September wrap-up 🌯

Three learnings on content, work and life

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In September, my learning curve has gone hockey-stick again 🏒 as I juggle work, writing and personal life.

And with that, my routine, my balance and my content process has completely changed.

In January, I posted about how I (used) to work:

Zoomed in for you:

This is more what my week looks like now:

Spot the 🐶 how many can you see?

That’s Stanley coming in with me on Mon and Wed:

Looking back, this year has had 3 distinct parts for me:

• Q1: Slow start to the year, felt sluggish coming into January
• Q2: Got back into the enjoyment of writing, went viral on LinkedIn
• Q3: Jumped right in the deep end with two intense months at my new role after a full month off

And with these big life changes, come three potentially-obvious-but-interesting learnings from September:

• Protect your writing time
• Set rules for saying no
• Get help & delegate

Let’s go through one by one and some of my failures along the way, as usual.

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1) Find your writing time, and protect it

Despite having less time for writing, I’ve cracked out some super interesting articles this month (in my view):

Two of these, I wrote at 5am or 6am. And I’ve never felt more at-peace. With my candle on and a peppermint tea. No notifications.

🤤

Spending 4 hours in a morning really getting into the flow has been energising, and I think you can tell. This month, I’ve felt particularly nerdy by the topics and depth to which I’ve written.

In particular:

• My most-detailed issue in the past 12mo: Designed to be complicated, Attio vs. Hubspot (lots of design nuggets)
• My most chaotic issue in the past 12mo: When PLG backfires, my Typeform mess-up (lots of UX nuggets)
• One article where I felt smart: How GPT-5 turned free access into a conversion machine (cynical take on monetisation strategy)

The learning here is: find your time, and schedule it in. Get someone else involved for accountability if you need it. Create some sort of ritual to ease you in (like a tea and a candle).

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2) Say rules for saying no

I have a bad habit of saying yes 🥴 which is always my downfall.

Things always feel possible, fun, or interesting. But realistically, if I’m not writing or working on product growth, it’s usually a poor use of time. Those two feed into each other and make each other stronger - whereas the ROI for me on events, extra calls, or non-growth work is low.

My favourite prioritisation rule comes from Lenny’s article ‘on saying no’.

There’s lots of rules in there, and my favourite one (particular for social events) is:

However I’ve found that’s not enough.

In the moment, without rules I default to my old people-pleasing behaviour.

So, I’m adding a new rule (thank you to advice from Anna Tankel):

Let’s see how that goes in October shall we?

(Curious if you have any other 'no' strategies yourselves?)

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3) Get help

I dropped many balls this month.

I can tell how busy I am by how my desktop looks.

The person who sits next to me caught a glimpse said:

I know it’s getting out of hand when the screenshots start piling up on each other.

So, in conjunction with saying no more (which will solve 90%) I’m leaning on more people, mainly my assistant (Becca), Fleurine (who proofs for me) and others.

Take this as a reminder to slow down, delegate, ask for help. And ultimately, free up some juicy brain space for things like writing, thinking of great test ideas or new strategies.

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What’s next?

There’s so many cool ideas I’ve come across lately that are swirling around in my mind. Specifically:

• Runna’s post-plan experience
• Usage-based pricing (more examples than chatgpt)
• Pricing pages: a collection of test ideas
• Deep dive into CX (customer support) and how it links to growth
• Graceful ways to correct a mistake
• Deep dive on Medium as a writer
• My chaotic time with Vinted

Any requests? Let me know what’s on your mind.

Thanks again to Attio 🫶

Thank you SO much for reading (all the way to the bottom, wow look at you go).

See you next week,

Rosie 🕺 🤸‍♀️

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