Trusting the process without setting up a process

"Trust the process." They say and we repeat it like a prayer. Whenever work is slow, when a launch flops, when we're tired and nothing is landing, someone tells us to trust the process and we nod like it means something. Does it really, though?

My question: What process are you - me - us trusting?

Because a lot of us are out here trusting a process we never actually set up. We're trusting a vibe. A general sense that if we keep showing up and working hard, things will somehow click into place. And to be honest, sometimes they do, but hope is not a system, and "I'll just remember how I did it last time" is not a process.

An actual process is boring. It's the steps written down, the checklist you follow so you don't have to reinvent the wheel every single time. It's knowing that when a new client comes in or a new lead drops in, tasks one through seven happen in the same order, whether you're feeling as fresh as a day’s bread on a Monday or as fried as burnt dodo on a Friday. 

Most of us skip this part. We do the work brilliantly once, in our heads, under pressure, and then we do it slightly differently the next time, and the time after that. Every project starts from scratch. Every job/project/application costs us the full mental price all over again. And then we wonder why we feel like we're always running and never getting ahead.

You cannot trust a process you have not built!! (ko possible!) You can only trust your own memory and your own energy to hold it together each time, and both of those run out.

So here's the shift. Before you trust the process, set the process.

Pick one thing you do over and over. Onboarding a client. Sending an invoice. Publishing a post. Sending a cold DM or mail … Just one. The next time you do it, write down what you actually did, step by step, in simple terms for your benefit and whosoever you intend to pass it on to. It doesn’t have to be pretty perfect, nothing fancy. Just capture it, so the next version of you can follow it instead of remembering it.

That's how you start. You've turned a thing that lived only in your head into something that lives on paper, something you can hand off, improve, or automate later.

Do this a few more times and the work stops feeling rushed every time. You get faster, not because you're grinding harder, but because you're not rebuilding the road each time you drive it. Just like the purpose Google email templates serve and then with a bit of tinkering on Zapier, you don’t even have to manually add certain info like names etc, it just gets easier from there and all you ever have to do is update it and ensure it still does or carries the message you intend it to.

A recipe is just a process someone bothered to write down. It's how the same good meal shows up again and again, even on the days the cook is exhausted. Your business deserves the same.

So by all means, trust the process. Just make sure there's an actual process there to trust.

I dare you to create a process out of the thousand and one things sitting in your head that make what you HAVE to do soooo annoying and share with me in the comments your win after doing it.