18 Jun - 24 Jun 2018
I realised I wasn’t yet ready to publish my next article but I had a planned deadline to have something published by mid-June. I couldn’t get back to sleep early Tuesday morning so I decided to get up and wrote and published my One Weird Trick article in an hour or so. Whilst some posts are still taking me quite a while to compose, edit and publish I’m taking this as a sign that I am improving and have the ability to publish more quickly.
Scouting
This weekend was our Scout group camp over at John’s Lee Wood Scout campsite in Leicestershire. It was hard work but good fun. The main aim, as always, is to give the kids some good experiences that that don’t usually get the chance to experience.
It’s always nice to have a relatively technology-free weekend, and the weather was perfect in the woods. I’m writing this up on the Monday because when we got home on Sunday afternoon, I was completely bushed. We were in bed and asleep by 8:45!
Now that I’m on the other side of Scouting as a leader, I’m much more grateful to those who gave up their time every week to give me fun and adventure when I was young. I don’t think many parents realise the time and effort it takes to run Scouting events, even just the weekly meetings, just seeing us as a cheap babysitting service (and I’m sure many think we’re paid too). The camps are one time when we do get quite a lot of thanks, which is really appreciated.
If you do have some spare time to give to any worthwhile volunteer organisation then I highly recommend it. It can be hard work but it is fulfilling knowing that you’re making a difference to someone else’s life.
Reading progress
I’ve been making steady progress through Building your StoryBrand. It’s quite an enjoyable and straightforward read, providing a clear way to think about and structure your marketing messages. I’m excited to try it out with my business. One thing of note, I’ve used Joe Buhlig’s workflow for creating a set of tasks in OmniFocus to ensure I’m reading enough pages every day to finish the book in time for our planned book club call next week. It’s working surprisingly well. I have plans to learn from it to create my own workflows for automating the follow-on tasks and notes reviews when I finish a book.
A week in Stoicism
This week we’re reminded that taking a break is a necessary and useful thing. Seneca often recommended taking frequent, wandering walks to nourish our minds and be refreshed.
However, the Epictetus quote below really stood out for me this week. It reminded me that we mustn’t keep doing the same thing that doesn’t work over and over. We must change those routines and habits that are not providing the results we want.
”If you are defeated once and tell yourself you will overcome, but carry on as before, know in the end you’ll be so ill and weakened that eventually you won’t even notice your mistake and will begin to rationalise your behaviour” Epictetus
weeknotes