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Isn't The Drawing Board The Place Where All The Best Work Happens? It's Not A Bad Thing To Go Back There. It's The Entire Point.

-Seth Godin

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Isn't The Drawing Board

Seth Godin

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Isn't The Drawing Board The Place Where All The Best Work Happens? It's Not A Bad Thing To Go Back There. It's The Entire Point.

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Criticism Comes To Those Who Stand Out.

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You Can Listen To What People Say, Sure. But You Will Be Far More Effective If You Listen To What People Do.

The Key To Getting A Reputation For Being Brilliant Is Actually Being Brilliant, Not Just Acting Like You Are.

Catering To The Passionate Is Exactly What You Should Do.

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All Artists Are Entrepreneurs. All Entrepreneurs Are Artists.

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One Bad Review Doesn't Ruin My Day Because I Realize What A Badge Of Honor It Is To Get A Bit Of Criticism At All.

Speak Up. Not Just Tomorrow, But Every Day.

The Myth That The Ceo Is Going To Discover You And Nurture You And Ask You To Join Her For Lunch Is Just That, A Hollywood Myth.

If You Set Your Bar At 'amazing' It's Awfully Difficult To Start. Your First Paragraph, Sketch, Formula, Sample Or Concept Isn't Going To Be Amazing. Your Tenth One Might Not Be Either. Confronted With The Gap Between Your Vision Of Perfect And The Reality Of What You've Created, The Easiest Path Is No Path. Shrug. Admit Defeat. Hit Delete. One More Reason To Follow Someone Else And Wait For Instructions. Of Course, The Only Path To Amazing Runs Directly Through Not-yet-amazing. But Not-yet-amazing Is A Great Place To Start, Because That's Where You Are.

If It's Worth Listening To, It's Worth Questioning Until You Understand It.

I Was Amplifying The Negative At The Expense Of The Positive, Not To Serve Any Useful Function, Not To Make My Writing Better, But To Destroy It. The Lizard Brain, So Attuned To People Laughing Behind Our Backs, Was On High Alert For This Sort Of Criticism And Would Do Anything It Could To Stop Me From Writing Again. I Haven't Sought Out And Read A Review Or A Tweet Since.

I'll Confess That I Don't Watch The Olympics, But You'd Have To Be Living Under A Rock To Be Unaware Of The Corruption And The Expense. An Amorphous Organization With No Transparency, Unclear Lines Of Responsibility, Huge Amounts Of Politics And A Great Deal Of Unearned Power.

All Motivation Is Self-motivation. Your Family, Your Boss, Or Your Co-workers Can Try To Get Your Engine Going, But Until You Decide What To Accomplish, Nothing Will Happen.

Accomplish Nothing

The Media Wants Overnight Successes (so They Have Someone To Tear Down). Ignore Them. Ignore The Early Adopter Critics That Never Have Enough To Play With. Ignore Your Investors That Want Proven Tactics And Predictable Instant Results. Listen Instead To Your Real Customers, To Your Vision And Make Something For The Long Haul. Because That's How Long It's Going To Take, Guys.

Marketing Is The Art Of Seeing (and Then Creating) What Might Be Interesting To More Than Our Friends

When The Room Brightens When You Walk In, You Matter.

In A Long Distance Race, Everyone Gets Tired. The Winner Is The Runner Who Figures Out Where To Put The Tired, Figures Out How To Store It Away Until After The Race Is Over. Sure, He's Tired. Everyone Is. That's Not The Point. The Point Is To Run.

Being A Leader Gives You Charisma. If You Look And Study The Leaders Who Have Succeeded, That's Where Charisma Comes From, From The Leading.

Life Is Not About Gutting Out Every Situation. It's About Identifying Opportunity Or The Lack Thereof. If Your Pride Is All That Is Standing In The Way Of Quitting, Quit. The Right People Won't Care And The Wrong People Don't Matter. If You Know You're On The Right Path, Persevere Though The Pain. It Will Be Worth It.

The Problem With Holding A Grudge Is That Your Hands Are Then Too Full To Hold Onto Anything Else. It Might Be The Competition Or A Technology Or The Lousy Things That Someone Did A Decade Ago. None Of It Is Going To Get Better As A Result Of Revisiting The Grudge.

Build It, And They Will Come" Only Works In The Movies. Social Media Is A "build It, Nurture It, Engage Them, And They May Come And Stay.

The Ladder Of Success Isn't A Ladder. It's A Series Of Steps With Leaps Interspersed Along The Way.

We Live In A Vague World. And It Gets Vaguer All The Time. In This Environment, The Power Of The Specific, Measurable And Useful Promise Made And Kept Is Difficult To Overstate.

Art Is What We Call...the Thing An Artist Does. It's Not The Medium Or The Oil Or The Price Or Whether It Hangs On A Wall Or You Eat It. What Matters, What Makes It Art, Is That The Person Who Made It Overcame The Resistance, Ignored The Voice Of Doubt And Made Something Worth Making. Something Risky. Something Human. Art Is Not In The ...eye Of The Beholder. It's In The Soul Of The Artist.

Art Is The Work Of A Human Being – Something A Person Does With Generosity To Touch Someone Else To Make A Change For The Better.

You Can Define Advertising As The Science Of Creating And Placing Media That Interrupts The Consumer And Then Gets Him Or Her To Take Some Action.

Developing Expertise Or Assets That Are Not Easily Copied Is Essential; Otherwise You’re Just A Middleman. “ “don’t Try To Be The ‘next’. Instead, Try To Be The Other, The Changer, The New. “ “everyone Is Not Your Customer. “ “fire The Committee. No Great Website In History Has Been Conceived Of By More Than Three People. Not One. This Is A Deal Breaker.

If You Can't Make Money From Attention, You Should Do Something Else For A Living.

In Fact, Most Of The Time, People With Similar Information, Similar Beliefs And Similar Apparent Choices Will Choose Similar Actions. So If You Want To Know Why Someone Does What They Do, Start With What They Know, What They Believe And Where They Came From. Dismissing Actions We Don't Admire Merely Because We Don't Care Enough To Have Empathy Is Rarely Going To Help Us Make The Change We Seek. It Doesn't Help Us Understand, And It Creates A Gulf That Drives Us Apart.

But What If I Fail? You Will. A Better Question Might Be, ‘after I Fail, What Then?’ If You’ve Chosen Well, After You Fail You Will Be One Step Closer To Succeeding, You Will Be Wiser And Stronger And You Almost Certainly Will Be More Respected By All Of Those That Are Afraid To Try.

The Opportunity Of A Lifetime Is To Pick Yourself. Quit Waiting To Get Picked; Quit Waiting For Someone To Give You Permission; Quit Waiting For Someone To Say You Are Officially Qualified... And Pick Yourself.

There's No Life-work Balance. I Think You Have To Have The Discipline To Have The Life You Want To Have. And If You Are Stealing From One Part Of Your Life In Order To Make The Other Part Work, You Are Going To Pay For It.

It's Human Nature To Quit When It Hurts. But It's That Reflex That Creates Scarcity.

There Are Lots Of Good Reasons To Abandon A Project. Having A Little Competition Is Not One Of Them.

Competent People Are The Most Resistant To Change

Go Ahead, Do Something Impossible.

Instead Of Working So Hard To Prove The Skeptics Wrong, It Makes A Lot More Sense To Delight The True Believers. They Deserve It, After All, And They're The Ones That Are Going To Spread The Word For You.

The Librarian Isn't A Clerk Who Happens To Work In A Library. A Librarian Is A Data Hound, A Guide, A Sherpa And A Teacher. The Librarian Is The Interface Between Reams Of Data And The Untrained But Motivated User.

Art Isn't Only A Painting. Art Is Anything That's Creative, Passionate, And Personal. And Great Art Resonates With The Viewer, Not Only With The Creator... Art Is A Personal Gift That Changes The Recipient. The Medium Doesn't Matter. The Intent Does. Art Is A Personal Act Of Courage, Something One Human Does That Creates Change In Another.

Life Is Like Skiing. Just Like Skiing, The Goal Is Not To Get To The Bottom Of The Hill. It's To Have A Bunch Of Good Runs Before The Sun Sets.

Habits Are Where Our Lives And Careers And Bodies Are Made.

Give Up Control And Give It Away ... The More You Give Your Idea Away, The More Your Company Is Going To Be Worth.

The Problem With Holding A Grudge Is That Your Hands Are Then Too Full To Hold Onto Anything Else.

And In A World Where We Have Too Many Choices And Too Little Time, The Obvious Thing To Do Is Just Ignore Stuff. And My Parable Here Is, You're Driving Down The Road And You See A Cow, And You Keep Driving 'cause You've Seen Cows Before. Cows Are Invisible. Cows Are Boring. Who's Going To Stop And Pull Over And Say, Oh, Look, A Cow? Nobody.

Positive Thinking Is Hard. Worth It, Though.

Being Charismatic Doesn't Make You A Leader. Being A Leader Makes You Charismatic.

Everyone Picks The Best One When Given A Choice.

Our Job Is Obvious: We Need To Get Out Of The Way, Shine A Light, And Empower A New Generation To Teach Itself And To Go Further And Faster Than Any Generation Ever Has.

I Feel Like I'm Treating People As I'd Like To Be Treated.

The Status Quo Is Leaving The Building, And Quickly.

We're All Born Creative, It Takes A Little While To Become Afraid.

The Minute There's A Map, There Is No Art. Paint By Numbers Is Not Art. Paint By Numbers Is A Mechanical Activity.

Great Work Is Always Shunned At First.

The Purpose Of An Elevator Pitch Is To Describe A Situation Or Solution So Compelling That The Person You're With Wants To Hear More Even After The Elevator Ride Is Over.

The Digital Asset That Matters Is Trust. Awareness First, Then Interaction, And Maybe A Habit, But All Three Mean Nothing If They Don't Lead To Permission And Trust. The Privilege Of Connection. Everything Else Is Slippery.

The Reason Social Media Is So Difficult For Most Organizations: It’s A Process, Not An Event.

A Well-defined Backup Plan Is Sabotage Waiting To Happen. Why Push Through The Dip, Why Take The Risk, Why Blow It All When There's The Comfortable Alternative Instead? The People Who Break Through Usually Have Nothing To Lose, And They Almost Never Have A Backup Plan.

It's More Important That You Be Passionate About What You Do All Day Than It Is To Be Passionate About The Product That Is Being Sold.

Conversations Among The Members Of Your Marketplace Happen Whether You Like It Or Not. Good Marketing Encourages The Right Sort Of Conversations.

The Only Path To Amazing Runs Directly Through Not-yet-amazing . But Not-yet-amazing Is A Great Place To Start, Because That's Where You Are. For Now.

What You Do For A Living Is Not Be Creative, What You Do For A Living Is Ship.

When Your Art Fails, Make Better Art.

Remarkable Work Is Always Not On The List, Because If It Was, It Would Be Commonplace, Not Remarkable.

The Question Isn’t Whether Or Not You Should Wait To Be Picked, The Question Is Whether You Care Enough To Pick Yourself.

One Option Is To Struggle To Be Heard Whenever You're In The Room... Another Is To Be The Sort Of Person Who Is Missed When You're Not. The First Involves Making Noise. The Second Involves Making A Difference.

Making A Difference

'good Enough' Stopped Being Good Enough A Long Time Ago. So Why Not Be Great?

It's Not About You, It's About The Next Person. The Single Best Use Of A Business Book Is To Help Someone Else. Sharing What You Read, Handing The Book To A Person Who Needs It... Pushing Those Around You To Get In Sync And To Take Action-that's The Main Reason It's A Book, Not A Video Or A Seminar. A Book Is A Souvenir And A Container And A Motivator And An Easily Leveraged Tool. Hoarding Books Makes Them Worth Less, Not More.

Loving What You Do Is Almost As Important As Doing What You Love, Especially If You Need To Make A Living At It.

Loving What You Do

Doing What You Love

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