There’s a concept we live by in media: reach and frequency.
We know there’s a point where more impressions don’t just stop helping—they start hurting. Diminishing returns kick in. Frequency gets wasteful. The message loses impact.
And yet, somehow, none of us apply that logic to ourselves. Instead, we live in a constant state of overexposure: Emails. Slack notifications. LinkedIn articles. Industry headlines. Repeat. We wouldn’t recommend this strategy to a client. But we accept it as our default operating system.
I was thinking about this the other day—ironically, during a window where I had my email and Slack closed just so I could actually think. There’s an idea I remember reading a while back: If you want fewer emails, you have to send fewer emails. Because every email you send is basically a boomerang. It comes back. And now you’ve doubled your workload. In media terms, it’s like launching a campaign and being surprised by the response volume.
On top of that, there’s the pressure to keep up with everything. And I mean everything. Every acquisition. Every partnership. Every product update—covered by five different outlets, all saying roughly the same thing with slightly different headlines. Don’t get me wrong—that’s part of what I love about this industry. It moves fast. It evolves. There’s always something new to learn. But if I’m being honest, I don’t need to read the same news five times to be good at my job. By the time it actually matters, a rep will email. Or call. Or it will come up in a client conversation. And six months later, there will be another announcement anyway.
What I don’t want is for my value to be based on “the last thing I read.” That’s not insight. That’s just being recently informed.
The times I do my best work are the times I’m not constantly reacting. When email is closed. Slack is quiet. And there’s actually space to think. That’s when better strategy happens. Better planning. Better conversations with colleagues and clients. Because productivity in this role isn’t about how quickly you respond. It’s about how well you think.
The reality is, the noise doesn’t fully go away. There will always be more emails. More headlines. More things competing for attention. But productivity isn’t about eliminating noise entirely—it’s about deciding when to let it in.
In media, we optimize for impact.
Applying that to how we work might look like:
Less frequency. More intention.
Fewer interruptions. Better thinking.
And ultimately, work that’s driven less by reaction—and more by perspective.