Become a Well-Organised Marketer
A four-phase plan for managing your distractions and making time for deliberate practice
When Malcolm Gladwell published “Outliers”, one of the most interesting suggestions he made was the theory that to achieve excellence in a field, you must spend 10,000 hours practicing your chosen topic.
The maths suggest if you work on something for 40 hours a week, it will take you five years to reach peak performance.
You already know becoming a great marketer happens over time by blending the development of skills, knowledge, and experience. That’s why mastery of any chosen profession is often a lifetime’s work.
I will not argue with that.
Instead, I’ve got a different suggestion to make. Why not shorten the time you take to accumulate the 10,000 hours you need to become an expert marketer?
How?
By developing one key meta-skill.
What Is a Meta-Skill?
You already know about metadata — data information that provides information about other data.
Well, a meta-skill is a skill that provides a capability for other skills. Here’s an example.
You want to be a great marketer. To do so, you must become expert at analysing data, interpreting customer behaviour, learning about market trends, setting objectives, working with teams, being adept at evaluation and feedback, communicating ideas and a variety of other skills which add up to being a great marketer.
Your task as a novice marketer is to practise these skills until you are fantastic at them.
You need time to gain the marketing skills you require. The trouble is, there are always competing claims for your time and attention. If you’re not careful, distractions limit the time you spend on developing the core marketing skills you need.
Then you’ll take longer than necessary to build the marketing expertise you need.
Distractions delay your progress to excellence.
Examples of meta-skills include:
- Time management
- Note-taking
- File and information management
- Speed reading
- Task management
The Well-Organised Meta-Skill
Anyone who wants to shorten the lead time to excellence must organise their time well. This is a skill that needs time to develop into an expertise like any other.
What does it take to become expert at the meta-skill of being well-organised?
The answer is 10,000 hours of practice.
Increasing your competence in this area, however, will drive improved performance everywhere else.
So, what can you do to speed up your accumulation of 10,000 hours of practice of this meta-skill?
Spend 30 minutes of each day on intentional self-organisation.
Here’s how to do it.
1. Choose a System or Method
There are many methods to choose from. Here are three well-known systems I have tested.
Each of these three offers a way to organise yourself. Start by picking one and adopting or adapting it as a practice.
2. Spend 30 Minutes a Day Organising Yourself
Create a 30-minute window each day to spend implementing your chosen method. Maybe you use a start-the-day routine or you use one at the end of each day.
Just dedicate 30-minutes each day to the job of clarifying your marketing and other goals, defining priorities, and taking action. If you’ve not tried this before, it can revolutionise your productivity.
I have my routines built into OmniFocus. When I get to work I open my laptop, iPad or iPhone and run through the tasks I’ve defined which set my day up. It’s quick to do and creates momentum at the beginning of each day.
3. Spend 30 Minutes a Week on Reflection
None of the methods above is likely to suit you down to the ground. If you spend just 30 minutes each week reflecting on how things have gone, you’ll be able to adjust course.
By taking this small amount of time each week you will gradually evolve a way of working that suits you. This means it is far more likely you’ll stick to it.
I find the best way to do this is to make a journal entry. I have a folder in DevonThink called ‘Reflections’. When I’m ready to do my weekly reflection, I open the folder and make a new note. I can review every note I make and over time this allows me to understand what works best for me.
Here’s a sample entry from early 2015.
I’m struggling to use contexts (a feature of Getting Things Done) and this is slowing me down.
Today I only use three contexts. I’m usually either at work or at home — so these are my first two. I have a third context for creativity (where I work on creative projects that can straddle work and home).
4. Spend 30 Minutes a Month on Progress Checking
Each month set a time to look at the progress you’re making.
By checking in regularly you can reinforce your practice. The wider field of view you get looking at a month allows you to see where you’re making progress and where you’re stuck.
The key is never to lose sight of the big picture. In fact, this can be hard to achieve. In a busy week, it's easy to miss that a key area of personal development is being neglected.
I use my monthly check-in to ensure I’ve got the coverage I’m aiming for across the big areas of my life. I check to make sure I’m spending enough of my time on the areas I want, whether these are projects at work, my personal interests, or areas I’m looking to develop.
It’s how you can ensure that enough time is being spent on the skill areas you are prioritising for development.
Here’s how the meta-skill maths adds up.
- 30 minutes/day = 10,950 minutes a year, or 182 hours.
- 30 minutes/week = 1560 minutes a year, or 26 hours.
- 30 minutes/month = 360 minutes a year, or 6 hours.
- Total time spent each year = 214 hours.
That’s not the whole story though.
By ensuring I dedicate this amount of time to preparation, I end up spending far more of my day intentionally focused on purposeful activities. This means I’m using the meta-skill almost continuously.
Getting to 10,000 hours practicing the meta-skill happens a lot sooner than you think.
Turn Your Practice Into a Habit
At a conservative estimate, I think entraining a practice like this takes at least two months.
There’s some great reading below on habit formation — the consensus seems to be a habit takes 66 days to form.
The benefit of turning your meta-skill into a habit is that the cognitive burden imposed by the skill itself diminishes as it becomes habitual.
Gradually you turn into a more organised person.
After a year, it is possible that most of the time you spend is well-organised, purposeful time.
By building your meta-skill expertise, you create time and space to develop your core marketing skills. The result is less wasted or redundant time and more time spent on honing those core marketing skills.
The Takeaway
Excelling at a meta-skill exponentially increases the rate at which you can gain other essential marketing skills.
The investment of time developing expertise in a meta-skill area compounds. It creates a multiplier effect, which you can use to drive your personal development across the board faster than you thought possible.
