My mom has Alzheimer’s, and this week I finally had to move her into a home. The uncomfortable build-up and cross-continental travel prep took me out of creativity and productivity last week.
| Week 12 number of words written: | 125 |
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| Total number of words written to date: | 5679 |
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| How I’m feeling about it: | Disconnected |
I’m no less interested in writing a great book.
And I’m no less capable of writing a great book.
But for right now, the situation has put me in a place – mentally and physically – where I don’t have the same access to my abilities.
Those abilities aren’t gone. Something is just sitting on top of them.
What’s interesting is that that’s the exact same thing I’m writing about in this book, just in a different context.
In the simplest terms, here’s what happens to us marketers and marketing leaders:
1. External trigger: Anything from “missing the number” to complaints from the CEO
2. Internal reaction: The degree to which we’ve worked on our inner game is revealed
3. Change in mode: Likely switching from offense to defense – without quite realizing it
What most of us have underestimated is (1) how much the internal reaction affects our operating mode and (2) how much we can affect our internal reaction.
How?
By understanding our internal architecture. And by optimizing it.
Again, that’s in simple terms. There’s a full book coming about the details around that.
We’ll just have to wait and see exactly when this book is coming, haha!
In the meantime, it’s worth calling out the difference between what I’m describing in the book and what I’m dealing with at the moment:
What I call our operating mode – the degree to which we’re playing offense or defense and the degree to which we’re aware and intentional about that – is not really a factor for me right now.
But the ultimate problem is similar:
I have temporarily lost access to what lets me deliver my best work.
The narrative in Marketlingland is that we need to become better marketers. More skills. Sure, we can always improve, I guess.
But when we’re struggling, it’s less of a skills problem and more of an access problem.
That’s what most people miss.
– Joergen
