When I listen to music I love the repeat button. I especially love the “repeat 1” button. I love to hear the same song over and over again. It drives most people crazy. After a while, admittedly about 5 times, it even starts to drive me crazy. I want something new. I need something new. It is hard to deactivate the repeat button and stop the same song from playing again and again. Actually it isn’t hard, we just think it is hard but actually it just takes a click of action, and then some searching to find a new song to play.
For many of us we just hit the repeat button in our work. It seems safe, easy and effortless but too much repeat with the wrong things leads to rapid decline. You’ve seen a lot of examples of businesses that have gone out of business because they didn’t change, they just repeated. For many of us, we do the same things year after year. We run the same program again, the same event, use the same strategy or system. It becomes less engaging, less challenging, less rewarding, and the returns and results diminish. Before we know it what we are doing becomes obsolete because someone else stopped hitting the repeat button and what we offer is no longer needed.
In thinking about this Repeat button metaphor, let’s use the example of people that create products that deliver our music to us. They didn’t repeat how it is delivered. They produced an Ipod, or Grooveshark instead of the same CD player again. Lucky for us though, they still kept the Repeat button in the new devices and software because it is good to listen to the same song a few times in a row now and then. The music deliverers repeated that Repeat button feature/benefit but did not repeat the way the music is delivered…that is now different and better. It saves money and is far more effective to have digital music files on your computer or IPod instead of a stack of cassettes. Some things are worth repeating (like the Repeat button with music players), others aren’t (like producing cassette players). This year check yourself before you wreck yourself. Are you hitting repeat again or doing something better and new that saves time and money? What are you hitting repeat on that you should reconsider?