I always feel bad when I repeat myself, and that’s creating a disservice to both you and I.
I’ll frequently have an idea for a post and think “I can’t do that, I already talked about it before”, which is just silly. I appreciate you reading this post today, but I’m quite confident you can’t remember many of the other posts on here. I hope they made you think more and become a slightly better person, but it’s unreasonable to think that you remember very much of the exact content on here.
As a result, repetition is a good thing. Not re-publishing the same posts again, but coming back to the same topics.
People like us do things like that
“People like us do things like that” is something Seth Godin has said repeatedly over the years when talking about building tribes of like-minded people. I wanted to look at his blog and see how many times he’s said that phrase, but it was too many to count — easily hundreds of posts. He didn’t repeat himself over and over, but it was the same tune. Each time he shared that concept, he gave a slight twist.
In Robert Carnes’ excellent book “The Story Cycle“, he talks about sharing a specific story repeatedly. He says:
“There’s a fine line between under-sharing and oversharing a specific story, but most organizations under-share. Perhaps that’s because they’re not confident enough in the quality of the work. Or they’ve grown bored with the story themselves. Remember that once you’ve heard the story internally a few dozen times, it likely means that your audience has only heard it once or twice. Keep sharing.”
As he says, it’s a fine line between under-sharing and oversharing but I’m so far from that line that, to quote Joey Tribbiani, “the line is dot to me”. I need to be careful not to overcorrect, but being willing to share the same type of thoughts over time can be a great thing.
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