I was finishing up some sales email templates as part of a contract. I had something pretty good, but I figured there's always room for improvement, so I dug out eight to ten of my favorite books to see if there was any more juice I could squeeze out.
When I do work like this, I go to a number of different sources. So I opened up a few books centered around email templates, some books on marketing, some books on consulting, a book on networking, and two books on sales. These are some of my favorite books covering their respective topics.
What shocked me -- and I mean, shocked -- is that there was a piece of advice given in almost every single book that I'd never noticed before, despite having read these books many times.
It was about professional affiliations -- joining organizations and going to events and conferences.
This was never something I did much of. I didn't know how useful it was previously. I always preferred connecting with people one on one, and I had a flawed conception of events and conferences.
That turned around with time and new experiences, and there I am, flying from Narita Airport to Berlin for an event.
And suddenly, every one of these books has a chapter or sub-chapter on joining organizations, going to conferences, and getting a lot out of them.
I'd never really noticed the advice before, even though it would have been useful for me to notice it. My mind just parsed it. It wasn't something I was doing, it wasn't something I was interested in doing, it wasn't something I was interested in considering doing, and so I just skipped over it.
To my own detriment.
It's not that I considered going to events, did an analysis, and decided against it. That would be fine, because you can't do everything. Rather, I didn't seem to notice it at all. Books that I've worn out by referring back to repeatedly, I seemed to notice the sub-chapters for the first time. It was like I'd never read them before.
This is scary, because it makes me think that there's probably a lot of other things like that. How many key activities, core components, and useful actions to take is my mind just outright ignoring?
Most of them, right?
How many useful activities is your mind parsing out because of some preconception?
Most of them, right?
Scary stuff. Blindspots. What advice are you not even noticing, because you don't want to?