Something that I’ve realized I’m pretty bad about is repeating myself. It’s not that I do it too much, but rather that I don’t do it nearly enough.
I first realized this years ago when I would teach 8th grade Bible Study at our church. I’d get the curriculum, go through it with the students, and be done with it 10 minutes into a 60 minute session. They heard everything they needed to hear, but they only heard it once. It’s not that I should have done the same lesson over and over the same way, but augmenting your teaching with similar stories can help get the point across.
Some great examples of this include folks like Gary Vaynerchuk, Donald Miller, Seth Godin, and many others.
In the case of Gary V, I’ve heard him literally say it. His words were something to the effect of “I have a few great ideas, so I share them over and over to help people understand.“
With Donald Miller, I’ve probably heard him say “If you confuse, you lose” 500 times in various podcasts, books and interviews. It’s a key to what he does, so he pushes it.
With Seth Godin, he has written daily blog posts going back nearly 20 years. They’re all excellent, but they fall along similar themes (as do his books and other content). He wants to make sure that his message is understood, so he repeats it frequently, often with new stories and twists but with the same core idea.
Improving…
I’ve gotten a bit better about this recently, but I need to be more willing to share the same message multiple times for things that I believe in. When I have an idea for a blog post, I’ll often think “I already posted basically the same thing last year”. It’s quite presumptuous (and wildly inaccurate) for me to think anyone will notice a post today and remember that I posted something similar a year ago.
I’ve been posting daily on here now for nearly 10 months, and some patterns are beginning to emerge. As they do, I need to be willing to grab onto them and dig in, rather than trying to find a way to always find something fresh.
