why you should love problems
Living in the high-octane, can’t-stop-won’t-stop digital world that we do, failure can be pretty immediate. I know I’m not the first person who’s tweeted out a hilarious-at-the-time missive and deleted it two hours later because there wasn’t even a hint of a favorite, retweet or reply.
When you’re not just creating content for yourself, but for awesome clients who you want to help succeed, it can sting even more. It’s easy to fall in love with our solutions and freak out a little when they don’t work. But we have to realize no one’s really batting 100 (is that sports metaphor right?) when it comes to creating content.
Sometimes things will fail. Sometimes they’ll do just okay. If you can’t take a few problems and an occasional dose of failure, being in the Creating Stuff industry may just not be for you.
Embracing problems can be tough — but it’s essential if you want to be real with yourself and hone your content creation skills.
Here are a few reasons that I’ve come to love problems in all shapes and sizes.
Problems happen to everyone
Remember when Facebook launched Slingshot, its version of Snapchat, in 2014, and it didn’t go so great? They could have let that be their last attempt at short-form video messaging. But it seems they took another look at this idea and found a place where it might fit: Instagram. I don’t know about your Instagram feed, but mine is full of tons of people using the new Stories feature. Sometimes the idea itself isn’t bad, but the execution needs work.
Problems teach us new things
Let’s say your email unsubscribe rate has increased over the last few months. It takes some careful, neutral investigation to understand why this is happening.
It’s possible that your emails aren’t resonating with your audience anymore. Maybe you’re emailing them too often, or not often enough. Or maybe it’s a good thing: if you’ve adjusted your email content to reach people who are more aligned with your message, you’re losing subscribers who were never really going to engage with you anyway.
Spending time understanding the problem is going to tell you something you didn’t know yesterday.
Problems are opportunities
Finding a problem means there’s room for new opportunity. If a tactic isn’t working, it might justify trying a new channel or dipping your toe into a style of content you’ve always wanted to try. This doesn’t mean it’s cool to be reactive and jump from tactic to tactic — some things take time to gain traction. But it’s good to keep perspective and be open to change.
Problems are part of a bigger story
Maybe your users just aren’t that into Throwback Thursdays. Maybe the tone you’re using doesn’t match your product. Some problems are small and can be solved with a quick pivot; others tell you something larger about the way you’re connecting with your people. Connect the dots of a few problems and you might see a narrative that changes the way you view your business.
Problems are lessons in humility
Having things work perfectly is great, but there’s not much to learn from that besides how awesome you are (which, while fun, doesn’t make you better at what you do). Being able to objectively look at your work is tough, but important. Training yourself to get out of your own head is invaluable.
Problems push us forward
Problems don’t have just one solution. That’s why they make us smarter, faster, more agile, more adaptable. Problems brought us vaccines, space travel and Snuggies (if you don’t love a blanket with sleeves, you can get out of my house).
We all have a natural impulse to act on problems immediately, but taking the time to investigate a problem gives us a healthy dose of perspective — an essential part of being a good strategist.
