So, we are now at 500 posts since I committed to posting every day on this site.
Today I am thinking about marking occasions.
Marking Occasions
As I go about my day, it would have been easy to miss this minor milestone of 500 posts, as I find writing daily a natural part of my rhythm now.
So many things to do each day, only one of which is to focus for something around an hour to write that day’s post.
How often do we decide not to pause, even for a moment, to mark occasions small or large?
It can be as tiny as looking up and seeing the sky (as a Scot, the photo below was from a moment where I was walking through the City of London to lunch last week, I marked it with taking a moment to photograph it).
In leadership, am sure most remember to mark the large moments. What about the small moments?
Perhaps you hear that a new team member has just made their first sale. Perhaps take a moment to go to their desk and recognise that.
Perhaps someone else just finished the MBA they have been studying part time for two years. Go congratulate them.
Oh, and if not in person, send them a hand written thank you note to show you are really giving them your attention and appreciation.
For now, let me both appreciate myself (!) and also appreciate all of you for reading along with me.
So, as we reach 500 daily posts together, some facts and thoughts:
- At approximately 600 words per post, this adds up to about 300,000 words, so that is the equivalent of about 5 business books (though still far less than Tolstoy’s War and Peace, which “weighs in” at 587,287 words).
- There may be a book in all of this, perhaps?
- I recently added a “Top 5 posts of all time” widget on the right-hand side of this page. The most read post has a little under 1000 views.
- Visitors to the site have been steadily climbing. While still a “small, but perfectly formed” audience, we now have over quadruple the visitors we had a year ago. FOr all the “tricks” in the world of online search engine optimisation (“SEO”), perhaps one secret is not really a secret at all, ie simply to consistently provide content that is of interest.
- Writing here has connected me to new people and experiences in ways I could never have anticipated, and these have been in unexpected places. To single one out, meeting Chip Conley through my writing has connected me to amazing people in the Modern Elder Academy community and taken me to Baja not once, but twice.
Thank you for being with me on this journey as I mark this small occasion.
What small occasion could you mark today?