What I’ve noticed as a copywriter is that the current climate in the world, media and everything else is such that it really doesn’t support deep work.
You could even make the argument that it is antithetical to deep work such as writing, researching, copywriting certainly… Anything that requires going really deep into a subject in order to do your job and have a real effect.
I’ve definitely noticed this with budding copywriters who find it easy to use formulas sometimes and there is nothing wrong with that. And just create the first draft and that is almost it.
While traditionally it is accepted fact with copywriters of significant experience that it really takes deep concentration, prolonged focus and other truly demanding ways of working in order to come up with the winning hooks formulas and the final copy that will actually have an impact.
If you are only surfing on the surface waves of copy you will never get there. And you will eventually brush against some client who is expecting something great and insightful and they get halfhearted results instead.
So be careful about that… and actually get good at the deep work that separates the great ones from, well the rest.
Cal Newport, the Georgetown professor and writer who coined the term deep work, talks about it as the state of flow where you’re so engrossed in the task at hand that the world could do the Cha Cha Slide around you and you wouldn’t even blink.
It’s the kind of work that when you’re done, you actually have something meaty to show for it—like a craftsman with a newly built chair, except your tools are your brainpower, the proverbial quill and sheer will.
You may ask for reviews, responses and reactions from other people – as you should – but having done the deep work to begin with, you’ll know it already means something.
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