I smiled as I snipped the last piece of hemp, now holding 14 strands of this earthy cording. The smile wasn't from the hemp itself, although I do love all the eco-friendly characteristics of this fiber. Rather, it was from the realization that this was double the amount of hemp I needed when I first started meaning Switch Script, my home decor subscription service, had doubled in size. Now numbers are relative and 14 might mean piddle squat to someone else but a 100% increase in subscribers had me on cloud 9!
That cloud quickly started sinking as I started to see just how much time packaging these orders took. I put a lot of importance on the packaging of all my orders and especially those for loyal subscribers but the amount of time this was starting to absorb was more than I ideally wanted. Quite frankly, one of my main goals is to continue doubling the numbers of Switch Script so what was I going to do when 14 turned to 28 and then 56?! As I felt the anxiety slowly start to creep in, I knew that was my cue to take action before letting myself tailspin out of control. I've been a swirling mess too many times before when I let myself forward think too much so I quickly grabbed a pen and note pad and decided to use this as an opportunity.
I continued working through my current cumbersome process of packaging orders but this time when I thought about how much time a specific task was taking up I wrote it down in my notepad. Even just the act of getting the thought out of my head and onto paper eased some anxiety but mostly as I was writing the thought down I'd automatically think of a solution (or at least a semi-solution). Some of those semi-solutions I could implement right then and some I needed to adjust at another time such as on my computer or something.