Is your learning curve accelerating? Mine sure is. Especially since I decided to launch a podcast and publish a book as part of content marketing strategies for a writing business.
This need to move quickly in and around digital platforms is probably best represented by the fact that I now have a Venmo account. Five days ago, I did not have such an account. Then a request came in for a signed copy of my new novella … with the follow-up question, “Do you have Venmo?”
Within just a few minutes, I opened a Venmo account and responded, “Yes, I have Venmo.”
Over the last couple of weeks, I worked through the various issues of hosting a podcast … after I’d worked through issues of recording and editing a podcast. Prior to that, I figured out how to publish a book via Amazon KDP. So, yes, I’ve learned a lot.
But here’s the thing that hasn’t changed. Every time I come face to face with a new digital marketing platform or technological process, I feel overwhelmed. I enter with fear, uncertainty and confusion wrapped up in a big box of “How will this ever work?”
Yet here’s the other thing that hasn’t changed: I get to the other side of that question one step at a time.
A well-known book by Dr. Robert Maurer, One Small Step Can Change Your Life, is based on principles of Kaizen, a philosophy used by Japanese businesses to make improvements. The Kaizen method involves making an improvement by taking a small step – often the smallest possible – which reroutes the circuits in your brain that cause you to feel overwhelmed.
The Kaizen method is an effective way to approach learning something new – such as publishing a book or recording a podcast. Yet it’s also a useful approach for overcoming your resistance to doing something you already know how to do.
For example, you already know how to make up your bed, but you don’t feel like it. So you tell yourself, “I will put a pillow back in place.” That small step gives you the momentum to take the next one, and you end up making up the bed.
Obviously in your business life you might want to apply that process to a more profitable outcome. For example, the need to send a follow-up email to a prospect is pressing on you. You already know how to send an email, but you don’t feel like it. What’s the smallest step you can take to get started? Take that step, then move on to your next one.