You wake up. You wash or shower. You shave (or not). You brush your teeth. You comb or brush your hair. You get dressed. Have breakfast, drink coffee. You go to work.
Safe. Routine. You know what you need to do so well that it becomes automatic. You don’t even need to think about it. Routine is good. Routine makes your day easier.
But your routine is also killing you.
Think about your business. Your customers. Your clients. Your contacts.
Are you routinely writing a press release and mass mailing it?
Are you routinely messaging your email subscriber list with the same routine message and the same routine deals and information?
Are you routinely offering the same Happy Hour drink deals or 2-for1 meal offers?
Are you routinely displaying the same point-of-sale banners with the same discounts?
Why? Why are you doing this? Is it working for you? Or are you losing mailing list subscribers? Losing sales? Losing customers? Losing contacts from your media list?
Break the routine. Differentiate your contacts, your customers, your clients. Tailor the message. Look at your trends and who’s buying or reading and on what days, weeks or months. Make that information your routine.
Routine is good. Routine is safe. But routine also leads to automation and boredom. Break it up a little.
After all, would it really hurt you to brush your teeth before you shower?
photo credit: h.koppdelaney
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Twitter: Narciso17
YES!!! There is SOO much value in taking a step back and looking at three key things:
* WHAT you are doing
* HOW you are doing it
* WHY you are doing it
These kinds of tweaks will not only get you out of your routine and get you off ‘auto-pilot,’ but, quite possibly, help you from making some BIG mistakes.
Twitter: timjahn
It’s true, we all get stuck in our routine at one point or another. You’re right, though, we must break free and try something new.
Adam Singer brought up a good point awhile ago on a post of mine relating to this very topic. He mentioned how patterns aren’t always bad if you analyze and learn from them.
Twitter: DannyBrown
Interesting post and response over there, Tim – very valid from both perspectives. It’s true, there can be the mix – it’s getting it that makes the difference.
I’ve been thinking a great deal about this recently, Danny. We are what our habits make us!
Great post, something I like to read about a lot.
There’s a theory that 95% of all the things we do is automated. And it’s not bad actually… running on auto-pilot means saving time, if you have to think about everything, you’ll never get anything done.
But that does mean we have a very important 5% left. And it may seem weird, but I believe that putting a routine into those 5% can expand it a bit. First accept that you can never turn that 5 into a 20. But you can schedule time where you force yourself to focus on certain issues to get the most out of it.
I presume you also write a lot of pr-campaigns? It’s tempting to take the ‘template’road right? I’m always tempted to start from a previous plan and ‘just’ update it, whether it’s because I don’t have a lot of time, because something similar had success,… But that plan is a keymoment, you can do all the rest on auto-pilot, not this. So scheduling (routine) enough time to force yourself to think and rethink your campaign can actually make it better. Defining those keymoments and force them into that 5%… maybe you’ll end up with the same plan, but at least you’ll know that it’s the best plan you could come up with. When you go on auto-pilot you’ll always doubt yourself.
grtz
Tom
Twitter: DannyBrown
It’s funny you mention PR campaign “templates”, Tom, as that was part of the thinking behind this whole post.
It is easy to get sucked into the “take away here, add on there” approach when coming up with a new release or strategy. But that would only cheat both you and your client from achieving real success (and not calling you a “cheat”, by the way!).
Success is a funny thing; it lets us believe we can repeat the formula, when all too often of course we can’t.
So, yes – we can take the 95% and work with it, as you say, but it’s really the other 5% where we should be aiming for.
Thanks for stopping by and sharing, appreciated.
Thanks for not calling me a cheat… though I must admit I sometimes go auto-pilot where I should think more about what I do.
Great read is Flow from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, he writes about how to get the most out of those 5%. And I know a Dutch psychologist is researching how to define those keymoments and get the most of it. When we can do those two… world domination is ours.
Hi Danny!
It’s the 99.9% which is routine! I like your idea of switching it up a bit and doing the .1% first! :~) Fresh breath in the shower is suddenly the new ideal for me! Thanks! :~)
Your perspective always leads me to new points of discovery!
What about routinely writing blog posts? I’m totally screwed if this is the case… I have been trying to break my routine by reading more blogs and running though
.
Twitter: DannyBrown
I think that’s where routine can be good (as kind of adhered to in the post and comments). The monotony comes in if you’re just writing for writing’s sake, with nothing different to offer or say – that’s where the routine could be killing the blog.
Twitter: drewmaniac
Thanks for this, Danny. Of late, I’ve been going through the motions of my routine and not been giving much thought to anything. I needed this reminder.
If you keep doing the same thing over and over you get the same results which sometimes people are ok with that….but successful people go above and beyond the ordinary. Great Post Danny. Food for thought.
Twitter: johnhaydon
A good friend of mine who owns a recording studio has a very small post-it note on the mixing board with the words “Freshness Is Key”.
Reminds me of this quote on the definition of insanity: “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
If you’re doing the same thing over and over again and producing the same result, I agree, it’s time to try something different. When it comes to business and new contacts, I try to get creative/unique by sending new contacts a personalized video email (using TokBox or Eyejot). It’s personal ya know…and different…
Twitter: DannyBrown
Video email? That’s an interesting approach, very different. What’s the feedback been on that? Definitely something new, that’s for sure – may have to consider that.
Cheers, Ricardo, food for thought.