Boring is important

Rather like a dog when seeing a squirrel, its easy to be come distracted by something bright, fast-moving and new. Getting bored all too quickly with the usual day to day stuff, or fetching the ball, or simply walking to heel home.

I understand the desire, the urge and the need to go play with the new toy, the new thing or the new process. The adults in the room know that you will have to come back and get on with the boring routine, because the boring routine gets the baby bathed, or gets you home, or makes sure the lights stay on.

I don’t mind the excitement of the new thing- in fact it SHOULD delight you and engage you and get your excited. I try and spend time on making the boring a bit more engaging too, and a way to do that is to zoom out a bit and refresh your reasons why its important.

The everyday stuff can be a bit of a hamster wheel, a conveyor of the same old same old, the sausage factory. Its hard to keep them fresh and interesting but the reality is that the very best radio stations, podcast producers, audio producers and practitioners of the art of communication, without fail get the boring stuff DONE. Not just done, but done brilliantly. It doesn’t mean they don’t do the bright and new, but the basics are covered off well with out fail every time.

Make it count and make it great.

In my most recent job in radio, I immersed myself back into GSelector, Zetta and music scheduling, since with a small team and the number of logs required, it was all hands to the pumps. Its true there were days when the repetitive process could be laborious – important but laborious. The challenge I set myself was to make it count and make it great, adding something new as often as I could. I would ensure to schedule some time to look through the rotations, the analysis and find a problem in need of a fix. Nothing major, but something that would make a difference in the quality of the everyday production. For the bits which had a sketchy memory (it had been sometime since I had been in GS), I spent the time reading up, scrolling through the RCSWorks videos and learning something or refreshing the basics.

Was it new? Was it exciting or creative? Not particularly, but you can’t build anything decent without a strong foundation which is where the boring every day tasks become important.

Boring MATTERS

People won’t remember you for the perfect logs, the great segues, the solid rotations its true, but that is the reason they will STAY. The big ideas, the contests and the glitter will excite, but without the cake, no-one wants to just eat the icing.

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