midThink

I spent my day analyzing the copy structure of a handful of control video scripts.

Instead, I wished I was reading the book I told you about the other day: Red Rising.

🚨 NERD ALERT* 🚨

The book takes place on a future, terraformed planet Mars. Themes include power, social hierarchy, war theory and more.

One thing I love about the author’s style is his extensive use of creative vernacular, specific to the story’s characters.

Goodman = a friend.
Pissprick = an insult.
highLingo = the way the elite of society speak.

If I had to force a phrase to describe my video analysis task today, I might call it midThink.

I mean … It wasn’t really lowThink. I wasn’t looking up what a P-A-S formula is to write social media captions.

But it also wasn’t highThink, either. I wasn’t making big, bad business decisions from a place of strategy.

I was just doing the work that needed to be done, and needed to be done today.

(To be fair, this is my own project. So I may have put myself in this midThink mess.)

You might think that the goal of a copywriter is to ascend to a place in the copywriting hierarchy where you need only to operate in highThink.

The truth is that you need to be able to operate at each level, at any given moment.

Top to bottom. Full stack. Yada yada.

Sure, as time progresses, the majority of your work might shift from lowThink to midThink to highThink.

But all three are necessary. Whether you’re the one doing the actual work. Or you’re mentoring a junior copywriter on how to do the work.

And heck. Sometimes you just need to be the one to get your hands dirty. That’s what makes a leader a good one. At least to me.

The point: Don’t scoff down at menial copy tasks. This will hold you back. You bring the attitude to work. The work doesn’t bring the attitude to you.

If even the smallest tasks are fun and engaging, then work is a breeze. But if you’re constantly pining for highThink, you’ll forget to look around and see how great it is to just get paid to freakin’ write.

Alright. Back to my book. Bye.

— David

*I’m gonna start putting these disclaimers in whenever I’m about to tangent on some weird fascination I have. Unsubscribe if you hate nerds.