• by Gord Hotchkiss , Featured Contributor, November 27, 2018

Writing this column (first for Search Insider, then here) has been a private social experiment for me. It’s one that has now lasted at least 14 years and is pushing 700 iterations in the number of columns I’ve written. 

It’s been fascinating to see which topics seem to elicit reaction among MediaPost readers. Granted, the metrics I have available are limited to two: how often I’m shared and how often I get comments. Still, based on this limited feedback, I’ve come to some conclusions. 

I’ll be totally honest here. Just a few weeks ago, I was considering packing it in. But I didn’t. I attacked advertising instead. Perhaps you could chalk it up to the mood I was in at the time.

If you don’t write for an audience, know that it’s a soul-sucking thing to do. You metaphorically chop out little -- or large -- pieces of your brain and string them up to see what flavor the carrion eaters (that would be you, the readers) are favoring today.

That sounds gruesome, but when it comes to sharing ideas, you actually want to be eaten alive. It’s a good thing. I have found -- again, based on the limited metrics I have access to -- that I’m not usually the most popular taste-du-jour. There are other writers here at MediaPost whose posts are shared far more often than mine.

I’m OK with that. That wasn’t why I was considering packing it in. Instead, I wasn’t sure I had anything thoughtful left to say. After 14 years of doing this, I’ve said a lot of things here, and I was worried the well might be running dry. For heaven’s sake, I don’t even work in the industry anymore! I haven’t for five years now. Who am I to be pontificating on advertising, media or marketing?

But then I reconsidered. And I did so precisely because I’m not the most popular writer here in the MediaPost stable. I don’t really care if you share me (OK -- I care a little bit). I do care if I make you think. And I think I can still do that. At least, I can on a good day.

The reason I keep carving off chunks of my prefrontal cortex to share with you is because I love thoughtfulness. If I can contribute to the dissemination of thoughtfulness -- even in a small way -- I need to keep doing what I’m doing.

I believe thoughtfulness is in danger. We are all collectively suffering from FOMO -- we are scared of missing something. And so we all flick from meme to meme.

I call them cog-bits. These are the proliferating mental tidbits that are thrown at us each day. They may be top-ten lists, videos, pictures, posts -- even news articles.

The one thing they have in common is that they have been crafted for attention spans of 10 seconds or less. If you’re not hooked, you move on to the next cog-bit. They are not designed to make you think. Their entire purpose is to make you share, which requires just 0.05 seconds of rational thought.

I admit I am not immune to the charms of a cog-bit. I’m a sucker for them, just as I suspect you are. But I also believe our mental diet should be balanced with some long-form, thought-provoking content.

Thinking shouldn’t always be easy and instant. The end result shouldn’t always be a knee-jerk jamming of the share button. We should mull more. We should roll thoughts over in our mind, picking them apart gradually. We should be introduced to concepts and perspectives we haven’t thought before. And it’s OK if, in this process, we find our own minds changing. We also need to do that more.

For me, my best writing day is when I provoke a conversation. I don’t mean a trolling comment. I mean an honest-to-goodness conversation, where the parties are open to thoughtfulness and are mentally stretching the boundaries of their own perspectives.

When was the last time you had a conversation where you really had to think -- where you had to pause to catch your cognitive breath? It’s been a while, hasn’t it? 

In looking back at the last 14 years of writing for MediaPost, I have found that while I hope I have introduced some new ideas to you, the real reward has been how this weekly exercise has shaped my own thoughts.

Frankly, some weeks it’s a pain in the ass to come up with an idea for the Tuesday slot. But when I actually engage with the creation of a column, I always find my ideas shift, just a little. Sometimes, I throw ideas out there that I know will be contentious: ideas that will make you think. Sometimes they will be half-baked. You may agree, you may not. All I ask is that you think about them.

That’s why I keep doing this.