I can see for miles and miles

Statistics and focus groups are not going to tell you what your listeners will want in the future.

You know that even if it’s comforting to believe otherwise.

It would be helpful if you could use research and ratings data as a scapegoat for failure.

Helpful to egos and perhaps tenure, but not helpful in the actual sense of trying to divine what listeners will want next year.

The truth is, the best you can hope for is to spend time looking inward, to your own most basic wants and needs, identifying those particular things you are most passionate about, and following that passion wherever it leads.

You can hope to find meaning in your work, meaning that is more valuable than money, the reason you chose this radio job in the first place.

And, the meaning your best work may provide for those who hear you. That’s part of it too.

I’ve talked about it before, HERE and HERE.

I know you won’t hear this from the other consultants you follow, but whether they know it or not, it is true!

Turn off your phone. Disconnect from your gadgets. Go for a walk, a long walk, and spend the entire time searching within yourself.

It will be hard, at first, to quiet the voice in your head, the feeling that you’re wasting time and have so much to do.

Keep walking.

Finding why you do what you do — again — will be worth it, for you and for your listeners.