DEEP WORK FOR BRAND MANAGERS – Brand Management 112
A pharma brand manager in Bangladesh and India should basically be a creative and innovative knowledge worker.
One of the most valuable skills needed by these knowledge workers is critical thinking and great analytical abilities. And you can achieve only through deep work.
Only through deep work can you, the pharmaceutical brand manager, achieve astonishing results.
Deep work is the ability to focus on your tasks without disruption.
Your tasks are cognitively demanding. It requires distraction-free time and focus. Deep work will help you master complex information and produce better results in less time.
Be in a deep work mode for at least two to three hours every day! How?
Find a secluded place where there is no distraction. Switch off your mobiles or keep on airplane mode. The purpose of the deep work mode is to allow for total focus and uninterrupted work flow in this distracted world.
I do it between 4.00 am and 6.00 am every day, or the ब्रम्हामुहूर्तं.
Deep work will make you better at what you do. It will provide you the sense of true accomplishment.
Although deep work is like a super-power in your super-competitive pharma industry, many have lost the ability to go deep into your subjects because you live in the frenzied world of social media and the internet. They are the disruptors of deep work.
Fragmented attention cannot accommodate deep work.
Deep work requires long periods of uninterrupted thinking. You get this time early in the morning if you begin work at ब्रम्हामुहूर्तं.
In residential learning and development programs for brand managers, my sessions often start at 4.45 am to acquaint them with how important deep work is.
The converse to deep work is shallow work.
Shallow work is non-cognitively demanding, often performed while distracted. Shallow work doesn’t require uninterrupted concentration. This includes, for example, most administrative tasks like answering email or scheduling meetings or browsing through social media.
If social media supports your work, like it does for me, then go ahead.
Shallow efforts create little new value for a brand manager because they look pedestrian and perhaps become easy to replicate.
In contrast, deep work pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limit. Deep work creates new value and hard to replicate. This is because when you perform deep work it is free from distractions.
Increasingly replace shallow work with deep work. You will then become so good no one can ignore you.
Deep work and deep thinking will set you apart and will be the differentiating USP of ‘Brand Me’.