Last month, I had one of my most productive weeks in the four years since I started this newsletter/coaching biz.

In that week, I boshed out my five “week-daily” emails, launched my new group coaching program The Inside Job and my new website finally saw the light of day too. I also took a bunch of half-written scraps I’d jotted down over the last few months and turned them into a decent first draft of my new guide, Freedom At Work.

It was a productive and satisfying week.

But guess what?

At the end of the week, the thought that came to mind was “but you still haven’t published your book Tom”.

And that’s true.

The manuscript for my new book Don’t Quit Your Job is done. Like, literally done. All I need to do is follow a well-trodden path to convert that Word doc into something I can pop up on the Kindle Store.

It’s funny how, even though I had a week the Duracell Bunny would’ve been proud of, my mind decided to ignore everything I’d done and focus on what I hadn’t done instead.

I do this at work sometimes too.

I might have a week where I clear out 600 emails, juggle more meetings than you can shake a stick at, solve a few problems that weren’t even my problems to deal with, make a tough decision that no-one else wants to make and tick nearly every item off my to-do list…

And yet my mind decides to fixate on my one expense claim that’s still gathering dust. I don’t know why I do this.

Perhaps there’s part of me that thinks this is a useful move. That finding the cloud in every silver lining is what keeps me honest and stops me resting on my laurels.

I’m not so sure that’s true though.

All it really does is make me feel like I’m behind.

But then I wonder…

Behind what? Some timeline that only exists in my head?

Sure, there are always real deadlines with real consequences if we miss them.

But there’s also those thoughts that say we should be further along by now or we should have something figured out already. And it’s easy to forget we’re the ones inventing these.

Don't Quit Your Job doesn't have a deadline.

In fact, the only deadline is the one I set myself, then missed, then reset. Then missed and reset again.

Which is an elaborate way of saying I made it up.

So I'm not going to beat myself up because the manuscript is still sitting patiently on my desktop.

It will get there when it gets there.

Incidentally, I know from my own coaching that I’m not alone in hunting for clouds in perfectly good silver linings. It’s one of many ways we make working life more difficult than we need to.

If this feels familiar, it’s exactly the sort of thing we explore in my coaching program Trust Me, I Work Here.

You can read more about the program here:

https://tomgrundy.coach/trust-me-i-work-here

To fulfilment,

Tom