HOW TO STREAMLINE your WORKFLOW for W.I.T.L

[Week In The Life]

INTRODUCTION

Some stories are shared, but shared differently, as in the case of our everyday stories. They will look something like sleep, eat, work, repeat, all the daily activities of living that sustain us, often ordinary, mundane, and on repeat. Other moments will be revealed or unravel, captivate or be poignant, some will be silent or brief.

Week in the Life™ documents a seven-day period, capturing in words and photos, your living memories. This annual event /project is the brainchild of Ali Edwards, a leader, designer, and visionary in this industry. You can be inspired, learn, and stay up to date with Ali Edwards here or view how other memory keepers are documenting their Week in the Life™ here.

PURPOSE TO PARTICIPATION

The most important component for Week in the Life™ is your ability to tell your story. Simple, given you are the eyewitness and expert authority on your own stories. Although there are many purposes for documenting stories, there are four general categories we focus on, they include;

1. To inform, is to share facts and other information, provide truthful evidence.

2. To explain, tell the who, what, how, when, and why about a topic.

3. To narrate, to tell the story, the beginning, the middle and the end.

4. To persuade, states an opinion/goal and supports it with reasons and supporting details to get the audience to agree, act, or both. All categories pivotal to successful storytelling.

Week in the Life™ provides an annual opportunity to capture in depth the essence of and narrate the stories of how we live our lives. Participation requires an investment of time, a few resources, an observant eye, and a keen interest in authoring your stories, visually and written. The format and process of how you curate your gathered stories will vary on your interests, skills, and resources. The outcome, of course is to give the audience a glimpse, or overview of your daily activities of living for an entire week. Providing insight and clarity on a season or era, personality traits, and so much more…

PROCESS TO PRODUCTION

The key to success is to keep it simple, which for me means implementing the skills and knowledge gained from past years successes, and failures.

My [ W.I.T.L ] success is determined by pre deciding the quintessential: product, format, font, photo editing, colour palette and a strategic plan. Once you have established “your quintessential”, you can start your preparations, organize your resources, and start production, wink! I have refined this process to what I have termed the 3 P’s. Plan, Polish, and Print. You can watch a video here. [warning, it's 53 minutes]...

WITL STORY FUNNELS

There are several reasons I appreciate and participate in this annual event. This activity helps me channel my focus, giving me greater clarity on my life and where I am in my personal progression. It becomes a week to improve my "vision", reflect, with an opportunity to refresh at it's conclusion.

I have found that several stories bites from a week of intense observation, often acts as a catalysis [funnel] for preserving deeper stories in my personal history album.

E.G We have a mouse plague in our country town. One mouse, three days of destruction until we had a catch and release event. Then the big deep clean-up started. Our storage room filled with moving boxes needed to be completely emptied and overhauled, assessing for damaged boxes and repacking or disposing of damaged items or boxes. Several undamaged memorabilia boxes were resorted and repacked, giving me the opportunity to review, reminisce, declutter or de-own the “stuff” we have been transporting across the country for the past decades.

Going down the rabbit hole of sorting through my mission boxes helped me to re-prioritize my memory keeping schedule and start curating these memories into a digital album before the memories fade. Something I have been wanting to do but putting off for decades because of the overwhelm.

I realized in that moment that I have gathered life skills and talents to do this effortlessly now, something I could not have tackled three decades ago, the technical resources were not available, and I needed time to develop my talents and skills.

WITL will have a few story bites of my week, a brief overview of all the activities, feelings, and observations of the living we enjoyed or not, in this era and season. I will funnel some of those stories into my personal history album, as they have provided lessons and experiences that need to be shared on a deeper level.

We all know why we are documenting this week, each of us gain something of value in participating in the WITL activity. I have learnt, a good workflow makes for a good experience and outcome, more importantly, returning to this activity and reviewing each year allows me to identify change, growth, and increases my gratitude for "all the things," that is priceless.

When we can eliminate the decision paralysis of the how, [ pre decide the elements that create a good workflow] we can truly immerse ourselves in the experience of discovering more about ourselves and understanding our environment. When we can be still, observe and reflect, we can change our experiences and emotions into insight and clarity, these are great stories, and great personal resources. This is why I choose to participate in WITL. For me, this intense level of observation, all be it annually through my lens, has often been fun, time taxing, but always rewarding and often life changing.

You never know where a story will lead you…

Products in this post:

PhD LDS Mission : Sister Missionary, Inserts, Journalist

[Update: 2022 Mission Collections edition 2 releasing soon, with a big announcement, watch for this in may/June 2022.]

Yearbook Series : Weekdays Bundle . *Use this Limited Time Code for a 20%. EXPIRED

Yearbook Series : Weekday Word Art . *Use this Limited Time Code for a 10%. EXPIRED

Project Life App : Collage & Edit