Be Prepared
I was a Girl Scout for four years in elementary school. I learned all kinds of handy things; my most prized gift was learning to step outside my shy comfort zone to sell cookies. It was painful at the time. I knew, though, that high sales translated to discounts for summer camp. I’ve never loved sleeping in a tent, so I’m unsure why this was so motivating. It was a challenge, and I was in. I credit that sales experience for making me more comfortable as an entrepreneur, so much so that I organized a project with my local Girl Scouts on the topic.
Part of the Girl Scout ethos is to be prepared. Of course, this applied to cookie sales: one always needed her trifold order form within reach to carefully write names, phone numbers, and number of boxes in the tiny columns. (That Thin Mint column lit up, even then.)
It applied to everything else we did, namely doing potentially dangerous things like camping. If you weren’t prepared with bug spray, those North Carolina mosquitoes would eat you alive.
I try to be prepared in my adult life, with mostly regular determination. I am a natural procrastinator and can be swayed by a well-crafted celebration of the habit (like this episode of Adam Grant’s podcast). Here’s how I - again, mostly - apply that to my snail mail practice:
When sending birthday or other occasion-specific postcards, I refer to the USPS Service Standard Map to calculate travel time. It shows how long first-class mail - which is what postcards are - takes to arrive at its destination.
The length of the route for a piece of mail from my home in Durham, NC.
For example, from my home in North Carolina, my postcards get to most of NC in 2 days, the rest of the South and Northeast in 3 days, Maine and the Midwest (and somehow, parts of Alaska) in 4 days, and anything west of the Continental Divide in 5 days. I used to live in Montana; to get a birthday postcard to a pal there, I usually send it a week out (to account for for Sundays and holidays).
I put aside the perfect postcard for a loved one’s birthday. Maybe you’re a birthday wishes purist, but I’ll add my own “happy birthday” to a postcard that’s perfect for the recipient.
My supplies are all together and ready for writing. Fortunately, I have a space in my house for a writing station. My great-grandmother’s secretary has lots of shelves and lovely glass-paneled doors to hold everything. If you’re short on space, assemble a mobile station that can easily tuck away. Short on funds, too? A shoebox will do the trick.
My people’s addresses live in a web-based spreadsheet, so I can access them from my phone or computer. Alternately, you can enter addresses for your phone contacts. Your address book goes wherever you do!
I pack stamps on vacation. You’ll likely find postcards easily, but you’ll have better things to do than hunt down stamps.
Now that you’re prepared, bring on the greatness!