NORTHERN PLANNER

People that have been reading this blog for a while (which won't be many), will be familiar with my love of tea.

That sacred beverage is still the first things to pass my lips on a morning and one of my favourite things in the word, it's warm hug, but as I've gotten more and more into cycling, I've found myself drinking more espresso during the day.

And I work in a coffee loving office and it's more expedient to join in the filter coffee runs.

Never instant coffee. I firmly believe it's the little things that give you away. When clients come in, crap coffee and tea shows lack of care for your visitor, sloppy attitude and general ignorance of quality.

Just as internally, kettle dodging is crime and shows lack of respect and care for your colleagues, while making crap stuff shows you just don't get it. 

As someone who isn't that junior, its' really easy to not look up yourself if you join in the coffee and tea rounds, only a dick is too grand not to make the drinks.

Just shows how your passions and habits change as your  environment does, which is why strategists understand context as much as 'people'.

Also, I was drinking so much coffee I was becoming numb to it. So when I went I went on holiday I didn't have any and limited tea to three cups a day, enough to get by.

When I got home and had my first espresso, it felt like lightning going through my veins. 

This is a learning for strategists too, the more you get used to something, the less you become aware of it. I think that's why you should tinker with your working processes, even mess around with the format of the creative brief and NEVER do a briefing in the same room and the last time you did it, the less you notice what you're doing, the more it become habit, the less good you'll be at your job.

It also means do everything you can in the working day and certainly out of it, to do something that is nothing to do with advertising and planning. 

Because the more you have of the same thing, the less effective it, and you become.