Excuses or Reasons?
Charlotte Booth • 4 July 2022
How to let go of excuses and find solutions that work.
I always thought that if as much effort went into actually doing the tasks I set them, as they put into coming up with excuses then they would have gone far.
I never had 'the dog ate my homework' scenario, but I did have 'the dog got sick on my homework' once. I also had a corker with 'I'm too busy to write my essay. How much will you charge to do it for me?'
As bizarre as his solution to the problem was, the excuse 'I'm too busy' is one of the most common ones.
Even now as a writing mentor, I get very elaborate excuses why work has not been completed between sessions. But now I am more pragmatic. I'm not particularly interested in the excuses other than for entertainment value, but I am interested in the solutions.
If you have signed up to a programme, and are making excuses not to do the work, we have to look at why. The real reason, not the excuse. Time is rarely a factor, as we can all find time to do the things we really
want to.
I'm not going to lie, I'm as bad as the next person when it comes to excuses. Last week I came up with a load of great excuses why I couldn't go running.
1) My car is at the garage so I can't drive to my favourite running route.
2) It's raining/windy/too hot/too humid.
3) I have a race on Sunday and don't want to risk injury.
4) I don't have time, as with the run, and the shower and the faffing about afterwards that cuts into my morning.
I knew these were excuses so I put my trainers on at 6:30am before they could take root and thought about them on my run. And that's the thing with excuses.
You have to recognise them, and decide whether there is a practical solution to the problem. For me, the solution is to just drag my butt out of the house - in waterproofs if necessary - or I will be making excuses all day.
Other solutions may be more difficult or they could be as simple as passing the job to someone else.
Many of my copywriting clients come to me as the solution. They don't have time to do their content. They don't have inspiration to do their content. Or more honestly, they don't want to write their own content, they would rather be doing something else.
So, rather than find excuses why it doesn't get done, they outsource it as a solution. I suppose the guy who tried to outsource his essay was embracing this mindset - but sadly it was against college policy due to the qualification he was working towards.
What excuses do you use not to write your blogs, post regularly on social media, write that email campaign, or to update your website? Are they elaborate excuses, or is it simply something you can't face doing, hate the idea and wish it would go away?
If you are ready to make some of this stuff go away drop me an email
today or book a meeting
to see how I can help.
Or comment below with an excuse as to why you can't. More than happy to score you out of 10 for creativity.
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There is nothing more amusing than checking out mediaeval artistic renditions of lions and other heraldic creatures. These beasts, grimacing and gurning are a strange juxtaposition of human, animal and demon and as far from the cute image of Alex from the Madagascar franchise or in fact a real lion as you could possibly get. There are three main reasons mediaeval lions are so ‘bad’ and un-representational; The artists were following a very tight brief. Some of the artists may never have seen a lion, and were following the descriptions they were given. These lions were representing heraldic principals of bravery, nobility and authority; all very human characteristics. When viewed through this lens it becomes more understandable why they look the way they do, but they are still ‘not right’ and not a great tool for learning about lions. Generative AI is very similar to an uninformed but talented mediaeval artist. There is a element of intelligence but at the end of the day it is following a brief, with no actual ‘knowledge’ of the thing it is producing. As an example, if you prompt your generative AI (ChatGPT and the like) to produce a blog for your new product or service, aimed at your ideal customer avatar you will in all likelihood get a mediaeval lion out the other end. Sort of recognisable, and sort of not. This is because AI doesn’t know what a customer is (ideal or otherwise), has no idea what your product or service is and does, and has no true understanding of how this service or product will serve your ideal customer and their needs. Of course, AI is pulling all the information available from the internet to help with its answer but there is no understanding there. There is no determining fact from falsehoods or even which websites are trustworthy and which are not. So, it skims the internet and puts together content which suits the brief as it understands it. This is then when the actual work should start as this content shouldn’t be used in the raw. It should be edited and tweaked by a human who DOES understand the brief, has been a customer (ideal or otherwise) and can imagine what your ideal customer will feel when using your product or services. We are in a world now, where we have generative AI promoting products and services to humans, when it has no concept of what a human is and how it thinks, meaning the marketing department are in fact more important than ever for ensuring content and copy is aimed at humans and human emotions. You could argue that the world would be a more entertaining place if there were more mediaeval lions in it, but it wouldn’t be a great environment for learning, or for basing purchasing decisions on. If you want to maintain the human element in your content, then I would love to help . Explain the brief, your CTA and your ideal client and I will know what I need to ask to get a clear idea before writing. Then you can rest assured your content was written by a human for a human and we can leave the mediaeval lions to the museums.
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