perfection is out
|
Hey Reader I'm writing this from Ipswich, Massachusetts. We get here once a year to see family, and August is when the whole place shows off. The flowers are in full bloom. Sunflowers, black-eyed Susans, zinnias. Miss Tilly has spent at least eight hours a day in the pool with her cousins. We've been out on the boat and over to the sandbar to dig holes and make drippy castles. It's fun and busy and loud. Laughter, new babies, a lot of sun. I look forward to it every summer. (Mostly what I look forward to are ice cold Arnold Palmers). And it's the one time of the year where nobody is performing. You just show up as you are. Last night we were passing old photos round the table, laughing at every single one. Terrible haircuts. Somebody blinking. Half a face cut off at the edge. Not one person said "that's a good photo." They said "oh, I remember that." Then I went through this week's research and found the internet quietly arriving at the same place. Three separate shifts, all pointing the same way. The crisp, finished, overhauled version is not the one that's working. Perfection is out. Here's what's in π
the 3 shifts I'd actually act on this monthNone of these need a rebrand, a new platform, or a free weekend. They need about twenty minutes each. 1. Change one thing, not everythingEvery AI guide I read this month landed on the same unglamorous advice. Pick one tool. Give it one job. Leave it alone until it's a habit, then add the next one. The women I speak to who feel behind on AI are not behind. They've been told to rebuild their entire business around it, so quite sensibly they've done nothing at all. Start with one thing and let it be small. Mine is a brainstorming partner for first drafts. I still make every edit myself, add the photos, and schedule the posts. That's the 'human in the loop' that stays under my control. β Try this: pick the one task you dread most this week and hand only that one over. First draft, not final word. 2. Say the plain thing, because your caption is doing search work nowAround 60% of people use Instagram to research what they're buying, and 55% use TikTok. It's now ahead of Google, for a lot of what they're looking for. So your caption is being read as a search result whether you meant it that way or not. Hashtags have quietly stopped carrying that job. The actual words are what's being scanned. Which means the clever line matters less than the clear one. Write the sentence she would type. β Try this: add one plain sentence to your next caption saying what the post genuinely helps with. Not clever, just clear. 3. Let it look a bit roughSearches for lo-fi design are up 527% this year. Grainy, muted colours, imperfect crops, and framing that's slightly wrong on purpose. Canva has called 2026 the year of imperfect by design, and I have never agreed with a trend report more. The crisp corporate look now reads as stock. A bit of graininess reads as a real person. Your slightly-off skew photo is doing more for you than the polished graphic you spent an hour on. β Try this: take a design you've already made and drop a grain or texture overlay over it. Look at the two side by side. Post the rougher one.
One tool. One plain sentence. One rough edge. Three small things you could do today to make your posts more imperfect.
2 things i'm loving⦠Ipswich in AugustSunflowers taller than me, black-eyed Susans everywhere, a kid who smells permanently of chlorine. We come once a year and it resets something. If there's a place that lets you turn up as you are, go there this summer, even if it's only for a weekend.
β¦ Canva's texture and grain overlaysHiding in plain sight and free. Search 'grain textures'. Drop one over a flat design and watch it soften from advert into something a human made. It takes about ten seconds and it's the cheapest way to move your whole feed in the direction everyone is searching for right now.
1 affirmationFor the woman with fourteen versions of the same post sat in her drafts: I am releasing perfectionism & embracing progress. The grain says a person made this. The plain sentence says a person means it. The tool you're still learning says a person is trying. What's the one thing you've been over-polishing? Hit reply and tell me. That's your 3-2-1 for this week. See you next Thursday! With love & creativity xo, Louise 𧑠P.S. Ready to Brand & Bloom? It's where we build things properly. A brand that looks like you, sounds like you, with AI quietly in the background. The founding group is small on purpose, and the waitlist is open: join it here. |