I had a friend named Greg Brown. I used to eat lunch with him back in 1989 when I worked at Marine Midland Bank as a Financial Associate right out of college (NYU).
Greg kept a Rolodex (remember them?) of his friends and contacts. It had the usual fields: Name, phone, company, title.
It had another field: Juggler?
On every card except two, it read: Non-juggler.
It amuses me to this day, Gregory.
How I juggle
Anyone who’s ever been within arms length of me knows I’m incapable of keeping three physical items in the air at once. Yet you and I juggle all the time: Parenting, caring for elder parents, working, socializing, praying, etc.
As an independent medical device marketing consultant, I use Toggl to track how I spend my time. It’s free and I’m pretty good about remembering to turn it on and off as I work on something.
But today, I didn’t bother.
In the past hour, I had four team conversations, moderated the Medical Devices Group, took two calls with future speakers at the 10x Medical Device Conference in April, and did client creative and list maintenance.
I track my list of things to do in Evernote (also free) and it seems I’ve struck nothing from my list in a week.
I know I’ve been productive. It’s just until something is finished completely, it stays on the list.
What Eric says
My dear friend Martyn has supported my business for seven years now. We connected over a tweet (it works, just far less frequently now) in 2011. He was 17(!) at the time. I’ve seen him grow up, self-educate then graduate from OSU, get married, have a child.
He’s practically a grown-up now!
Anyhow, Martyn works at Chess.com now, one of the top thousand sites visited on the Web. And he told me about message his CEO wrote the Chess.com organization.
I don’t remember most of it. But I remember the punchline.
If you’re 95% done with a task, you’re 0% done.
He emphasized that all the “code you’ve been working on” is meaningless until it gets pushed live on the site.
Why am I writing this?
Because I suspect, like me, you’ve had days (weeks?) when you think, “Did I get anything done?”
Yes, yes you did. I disagree with Eric.
Learning takes time. I’m smarter about how to use Drip this week than I was last, for example. I got three new initiatives kicked off with team members.
But “get smarter” and “train team” aren’t things you can cross off your list.
I guess that’s the point I’m trying to make.
Go ahead and get something done today. You don’t have to cross anything off your list.
The Healing Power of Music
My friend Bill, the president of my chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society, lost his wife of 49 years last week. She didn’t want a public service.
Instead he asked us to sing one simple song for him and his family.
Make sure your communications are about THEM
A Medical Devices Group member asked why I didn’t publish his post.
I answered, “I can’t publish a headline entitled, ‘[Someone], formerly chief [something] at [somewhere], is pleased to announce the re-launching of his [something something, something something].’
That’s a flat-out promotion. If you’ll endure some friendly but pointed marketing feedback, that’s all about YOU. Who cares about you? (No offense, I care about you.)
WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME is all the average reader wants to know.
I had this conversation with Michelle Lott a few weeks back and her recent posts have earned her more than 100 likes and comments. That’s the route I can support and, as a marketer, can recommend for building awareness about your offer.
I hope you welcome this note in the spirit in which I offer it.”
Postscript: I never heard from him again. Perhaps you value the advice more than he did.
Fast Round
- New LinkedIn discovery: It’s the first good thing I’ve seen LinkedIn do in years. Take advantage of it.
- Want to write better copy? Use some of these words.
- Want fries with that? Remember I told you about my new computer three weeks ago? OMG, I’m so lucky. My old computer stopped responding so I took it to the Microsoft Store for repair. The motherboard was completely fried. Everything on the computer was completely lost. We recycled the computer. Thank God I upgraded just in time. My livelihood depends on this thing!
Thank you for joining me on The Journey.
See you next week – or sooner – if you choose to reply to this email,
