I’m often told, “you should…….”
“I should”….
Funny enough, it’s usually by a friend whose name, if said quickly, would be heard as “I shall” or “I should” (100% she’s rolling her eyes right now, I’m confident her ears are burning). And she’s not wrong. There are lots of things that I should be doing. None among us is living entirely up to their potential, making the most of the short life we’ve all been given.
But “you should” isn’t a “why you should.” This phrase offers no tangible guidance or depth of reasoning behind why as a third person, you believe I’m the right fit to do the suggested thing.
This brings me to this entry and why you may spend precious minutes on these thoughts here. – Thanks, by the way. – I built this site two years ago on an idea that came probably two years prior. Covid was well in its throes, I was leading an awful client project, and I needed an outlet. This being the first actual entry, you can tell that I didn’t follow through, even though…. I probably should have, but we’ll get to that in a minute—first, some history. In my previous professional life, we had a saying; “IDKLFO.” This is an extension of “I don’t know” (with a shrug) and seeks to apply empathy, understand that the person in front of you has asked you a question you don’t know the answer to, and own that you may not have the answer, but you want to work towards helping them find out. So, IDKLFO, “I don’t know, let’s find out.”
IDKLFO is a beautiful premise, and today after getting another “you should” from my friend. It dawned on me that IDKLFO is less a statement and more a recipe for how to consistently write these entries.
What don’t I know?
Like most creatives, I’ve struggled because I’m not very good at writing as an art form. I find it difficult to find my voice, and I find it even more of a challenge to get to the fucking point. And worse, due to my nature of being technical and curious, rather than practicing my craft, I need to apply diligence to know if the time is worth being spent. This means ensuring analytics are set up to collect quantifiable information and examining services to collect behavioral data. Linking accounts to cross-post, validating that the topic I have an opinion about will perform as written, as well as translating to video. How many words are appropriate for short form? How much time should it take to read? Do I allow commenting? Would it maybe be better as a TikTok… forget it; ill do this later; I’m exhausted.
See what I mean?
What can I do to find out?
With the individuals I helped in that role, a long-winded explanation of the steps id take wasn’t always readily available or desired. We would have to take action, use a logical, systematic approach to break down their question or problem, and solve it one revelation at a time. So, today I’ll take action. Tomorrow I’ll take another, and I’ll promise to continue taking action until the revelations speak for themselves for if this was truly worth the time spent. To help this, I’ll add guard rails and Time-box writing to 30 minutes, no more, no less. This should help keep the word count down and force me to get to the point faster than I naturally would. I’m going to ignore the data for the moment. And I’ll share these semi-publicly and hope for constructive feedback.
That’s 30 minutes, this will be a journey, and I hope you have questions; I might not know the answers, but as has always been, I’ll want to help you find out how to get them together.