Adam’s Daily Post

As of last year, 51–53% of global internet traffic was bots, surpassing human activity for the first time.

Social media isn’t social anymore. The timeline is just sensational media, the social fell back to DMs.

Google search isn’t for search anymore. The results are modified and/or replaced with AI, so you never really see the real thing.

The web was social, now it’s just trying to be so clever it’s becoming “dumb pipes”, full of the echoes of voices long gone.

Maybe it’s time to stop playing the same old games.

Maybe it’s time to make remarkable, unusual, special things, and attract the right real people to you.

Maybe it’s time to focus on the quality of your craft: it could be the most social thing you’ve got.

When the Gorillaz team were waiting in LA to hear whether or not their movie would happen,

They could have sat around, waiting, sipping coffee, doomscrolling, stressing.

Instead, they made a song, on an iPad, while waiting.

Released as “Cracker Island”, released February 2023.

Not the first time they did that, either.

“The Fall” was an entire album, created in 32 days, on an iPad, while on tour with “Plastic Beach”.

The takeaway?

You’ve got time.

You just need to love what you’re doing enough to want to do it in the small moments.

Everyone’s sending cold emails.

There are unquantifiable numbers of them flying around right now.

And the number seems only to be increasing.

What’s the chance anyone will respond to yours?

Very good, if:

• You commit to understanding them
• You commit to sending them things they want
• You commit to doing so without asking for anything in return
• You commit to making it more fun for them than what they were already doing
• You commit to iterating on that until it works, because it’ll take time
• You commit to re-learning how to make it work when it stops working, and it will

Most don’t do any of these things.

They just generate pithy pitches and hope it works out.

You’re not them.

So you’re fine.

Some people optimize email for speedier replies, hitting more people with less care, shorter ping-pong replies powered by AI.

Other people optimize email for fewer messages in the first place, choosing to be thoughtful with people who will thank them for caring.

Some people optimize their copy or designs for speed, templating and generating quickly to get it done and move on.

Other people optmize their copy or designs for depth, taking the time to do fewer things but better, knowing the results will be far better… eventually.

There are people who argue for either side in both scenarios.

I have my opinion on which is better. I live and work accordingly.

You don’t have to agree. But your work benefits if you choose.

Got five minutes to spare?

You’ll be surprised what you can do with them.

You could sit quietly and focus on your breathing, calming yourself down in five minutes.

You could spin up a Hetzner server and get some open source software up and running in five minutes.

You could write a really rough draft of your next project or product idea in five minutes.

You could document some big sales challenges and where you think the solutions are hiding in five minutes.

You could tidy up all that clutter on your desk or on your desktop in five minutes.

Or, y’know, you could just waste it on social media, doomscrolling, for no reason.
But five minutes can go much further for you than that.

What if the landing page doesn’t work very well?

Or clicks from the initial page fall off in steps two and three?

Or the calls don’t book? Or there are lots of no-shows?

Or the outbound isn’t resonating? Or content engagement’s dropping?

Or? Or? Or?

Too many marketers fret about these things.

While forgetting that this is not a string of problems to solve before you can relax.

This is, in fact, the work.

Just as a young aspiring artist must learn every little thing, fighting form, volumes, inking, composition, or even drawing smooth lines.

The young artist isn’t stressed until they can draw well.

They are engaging in the act of drawing, and learning how to improve, all the time.

And so it goes in marketing or any other skillset.

Every project brings new challenges. Often hard challenges. No stress. Be like the artist.

If everyone wants “more more more” on social media…

More sensationalism, more content, more dopamine…

Then why is “slowmaxxing” trending on TikTok?

A trend that promotes:

• Spending 15 minutes making your coffee
• Choosing calm over pressure, rest over hustle
• Disconnecting from screens as a modern luxury
• Slow intentional meals, reading for pleasure
• Doing less, but better

What people do and what people really want are not always the same thing.

Many may be addicted to their phones. But that doesn’t mean it’s what they want.

If you ship work and it doesn’t get the response you expected,

It might not have anything to do with the work itself.

It could be related to:

• The moment in time (algorithms or news cycles not working in your favor)
• The portfolio it lives in (perhaps it’s still small, thus not carrying you forward like it might others)
• Who saw it (perhaps your people were doing something else, and it didn’t catch fire as a result)
• Something else entirely (who knows, we’re welcome to guess, but that’s all we’re doing)

The world is obsessed with judging work in numeric form.

But numbers don’t tell the full story, and can lead you astray if you let them.

Keep up the good work.

We can tell how much you showed up to your work.

It’s not obvious, when you look at what you’ve created logically.

A hand-drawn image, next to a generated image, might look technically very similar.

A real strawberry, next to an artificially inflated and polished strawberry.

Similar.

But your audience can tell the difference.

And if your audience wants to see people showing up for their work, the latter simply won’t do, however nicely done.

When you don’t know how to make your work better,

Ask how you might make it worse.

Then look for the inverse of what you find.

The opposite of worse, is often the same, similar, or better, than better.