This post has clarified something really important for me: why I’ve had a lot of trouble being motivated to expand my business.
When I work with individual people, I’m motivated to help them. But when I think about the broader concept of “helping people”, it feels like something I should care about, but don’t. So, this article made me realize that this isn’t something that’s wrong with me, it’s just normal. (And presumably, it means that when other people talk about how they care about people and their mission, they’re probably thinking of some specific people somewhere in there!)
When I think back to when I’ve been more motivated by my work, it’s been when I’ve had specific exemplars that I’ve thought about. Like, when I was a programmer, I always knew at least some of my software’s users, at the very least as people on the other end of a phone call or email conversation, on up to seeing some of them on a regular basis.
I don’t have the same frequency of contact any more in my business, and in recent years I’ve had the challenge that the people I mainly interact with are people who’ve already been working with me for some time—which means they no longer have the same sort of challenges or needs as people who haven’t worked with me at all. (Indeed, I used to use myself as one of my exemplars, in that I tended to think in terms of, “what do I wish someone else had told me?” or “what would I have wanted to find in a book about this?”… but I am no longer similar enough to that older self that I have any real clue any more what he would’ve wanted or been able to use.)
This post also provides a further rationale for what some internet marketing gurus advise: that you develop a “customer avatar”—an imaginary customer who embodies the traits of your target audience—rather than thinking about demographics or multiple people. This advice is usually given in the context of being better able to write persuasively to that audience, because you’ll have a specific person you’re talking to, and because you’ll be able to better imagine what they need. However, I can see now that it also has the additional benefit of being more motivating: it feels much better to help that one imaginary person who has a problem right now, than to imagine helping countless numbers of vague, faceless people who might at some point have that problem.
It also reminds me of Robert Frtiz’s writing: he’s always saying you shouldn’t try to make rules for what you want to create, or what you care about in general, but instead focus on specific creations that you care about existing. i.e., don’t try to define yourself as a painter of landscapes or even a painter; just focus on the next thing you want to make, whether it’s a painting or a business or tonight’s dinner.
And in a final ironic meta-twist, the post itself is an illustration of its own point. I knew before about abstract/concrete construal, but only in the abstract. ;-) This post provided a sufficiently concrete construal that I can actually do something about it. Well done, sir!
Thanks for making me understand something extremely important with regard to creative work:
Every creator should have a single, identifiable victim of his creations!
As far as I can tell, unless I have very specific information about the person I’m writing to, I’m writing for myself as of the moment just before I had whatever insight I’m trying to convey.
That could explain why I’m much more concerned with being clear than with being persuasive.
This post has clarified something really important for me: why I’ve had a lot of trouble being motivated to expand my business.
When I work with individual people, I’m motivated to help them. But when I think about the broader concept of “helping people”, it feels like something I should care about, but don’t. So, this article made me realize that this isn’t something that’s wrong with me, it’s just normal. (And presumably, it means that when other people talk about how they care about people and their mission, they’re probably thinking of some specific people somewhere in there!)
When I think back to when I’ve been more motivated by my work, it’s been when I’ve had specific exemplars that I’ve thought about. Like, when I was a programmer, I always knew at least some of my software’s users, at the very least as people on the other end of a phone call or email conversation, on up to seeing some of them on a regular basis.
I don’t have the same frequency of contact any more in my business, and in recent years I’ve had the challenge that the people I mainly interact with are people who’ve already been working with me for some time—which means they no longer have the same sort of challenges or needs as people who haven’t worked with me at all. (Indeed, I used to use myself as one of my exemplars, in that I tended to think in terms of, “what do I wish someone else had told me?” or “what would I have wanted to find in a book about this?”… but I am no longer similar enough to that older self that I have any real clue any more what he would’ve wanted or been able to use.)
This post also provides a further rationale for what some internet marketing gurus advise: that you develop a “customer avatar”—an imaginary customer who embodies the traits of your target audience—rather than thinking about demographics or multiple people. This advice is usually given in the context of being better able to write persuasively to that audience, because you’ll have a specific person you’re talking to, and because you’ll be able to better imagine what they need. However, I can see now that it also has the additional benefit of being more motivating: it feels much better to help that one imaginary person who has a problem right now, than to imagine helping countless numbers of vague, faceless people who might at some point have that problem.
It also reminds me of Robert Frtiz’s writing: he’s always saying you shouldn’t try to make rules for what you want to create, or what you care about in general, but instead focus on specific creations that you care about existing. i.e., don’t try to define yourself as a painter of landscapes or even a painter; just focus on the next thing you want to make, whether it’s a painting or a business or tonight’s dinner.
And in a final ironic meta-twist, the post itself is an illustration of its own point. I knew before about abstract/concrete construal, but only in the abstract. ;-) This post provided a sufficiently concrete construal that I can actually do something about it. Well done, sir!
Thanks for making me understand something extremely important with regard to creative work: Every creator should have a single, identifiable victim of his creations!
As far as I can tell, unless I have very specific information about the person I’m writing to, I’m writing for myself as of the moment just before I had whatever insight I’m trying to convey.
That could explain why I’m much more concerned with being clear than with being persuasive.