The Cat’s Meow

Like most people, I have a definite body clock and mind rhythm that influences how I work. My most productive work hours are early in the morning, from about 6:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., which seems to be the time when I need a physical break. Then I try to fit in yoga, elliptical or other running/walking activity to sort of recharge. After exercise I can focus again for a few more hours before the dreaded mid-afternoon crash. And boy, it’s a real ‘clunk’ feeling. I’m pretty well useless for any creative thinking or critical decision making after 3:00 p.m. Until late in the night when everyone else is asleep – oh, around 10:00 p.m. or so.

Cat's Meow

Why all this tedious listing of what I do and when I do it? Because I think it applies to how effective we are individually – whether we are aware of our own rhythms, and of other people’s. You may be on an exactly opposite schedule, though some research suggests that quite a few folks fall in the ‘morning productivity’ bucket. However, just because I’m wide awake and dying to share first thing in the morning all the amazing things that came into my head while I was sleeping, doesn’t mean that anyone else is ready to listen to those epiphanies.

Communication, like creativity, is all about timing. “I will hear you if what you are saying is important to me – at that moment.” For communications professionals, it is one of the trickiest challenges we face: getting the timing right.

That’s why marketing and advertising messages need to be broadcast more than once, at different times of day and deliver messages in variations on a theme. Not everyone ‘hears’ things the same way, nor at the same time.

For instance, this morning one of my cats – the obese one – was meowing at me. Loudly. Repeatedly. At 6:00 a.m.

Oh, I heard him – loud and clear. But I didn’t WANT to hear him, for a number of reasons, and I tried to tune him out. Especially because the noise he was making was interfering with my morning creative thought processes. Now that cat wanted food, not that he couldn’t live off his own body fat for a month, and it would have been simple to just fill the food dish. However, I had forgotten to get more cat food yesterday when I was running errands in the afternoon – during that ‘clunker’ time of day when I can’t remember everything. I was not about to make a market run in my jammies – so I put that crying beast outside. Problem solved.

And then I started thinking about meowing and messaging, and how we can shut things out, turn down the volume (I mute my laptops most of the time, so I don’t have to hear the pings), and just how difficult it can be to get people to listen.

And that’s how my cat’s meow motivated me to write this morning.

What makes you listen?

–Donna

Photo credit: decoder420 at Flickr, Creative Commons