No, I’m not talking about baptism. Over the last week, I got the chance to immerse myself deeply in research for a proposal, and I didn’t have any idea how great it would feel. We were putting together some ideas for a client in the area of social networking and some other online spaces. One of my colleagues and I spent a great deal of time looking at what’s happening now in those areas: who are the leaders, who are the newcomers, what are the patterns of use.

I knew about these topics already, but I got a lot smarter in a relatively short amount of time. And because we were working on a quick turnaround, I wound up spending a large part of several days on this. I hadn’t had the chance to focus on a topic in such a concentrated way for quite a while. It was an unexpected blessing. It felt great to really be up to speed on the very latest information, to really be master of the topic. People in our business are always trying to stay on top of a great many rapidly changing subjects, and it’s sometimes a daunting task. Total immersion felt like a delicious luxury. And our client got some excellent thinking.