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Hello Reader,

I stared down at the blue sparkling pool in dismay, thinking "this isn't the right place!"

Recently we had some friends come to stay with us for a week, both to visit and to explore the beautiful country where we live.

There's a place down the road about an hour from here called Mataranka.

And Mataranka has two naturally occurring springs: Bitter Springs, and the Mataranka Thermal Pool.

A lot of people who come here want to see the Thermal Pool, because the Elsey Homestead, which is the subject of an iconic Australian book called We of the Never Never (affiliate link) stands right beside it.

If you've never read the book, you might want to check it out. It tells the story of a young woman living in Melbourne in the early 1900's who fell in love with, and married the man who ran the Elsey cattle station.

Despite opposition from just about everyone (except her new husband), she moved up to the Elsey station to live. And the book does an amazing job of painting an accurate picture of what it was like living up here in the Northern Territory of Australia back then.

But here's the thing.

I'd been to the Mataranka Thermal Pool before, and I remembered it as a concreted spa-pool sort of thing. Lovely crystal-clear blue water, yes, but a ton of people sitting cheek by jowl, and it just didn't seem as nice as Bitter Springs, which is like swimming through an underwater garden.

But when we went back this time, the Thermal Pool was actually a lot nicer, a lot bigger, and far less crowded than I remembered. I felt like I had never seen it before. Which was a bit embarrassing because I was supposed to be the "knowledgable" local guide.

Of course, a few things had been replaced at the Thermal Pool since the flooding, but it truly felt like I was visiting the place for the first time.

And it made me think.

Memory can be a funny thing. Our memories change with time.

And it can be like that in our businesses too. We work on a whole pile of things, we get a lot done, and then six months later we've forgotten what we did.

More importantly, we've forgotten how much work we got done.

It's too easy to sit there thinking, "why isn't my business doing as well as it should. I should have done / be doing more and more and more". When in reality, if you go back and have a look, you can see how much progress you've actually made.

The one thing I do to keep my work in perspective is plan my weeks, my months and my days fairly thoroughly. That makes it easy to know what I need to be doing AND I can keep track of what I've got done.

Which means that six months later, when I'm feeling bad or thinking I'm not making enough progress, I can go back and look at what I actually have accomplished. It's usually a surprising amount.

So if you're feeling a bit down about your business, give yourself a simple system for keeping track of what you've actually achieved. You'd be surprised how much better it makes you feel.

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Back to Basics

Most of us track what's still ahead and never write down what's behind us. This week, start a simple running list of what you've actually finished. It takes a couple of minutes and it's the thing you'll be glad of in six months.

In my own daily planning I've got a Daily Review section that asks me to note three amazing things that happened that day. That's the bit I go back to when I need a boost, and it never fails to remind me how much is actually going right.

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A Quick Time-Saving Tip

Here's a small one that makes the looking-back easy. At the end of each month, paste your done-list (or your notes, or your finished tasks) into your AI tool and ask it to summarise what you got done and pull out the wins.

Two minutes with Claude or Chatty can turn a messy pile of notes into a clear picture of your month.

And trust me on this one, it reads a lot more kindly than the running commentary in your head (at least that's how it works for me).

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Highlight of the Week

I had a chat recently with Lindy Alexander, a highly experienced and very successful travel writer, about her brand-new podcast, Inside Travel Writing. It's just getting off the ground, and if you've ever wondered what the working life of a travel writer actually looks like, it's well worth a listen to our conversation.

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And that’s it for this week. Hope you have a lovely weekend.

Trudy

P.S. If you'd like a couple of reads that speak to this idea of having a simple system that tracks your wins, these two books go together really well. Gary Keller's The One Thing (affiliate link) is a good antidote to the "I should be doing more and more" spiral.

And James Clear's Atomic Habits (affiliate link) is its natural companion, all about making the small, repeatable systems (like that done-list) actually stick. Read just one, or stack them up together. They are both very helpful.