I’ve been in a peculiar on-off-relationship with this blog. Or with any other content creation for that matter such as my YouTube videos or my podcast. And while it is certainly true that I simply chose different priorities the last few months (changed job, bought a house, got married and I have a two year old daughter) something has been blocking me.
This something is my need for a label.
I’m the type of person who always needs goals. I don’t like doing things to pass time. Whatever I am doing, I am always looking for a purpose. Not the kind of life purpose that wants to make the world a better place. But I workout to get stronger, I read to get smarter, I work to deliver great products and sometimes I also relax to recharge my batteries.
But what I am creating this online content for?
When I fist started to blog around 2008 (yes…that’s not a typo) I was quite a sucker for everything related to personal development and that’s basically what I wrote about. However, my enthusiasm caved as I continued feeling like a phony. Who was I to give and share advice or my opinions, when I was just a student who, in my own eyes, hadn’t achieved anything impressive? I enjoyed writing but I felt uncomfortable sharing it. I am no self-help guru or lifestlye coach.
The next push was directed from my first steps as freelancer. When it comes to positioning the common advice is to find your niche. Find that one narrow topic that you want to be associated with and go all-in on that. You don’t want to be just another psychologist, you want to be the psychologist for goldfish with personality disorders.
So I went for „Growth Hacking“, what turned out to be a strategically sub-average decision as:
a) I had to explain what I do all the time,
b) only broke startups were intrigued to use that process. The companies with money wanted to rely on agencies.
c) I ended up optimizing facebook campaigns and landingpages – tasks that did not light my fire to say the least.
And while there certainly are a couple of people who can get hyped about the latest TikTok trend and build their entire career on it, I can’t. And I don’t want to. I’m not just a marketing guy. So I went silent again.
The next big push content-wise was all about leadership. It was the first-time I was promoted into a leadership position. Before that, I was CEO of my own company, but everyone essentially just worked for love and a pat on the back. And as we all didn’t end up becoming filthy rich, I guess I had a credibility issue. But for this new job, I embraced the concept of „document vs. create„ and basically created content along the things I learned myself. So I created some YouTube Videos about my best practices and I even started a podcast where I interviewed people to topics that were somehow related to leadership. And I honestly enjoyed all of it, even-though it was extremely time-consuming.
However, life unfolded in some unexpected ways and I started over at another company. No leadership position. While I was the confidant of the CEO before, I suddenly found myself knocked down two rungs to a position where I am happy if the C-Level knows my name. So what do I do now? I guess I’m not your leadership expert.
My first impulse was to go all-in on „product management“, certainly yet another topic I feel deeply passioned about and definitely a topic that matches my current role. But I hesitate. Is this now definitely the topic that I want to go for?
I hope we feel like this forever
OutKast – Ms. Jackson
Forever, forever, ever, forever, ever?
Forever never seems that long until you’re grown
And notice that the day by day ruler can’t be too wrong
It’s not that I am afraid to suddenly loose my passion for a topic. After all I am still into personal development and leadership fascinates me since I was a teen. It’s about saying yes to just one topic, and no to so many others. And while I certainly have absolutely no commitment issues in other areas of my live, this is an issue for me. I felt very much understood when I stumbled over an interview with Steven Bartlett. In it, for me, a burning bush moment:
‚I think once I left Social Chain, I learned a lot of lessons about how to build teams, how to delegate. I realised that also… I wanted to resist my labels. We all label ourselves. What tends to happen is that people live out those labels for the rest of their life. I don’t believe that’s actually a healthy way to live in terms of the mind. I think it’s a form of imprisonment. It tends to be the case that people adopt their label in line with their last achievement. So if they were the social media boss that’s what they then become for the rest of my life. I think real freedom and real happiness and real living is exploring the full nature of who you are, artistically, creatively, professionally, in your relationships.
Steven Bartlett
The pressure to have a clear focus for this – the blog and all the content I create – was based on the conception that you must have that singular label to build a personal brand. But what if that’s wrong? What if the multidimensionality, my unique interest and knowledge in a broad range of topics is in itself not an issue but an advantage?
What if I don’t need to adhere to a narrow set of subjects, but can switch gears as I learn new things in different areas?
So this is what I am going to do. I’m not going to officially peel off previous labels. I’ll just add new ones to create my unique combination of labels.
And I don’t have to attain perfection in any of these topics yet; I create this content for myself, as much as for anyone else, putting my faith in the words of the author Richard Bach: “You teach best what you most need to learn.”