite lovely that time was too.

I’d wake up each morning, cheerily wave Lauren off to work, hit the gym for an hour and then settle at Casa Grundy’s kitchen table with my laptop perched in front of me to write my newsletter that day. 

Back then it took me a couple of hours (at least) to write something vaguely half-decent. But I assumed that once I’d found my rhythm, the emails would get easier. So I stuck with it, day after day, week after week.

Now, fast forward a few months. 

That’s when Lauren and I decided to take a six week trip to Mexico. And a few weeks before we jetted out to the land of tacos and tequila, a thought crossed my email-riddled mind:

How on God’s merry earth will I write my daily emails while I’m on the road for six weeks?

The more I sat with this, the clearer it became that writing each day using dodgy Wifi on overnight buses and hopping around far-flung pueblos probably wasn’t going to work.

So what did I do?

I doubled down.

In the weeks before that trip, I wrote TWO emails each day. I sent one as usual and held the other in reserve. Then the night before we flew to Mexico, I hunched over the kitchen table, re-reading, editing and painstakingly loading 28 emails into my email software, one for nearly each weekday when I’d be gone.

That was a late night, but I got the job done.

Now, fast forward another few months and I’d accepted an offer to go back to my old job in the merry world of banking. As a result, I had to switch up my writing. That meant some 5am wake-ups and a few Saturday morning writing sessions too. Which might sound like a burden, but I was actually rather excited to be in a proper writing routine now.

But that routine didn’t last long.

A few months after that, Lauren and I discovered that a friendly stork was about to deliver a baby-shaped package to Casa Grundy’s front door. Which was quite the change and that prompted a change of house too. 

But the real life-changer (obviously) was how I changed my approach to these emails. 

It didn’t take long to discover there’s no way to plan diddly squat when you have a one-month old waking up at random intervals or gurgling throughout the night. 

In this instance, that meant writing a few emails with a snoozing baby nestled on my chest and writing a few others on the 20 minute train ride to and from Liverpool Street Station.

And now, the latest chapter.

Lauren and I have moved again to Sheffield (the mighty City of Steel). We have a one-and-a-bit year old toddling round the house and I’m spending a couple of days in London each week. So my writing time looks very different again and my two hour train journeys take the brunt of it.

By now you might be wondering where the hell I’m going with this four year trundle down daily email lane.

Well, what struck me recently was that I’ve spent the last four years waiting for a predictable daily email writing routine to emerge from the ether. Not consciously mind you. But somewhere in the back of my mind was the idea that one day life would settle down and I’d finally discover the perfect writing set up that would make the daily emails 10x easier.

Well, guess what?

We’re four years in. That still hasn’t happened and I suspect it never will.

But what has happened is that every time life changed, I didn’t wait for better conditions to keep writing. 

I found a way to adapt my writing around that change instead.

Which meant adapting WAS the routine!

And what I’ve come to see (which might sound small but it feels rather big) is that not only do conditions often tend to be messy and not only are messy conditions okay... 

But I can thrive through those messy conditions too.

All of which is a long, meandering way of saying that if you're waiting for things to calm down before you get going on whatever matters to you, the calm probably isn't coming. 

But the good news is that you don't need it.

As it happens, this is pretty much at the heart of what I do with my coaching clients.

i.e. helping ambitious people make moves that matter without waiting for perfect conditions that never quite arrive. 

If that's you, I'd love to help. 

You can join my waitlist here: 

https://waitinglist.followingfulfilment.com

To fulfilment,

Tom