Why Your Week Has Better Stories Than You Think (Even In The Age of AI)

I always take a notebook on holiday with me.

Not because I plan to work while I am away. I take it because I notice things, and if I don’t write them down, they disappear (because peri-menopause brain hahahahaha).

The act of writing slows the moment down enough for me to see it properly. Also, there is something deeply satisfying about opening a notebook on a cruise ship while everyone else is holding a cocktail (or their phone because people can’t seem to get off them, even on holiday).

On our latest cruise, I found myself standing in the perfume store listening to one of the crew members explain the story behind each bottle. She was not describing the scent notes or the price point. She was telling us where the inspiration came from, why the bottle was shaped the way it was, and what the creator had been trying to capture. It was unexpectedly fascinating. I went in thinking I might sniff something and leave. I walked out with a paragraph in my notebook instead.

In that same notebook, I wrote about meeting Barry Hall and his family near the elevators. That moment later became an email for my subscribers, because there was something in it about reputation and perception that felt worth exploring. There was a dot and a thread inside that encounter, so I followed it instead of pretending I was too cool to care.

When I flip back through that notebook, most of what I see would look entirely ordinary to someone else. They are small observations from a normal week away. There is nothing headline-worthy about them (or so you would probably think). There’s no dramatic plot twist or confetti cannons.

The reason they matter is that they reveal something about how I think and what I notice.

You’re standing too close to your own story

Many creatives tell me that nothing interesting happens in their week and that they are boring. They describe ideas scattered across their phone notes app, voice memos saved with good intentions, screenshots they meant to use. The material is there. It is simply sitting quietly, waiting for someone to look at it properly.

When you are living your own life, everything feels close and familiar. It is difficult to see what stands out because you are inside it. You are standing in the middle of your own story, trying to read the label from the inside of the bottle.

Strategic storytelling in business begins with paying attention to that familiarity and asking what it reveals. It asks what a moment says about your values, your standards, or the way you respond when something shifts unexpectedly.

The conversation in the perfume store revealed how much story shapes meaning. The elevator encounter revealed how easily we form impressions based on reputation. Those lessons were already present. Writing them down allowed me to see them clearly enough to use them.

Why AI can’t catch your dots

AI can help you shape language once you have identified a story. It can help you organise your thinking or refine your tone. What it cannot do is move through your week and notice which detail carries weight. Storytelling bots can offer structure, but they do not stand beside you while something unfolds. They do not sense the subtle shifts that indicate a deeper thread, or the moment you say something and then immediately think, “Oh. There it is.”

That kind of noticing requires attention and perspective. Occasionally, it also requires someone else saying, “You do realise that is the story, don’t you?”

This is exactly why I created The Dot Catcher

The Dot Catcher was created for that reason.

During The Dot Catcher, you live your week as you normally would. You send voice notes from prompts and share what happened without trying to adjust it first. I listen carefully and pull out the threads that are easy to miss when you are inside your own life. What you receive back is a bank of stories shaped from your real experiences, ready to be used across your emails, your website, your social content, and anywhere else your voice needs to show up.

The material is already there. The work lies in recognising it and shaping it.

If you have ever felt that your week is full but you cannot quite see what is useful inside it, The Dot Catcher was built with that exact feeling in mind.

You can read more about it here

Before you move on with your day, consider the last seven days.

What did you write off as ordinary that might reveal more about you than you realised?