March 6, 2024

Dear Reader,

Are you working to be more effective or more efficient?

When I first began learning how to write marketing content, one of the books I read talked about the difference between effectiveness and efficiency. It said, efficiency is paddling a canoe with the perfect stroke and effectiveness is being in the right river going in the right direction.

The catch was most people spent too much time trying to be efficient and too little time trying to be effective. After all, if you weren't in the right river going in the right direction, it wouldn't matter how perfect your stroke was.

When I first read this, I reflected for a few minutes. Was copywriting the most effective way to make money and grow as an individual? Was I being effective in my approach to learning and practicing copywriting? How do I even measure effectiveness in copywriting?

While I didn't have any answers, I learned something very important. Effectiveness isn't about having one correct solution but having an ongoing process of discovering more important areas of focus. Effectiveness isn't about validating what you are doing, but invalidating what you are doing. It isn't about doing the right things, but rather the never-ending pursuit of discovering more important things to do.

As time passed, I found many answers to my starting questions, with each of them being more accurate than the last. When I first began practicing my writing, I wrote about things that interested me and tried to share my interests with others. Eventually, I learned that effectiveness in writing wasn't about finding the right words to describe something. It was about having the right ideas that would engage the right readers, at the right time and place, and in the right way.

Now, I spend most of my time researching and reflecting on what people will be interested in reading, rather than spending time thinking about how to make things look correct and sound interesting. But more importantly, to this day, I work to improve the effectiveness of my writing because I'll never know what I don't know if I don't look any further.

So, if you feel you need a change of pace, learn to take a step back. Consider blocking off a few minutes every week to reflect on where you could be more effective with your time, attention, and energy. Is there anything more important you could redirect your focus toward?

Chris X