Tag: writing

No cogs

Fabrizio1 Comment

When looking back at our career, all we see is often company names, titles and dates.

But in those periods, in those roles, at those organisations, we have done stuff. Often, a lot of stuff. And that is much more important than the rest.

If you invest time writing down what you have done at one company, it is likely you are going to identify two or three skills you had no idea how to word and present. Do this for all of your past experiences, and you’ll have a pretty good picture of what you are good at and what you like to do.

The following step is to build a story around that, a narrative that matches the characteristics of the market you are in and the needs of the company you want to be hired from.

If you do not want to be treated like a cog, step out of the machine and go find your way.

Motivation and method

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The outcome of the things you do is heavily determined by your motivation and by your method.

Motivation is what gives you the reason why, what makes you feel all ecstatic, what gives you the kick to get started. Motivation is powerful yet fragile, and very often it is dependent on the feedback we get from the environment around us. If people don’t like our work, if we do not get the reward we were expecting, if things do not work as intended, motivation fades and leaves us wondering why we got started in the first place.

Method, on the other hand, is unexciting. It is a system, a discipline, a practice to obtain what you set out to obtain. Method is not as powerful as motivation, it is more of a muscle that needs to be trained, over and over again. Yet it can become solid, and when it does, you can fall back on method when motivation falters. It becomes a given, a reason in itself, not something others need to acknowledge for it to exist.

Motivation and method do not often go hand in hand, and when they do they are unstoppable.

Stories are ideals

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The stories we tell others, the ones we use to buy people into our cause, to inspire action, to convince buyers that our brand is better, to present ourselves and the work we do.

They are not lies.

They are ideals waiting for an audience.

A walk

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More and more, I find that taking a walk in the middle of the day is helping me to recharge, refocus, and gives me space to explore new ideas. Often those ideas are the ones I stick to later in the day, the ones that get me unstuck.

Give it a try.

Walking occupies us just enough to help us stop thinking about whatever it is we were working on, but not too much as to prevent mind-wandering. It’s the perfect gateway into the subconscious mind and for stimulating creative insight that can help us overcome mental gridlock.

Brad Stulberg, Steve Magness – Peak Performance

The two options

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Are you building thought leadership or are you looking for leads?

It might seem like it’s just a marketing question, but it is actually much more than that.

Are you establishing deep connections or are you greeting everybody and move on?

Are you here to make a change or to share your numbers?

Are you interested in telling a story or in surfacing shortcuts?

Are you creating or copy-pasting?

And the one that I personally prefer.

Are you for quality or quantity?

Certainly, the two can be simultaneously present. And yet, you can’t go all in on both. Eventually one will prevail, projecting your work in very different directions.

Also, the more you stick with one the more difficult it will be to move onto the other. But this is more true when the movement is from leads to thought leadership. So, the idea that “we are going to do quality work when X and Y will happen” is a mirage.

I bet you already knew that.