Seed draft — replace with a real essay.
I used to rely on wanting to do the work. Some days that’s there and some days it isn’t, and a business can’t run on the days it happens to be there. A checklist doesn’t care how I feel. It just says: these six things, in this order.
The publishing routine for the label is now a checklist. So is closing out a job. The wins aren’t dramatic — it’s just that nothing gets skipped, and I stopped spending willpower remembering steps instead of doing them.