Poke the Box
If you can’t fail, it doesn’t count.
Ouch, that one hit home.
I can sing in the shower. I can write in my notebook. I can take the easy road. But I don’t know how to put it quite more eloquently (OK, I can’t): if there’s not a chance of failure, then you have nothing to risk. If there’s nothing at risk, it’s easy, it’s cushy, it’s, I don’t know, eating an ice cream cone: there’s nothing to lose … but little to gain.
Mostly, these reviews are for myself to remind me that I read the book and what I thought was important about it. I hope you find some nuggets of wisdom.
Action is easy once you have a plan. Formulating a plan, however, is a rare and valuable skill.
I’m slow to the bandwagon for Seth Godin, but I’m a new fan, a good fan, a fan who’s going to be reading more of him. Whereas there’s just so much Me Too and “Just Do It” out there (yours truly not an exception), somehow Seth might say the same thing, but he goes deeper somehow.
When is something both painful and enlightening? When it’s true.
Way into my new found Learning Tool (highlights in Kindle), this was a book where you just highlight most of the text and wonder when to stop the cursor from highlighting. It’s almost as if you should highlight what you didn’t like.
Here’s another gut wrencher. I say gut wrencher because they just hurt: they are things that are simple, but hard.
Action is easy once you have a plan. Formulating a plan, however, is a rare and valuable skill.
This one is a goodie as it reminds you to do what you think is right/best/smart/odd/different, not what everyone else thinks:
Not sure I’m being as clear as I could be: The relentless act of invention and innovation and initiative is the best marketing asset.
Ouch. Are these as painful to you as they are to me? Here’s another slice of skin in the game:
Fitzgerald nailed it when he described Jay Gatsby’s attitude: “What would be the use of doing great things if I could have a better time telling her what I was going to do?” It’s easy to fall so in love with the idea of starting that we never actually start.
OK, I’m feeling better about Writing Every Day:
Once the habit is ingrained and you become the starter, the center of the circle, you will find more and more things to notice, to instigate, and to initiate. Momentum builds and you get better at generating it. If you go to bed at night knowing that people are expecting you to initiate things all day the next day, you’ll wake up with a list. And as you create a culture of people who are always seeking to connect and improve and poke, the bar gets raised.
I bought his latest, “The Icarus Deception” and I’m looking forward to reading that. I think.
