Technical Marketing Handbook Podcast with Simo Ahava

TMH #12: Missing Motivation with Simo Ahava

In this personal episode, Simo discusses his recent motivation slump in data and analytics work as well as some ideas for overcoming it.

It’s just Simo Ahava alone, again. But this time it’s somehow fitting, as the topic of this podcast is motivation.

Over the last four years or so, I’ve been really struggling with motivation, trying to stay excited about working in data and analytics.

I’ve been writing an analytics blog for eight years now, I’m still very active in a million different practitioner communities, and we founded Simmer with my wife so that we could scale up this type of work to an even larger community.

But it’s the actual work with data and analytics that’s got me in a slump.

In this podcast, I want to share four reasons that contribute to my motivation issues. I think they’re familiar to most who work in analytics.

I’ve also curated some ideas for overcoming these motivation slumps. I think they work because, well, I’m still here, right?

Please indulge me in this particularly personal and anecdotal episode. Thank you.

Listen to the episode using the player or find it in your favorite podcast service.

Topics

  • 00:00:00 – Introduction.
  • 00:04:24 – Data as a byproduct and a side effect.
  • 00:09:11 – The drawbacks of introducing data and analytics work to the surrounding organization.
  • 00:15:15 – Silos in the organization increase the disconnect between the ends of the data pipeline.
  • 00:19:17 – The meta discussion and dichotomies within the digital marketing industry are exhausting to follow.
  • 00:23:12 – Remember: Your work matters. You matter.

Notes and references

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