A Present for Your Future Self

Do a little groundwork now for future you.

To get the Compound Return newsletter in your inbox every month, subscribe here.

Issue 17 | July 20, 2017 | A Present for Your Future Self

Say it’s around 10P and the day is done. Deadlines wrapped, dishes finished, emails done, phone calls made, Netflix watched, whatever your evening entails. The last thing you want to do is get up and make the coffee for tomorrow, right?

The only thing that motivates me in these moments is actually picturing my future self. Future Carolyn wants coffee. She’s going to be sorely disappointed if there is none, and she’s going to start her day on a fluffy cloud of rainbows if she made the effort to load up the coffee maker and set the timer so it’s already brewed when she wakes up.

The Gift of Groundwork

In the middle of one of these sticky, sunny summer days, when you don’t want to do any work at all, consider doing some groundwork for your future self: plan a content audit to conduct at year-end.

A content audit can mean several things. In this case, I mean a look back at the content you produced and distributed in 2017 to evaluate your successes and weak points. This process can be really useful, but there’s never a great time to do it – your publishing pipeline is probably full most of the time.

So just set aside a few minutes to brainstorm the what and the how for doing a year-end review. What will you tally? How will you measure engagement? Who among your team of content users can you poll for feedback on their favorite pieces – and should you create some kind of survey for that? How will you evaluate changes you made to your content process? If you had to give awards to your own best and worst pieces, how will you decide?

Once you’ve brainstormed a process for your content audit, write it down and stick it in a folder. Put a reminder in your calendar to dig out that folder sometime in December – it’ll be one of those chilly pre-holiday afternoons in the office when you don’t want to do any work at all. Your future self will be happy to have a head start.

Looking for a freelance financial writer to help manage your publishing pipeline? Reach out and let’s talk about your project needs.