Ready to wake up

And more advice for your inbox / Issue 1,120

Oh, hi friends!

First day of fall! What shall we do? 

I celebrated by buying a few sweaters online this morning (I’ll probably return 3 of the 4, but you have to play the numbers game). Maybe a walk in the park to see the green leaves before they turn, turn, turn? 

But mainly I’m thinking about now being a good time to wake the heck up and turn the page.

Leaving what you want to leave back in the summer. 

Moving forward with confidence and enthusiasm. 

Accepting where you are right now and gathering courage for where you want to go.

All that—and sweaters. 

Let’s move.

If you don't ask, the answer is always no.
—Nora Roberts 

Mmhm! Nora knows.

Boomerang Even Better

Yesterday I wrote about boomeranging emails back to your inbox when you need them. In the comments, a reader named Em shared a “next-level” use of Boomerang, which was so good—and applicable to so many situations—that I had to share the comment with you in full.

I now *write the email I'm going to send* then schedule it to arrive in my inbox on the date I said I'd send them a reminder. It's because I used to just boomerang the email, but found the friction of having to remember what it was, what I wanted to say to them, etc, to be too much.

So now I hit reply, take their email out of the "To" line and replace it with my own, write whatever it was I want to write to them in six months time or whatever, and in the subject line write "This is a potential client who might pay you to do something fun!" or whatever it is to entice myself, then schedule it for the day I want to email them.

On the day, I can just dig out their last email, hit reply, copy/paste the new text (doing Shift+Command+V to take the formatting off, because: gmail) , then send it off! Present Me is always grateful to Past Me for her mental, emotional and physical labour!

Isn’t that brilliant? The friction of “what/who is this again” is such a momentum killer, and this solves the problem. Plus, wouldn’t you be much more excited to open an email with the subject line: “This is a potential client who might pay you to do something fun”?