What's with all the seriousness?
I had one of those lightbulb moments this morning. It came out of one of those serendipitous instances. Last night I was scrolling on Facebook (ok, don't judge me!) and stumbled upon a bizarre live video of a young guy from Cantebury walking around the town with a DJ console strapped to him. He was playing live his DJ dance music set. He even had a handheld microphone, talking to the camera and to those around him.
His phone camera was attached to the front of his kit so you could see him and the console. It was just so funny, brilliant, and creative. The fun continued for over 2 hours as he kept it all going whilst getting in a bus, in a taxi, then in a canoe as he paddled down a canal.
Breaking the status quo
I woke up this morning wanting to know why this guy would do this. I discovered that he'd been taking his idea all around the world and had millions of views. Now here's the key bit. He said the reason he did it was he wanted to bring joy to people in an industry that took itself far too seriously. He wanted to break that seriousness in DJing and music.
It got me thinking about the productivity and wellbeing industries. It's the same, it takes itself far too seriously. Now don't get me wrong, these are serious subjects and you need to be sensitive. Helping people who are maybe struggling and stressed, making lives better. But there's so much formality, strictness, self-righteousness in its approach. If we're not living and working exactly as the experts tell us, then we are bad people.
Competition and confusion
Everything has become productised and are battling against each other. Self-help books, courses, webinars, methods, techniques. Experts proclaiming they have discovered some huge new concept when in reality it's just a remix of what's come before. Have you noticed that everything's a remix of what has come before? There are no new ideas!
The irony being that people are getting overwhelmed by the amount of (and complexity) of improvement paths they could take. So they end up doing nothing.
So what was my lightbulb moment? It was a revelation that I need to continue breaking down that stuffiness and seriousness in the productivity and wellbeing arena. Helping people to transform in an enjoyable, relatable way. More music and pop culture references, more humour, and reminding myself continually not to take "me" quite so seriously.