Over the last couple of months, my messaging and inbox traffic has exploded.
It’s still manageable; I’m an inbox zero person and have curated my “Primary” tab in Gmail to be very effective in filtering out the stuff I actually need to see/action. And some of it is still garbage, but it’s probably 5-10x busier than it was a few months ago.
At the core, I think it comes down to one thing: more people know I exist.
That comes from a lot of things…being involved in several organizations, launching a weekly podcast with it’s own online profiles, continuing to write every day…
I’m putting out my signal more and more, I’ve done the hard work of yelling into the void every day for a year, and the effect is compounding.
Now I know you probably don’t have the desire to make as much “content” or share your life as publicly as I do (ever since Facebook rolled out short bios on profiles, mine has said “you’re gonna be seeing a lot of me.”)
But even so, you’re probably interested in some type of opportunity. It doesn’t matter if you’re waiting on someone to pick you and give you an opportunity, or if you’re trying to create leverage by getting lots of peoples’ attention.
You need someone(s) to know you exist.
The someone(s) who need(s) to take notice of you — do they even know you exist? How are you making sure they know you exist? Is that mechanism for noticing your existence putting your best foot forward?
You can do this in a very targeted, deep way, or you can be more of a shotgun blast. That’s your call.
But if you don’t even exist in the minds of the people you’re trying to help/change/get in front of/sell to, you will never get where you want to go. Why not be intentional about making your own breaks?
PS: One of my New Year’s resolutions was to balance creation with consumption. So far, it’s been everything it was cracked up to be!