Ms the Word: The pharma marketing workout
Going to the gym is just like pharma marketing: Set your objectives, plan properly, and you will succeed
By on Feb 28, 2011
So as it is a Sunday morning, I am at the gym on a rowing machine, looking at myself in a mirror.
I am not particularly happy looking at myself, but as anyone who visits a gym will tell you, it is difficult NOT to look at yourself at a gym.
I guess the sight of themselves motivates a lot of the people who go there.
Personally, it always makes me think of the mirror in the budgie cage: Who's a pretty boy, then?
Somewhat disconcertingly, the rowing machine is set at a slight angle, so my left arm seems to be bigger than my right. I look like a fiddler crab.
I know this cannot be the case. I am fairly right-handed, perhaps a bit ambidextrous, but I am definitely not a leftie.
And I am fairly sure there is not much difference between my arms.
They are both somewhat spindly. I have one of those bodies that definitely looks better in a suit.
I go to the gym with some specific goals in mind, and none of them include developing biceps that would make a fiddler crab scuttle off.
I want to ward off the beer belly that I deserve for all the late evenings I have spent discussing strategy, plotting campaigns, or just chilling out.
I finished with a flourish and headed off for the Roman chair.
One of my friends, who is older but a lot fitter than me, was standing beside a kneeling pad that looked like a rowing machine that had been bent out of shape by one of the people who DOES want to look like a fiddler crab.
Apparently, you kneel on it and, by flexing your stomach muscles, draw your knees up to your arms, and relax slowly.
She demonstrated it. I duly managed four, and then fell off.
She took over, managed about 20, then went off to spinning classes, while I staggered off and did half a dozen arm exercises on the lowest weight possible.
And I smiled to myself as I remembered my friend Mark, in Philadelphia, who would finish his exercise, then adjust the weights up to the maximum, just to impress the next person to use it.
I guess he had a different set of objectives from me.
The important thing, I realized, is to set your own objectives and focus on achieving them.
In pharmaceutical marketing, achieving the objective can take a long time.
You will see other people who seem to be doing something different.
Do not be put off. If you have planned properly, you will succeed.