I remember someone once said something like this.
He asked me to teach him how to muscle train because he wanted to become macho, and when I told him about my muscle training menu and how to take protein, his expression changed to a colossal grin, and I lost contact with him after that.”
It’s a bit of a funny story, but I personally believe that people like this make up the majority of the world. Especially working in marketing, I often see how many consumers become negative and cool down just by telling them something a little harsh or troublesome like the above.
I used to run an owned media company and I once looked at what articles were getting traffic and what articles were not. In particular, I looked at the difference in the way the title was written.
What I found was that titles that said “easy to do” or “easy to do” increased access, while titles that said “difficult” or “hard to do” decreased access. Clearly, online readers clearly wanted to solve complex and difficult problems easily and effortlessly. Since then, we have continued our trial-and-error process of emphasizing in the title how “quick,” “anyone” and “easy” it is to do, and this has been successful, and access to the site has steadily increased.
People are creatures that want to make things easy.
However, this kind of story is not limited to on-demand media articles. We can see this trend in all kinds of fields.
For example, we may have seen something similar in the way we studied when we were students. Many of you may have tried some weird, easy and simple methods to improve your grades easily and effortlessly, instead of the hard, boring, uninteresting and common methods. I personally believe that the best example of this is sleep study. The claim that one can obtain the necessary knowledge while sleeping was more appealing to those of us who wanted to get good grades with ease and without suffering.
And the same is true in business, isn’t it? For example, the skill of “logical thinking” is essential in business, and there are people who read books on logical thinking incessantly in order to acquire this skill. However, logical thinking is not something that can be acquired by reading books. It can only be acquired by practicing it at work and receiving feedback from others, but many people are satisfied with just reading books and do not speak up, give their opinions, or even think about it at work for fear of criticism. They know the necessity of logical thinking, but they are so averse to feedback that they never grow.
There are too many examples to list, so I will leave it at that, but this kind of human desire to “take it easy” can be seen everywhere. In other words, I think this can be said to be an essential human trait. In fact, it is because of this desire for ease and simplicity that civilization was born and the economy developed. Therefore, the desire to “take it easy” is something that every human being has, and that in itself should not be denied.
The solution to the problem “does not exist on the easy side.
However, these feelings of “wanting it easy” are troublesome when it comes to solving problems and challenges.
A problem or issue can be a problem or issue because it cannot be solved easily. If they were easy to solve, they would not even be problems or challenges. However, the reason why there are so many problems and challenges in the world is because they cannot be solved easily.
And there are many difficulties in solving these problems and challenges that have surfaced. For example, in the above-mentioned example of studying, it is absolutely necessary and unavoidable to repeat the process of studying to get a good grade. However, if the desire to “take it easy” prevails in such a situation, people will jump to impossible methods such as “sleep study” and deviate from the steady and painstaking correct method.
Also, suppose a company has one of its marketing challenges is to attract customers. What they can do with a small budget and no advertising is to make gradual improvements, such as by steadily updating articles on owned media, in order to increase their ability to attract customers. However, if the desire to attract customers with ease prevails in a situation like this, the company will take measures such as “creating buzz on social networking services,” which is a gamble that cannot be called a business, aiming for a reversal, and the small budget will be wasted.
In this way, it is natural that most problems and issues have thorny paths to be solved and that there is no such thing as an easy solution. Just as many students do not face essential problems head-on, many business people do not face problems and challenges head-on, but instead run away from them.
Always remind yourself that you are facing the issues.
It is also common in the business world for people to replace problems and challenges with problems and challenges that can be solved easily, rather than running away from them. For example, they conclude that they can solve the problem of lack of content and nurturing by implementing MA (marketing automation). In fact, there are many companies that switch the issue to the inability to deliver well-timed content as the cause of nurturing, when in fact the most impactful solution is to create good quality content.
Certainly, nurturing can be successful if content is delivered at the right time. However, this is only the case when there is enough quality content, and even if there is no content, it is meaningless to implement MA if there is no content that can be delivered in a timely manner. Besides, if you ask which has more impact on business performance, delivering content in a timely manner or creating quality content, it is definitely the creation of quality content. However, many companies are stuck in a situation where they are simply making it look like they are making an effort by taking the easy way out (in this case, implementing MA), distracting their attention from the essential issue.
Switching issues for easy solutions is a classic example of consciously or unconsciously not working. It is the same tendency for students and professionals alike to feel the psychological burden of steadily creating contents, and to jump to something else that seems to solve the problem as if they are trying to escape from it.
Therefore, it is important to ask ourselves whether we ourselves have fallen into such thinking. Everyone has these feelings of “wanting it easy,” and if you let these feelings control you and keep you from doing the task at hand, you will continue to not grow in any way.
However, if you are always aware of this and face the challenges head-on, it will surely lead not only to your own growth but also to the growth of the company. If you do this, you will realize that the right thing to do is to focus on “How can I create quality content with ease? If you can do this, you will realize that the right thing to do is to use your head to ask yourself, “How can I create quality content with ease? I believe that you should accept the “feeling of wanting to have fun” and work hard every day with the intention of using that feeling to your advantage.