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It's Far Easier To Put Your Future Into Someone Else's Hands Than It Is To Slog Your Way Forward, Owning The Results As You Go.

-Seth Godin

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It's Far Easier To

Seth Godin

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It's Far Easier To Put Your Future Into Someone Else's Hands Than It Is To Slog Your Way Forward, Owning The Results As You Go.

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If You Are Afraid To Write Or Edit Or Assemble Or Disassemble, You Are Merely A Spectator. And You Are Trapped, Trapped By The Instructions Of Those You've Chosen To Follow. Twenty People In The Field And Eighty Thousand In The Stands. The Spectators Are The Ones Who Paid To Watch, But It's The Player On The Field Who Are Truly Alive.

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Your Audacious Life Goals Are Fabulous. We're Proud Of You For Having Them. But It's Possible That Those Goals Are Designed To Distract You From The Thing That's Really Frightening You--the Shift In Daily Habits That Would Mean A Re-invention Of How You See Yourself.

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Some People Read Business Books Looking For Confirmation. I Read Them In Search Of Disquiet. Confirmation Is Cheap, Easy And Ineffective. Restlessness And The Scientific Method, On The Other Hand, Create A Culture Of Testing And Inquiry That Can't Help But Push You Forward.

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If You've Got The Platform And The Ability To Make A Difference, Then This Goes Beyond 'should' And Reaches The Level Of 'must.' You Must Make A Difference Or You Squander The Opportunity. Wasting The Opportunity Both Degrades Your Own Ability To Contribute And, More Urgently, Takes Something Away From The Rest Of Us.

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Chinese Proverb

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It's Clearly More Fun To Make The Rules Than To Follow Them.

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Mass Attention Is Almost Unattainable And It's Not Clear That You Want It.

Leadership Is Scarce Because Few People Are Willing To Go Through The Discomfort Required To Lead.

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Average Feels Safe But It's Not. It's Invisible.

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A Bully Is Playing A Game, One That He Or She Enjoys And Needs. You're Welcome To Play This Game If It Makes You Happy, But For Most People, It Will Make You Miserable.

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.

Living With Doubt ... Is Almost Always More Profitable Than Living With Certainty. People Don't Like Doubt, So They Pay Money And Give Up Opportunities To Avoid It. Entrepreneurshi P Is Largely About Living With Doubt. If You Need Reassurance, You're Giving Up Quite A Bit To Get It. On The Other Hand, If You Can Get In The Habit Of Seeking Out Uncertainty, You'll Have Developed A Great Instinct.

I Do Not Think You Can Get Rid Of The Fear... But You Can Dance With It.

Things That Look Like Shortcuts Are Actually Detours (disguised As Less Work).

I Define Anxiety As Experiencing Failure In Advance.

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.

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

In Our Desire To Please Everyone, It's Very Easy To End Up Being Invisible Or Mediocre.

Change Isn't Made By Asking Permission. Change Is Made By Asking Forgiveness, Later.

Asking Permission

Asking For Forgiveness

Gifts Are Not Favors. If You Expect Something In Return, It's Not A Gift.

You Are Far More Likely To Do Your Best Work If You Are Willing To Delight A Few As Opposed To Soothe The Masses.

Art Is The Work Of A Human, An Individual Seeking To Make A Statement, To Cause A Reaction, To Connect. Art Is Something New, Every Time, And Art Might Not Work, Precisely Because It's New, Because It's Human And Because It Seeks To Connect.

Don't Measure Anything Unless The Data Helps You Make A Better Decision Or Change Your Actions. If You're Not Prepared To Change Your Diet Or Your Workouts, Don't Get On The Scale.

If You Try To Delight The Undelightable, You've Made Yourself Miserable For No Reason.

The First Step Toward Becoming Extraordinary Is, Of Course, To Stop Being Ordinary.

In Other Words, If You Don't Take Action, You Won't Get Any Results You Are Not Your Resume, You Are Your Work

If You're Going To Buy A Real Book, A Paper Book, There Better Be A Good Reason. Perhaps Scarcity Is One Of Those Reasons.

People Who Make A Difference Never Wait For Just The Right Time. They Know That It Will Never Arrive.

Anticipated, Personal, And Relevant Advertising Always Does Better Than Unsolicited Junk.

How Was Your Day? If Your Answer Was "fine," Then I Don't Think You Were Leading.

The Tiny Cost Of Failure...is Dwarfed By The Huge Cost Of Not Trying.

The Question Is Not Will You Succeed? But Rather, Will You Matter?

The Sooner We Realize That The World Has Changed, The Sooner We Can Accept It And Make Something Of What We've Got. Whining Isn't A Scalable Solution.

Mind Your Own Business

The Goal In Blogging/ Business/ Inspiring Non-fiction Is To Share A Truth, Or At Least A Truth As The Writer Sees It. To Not Just Share It, But To Spread It And To Cause Change To Happen. You Can Do That In At Least Three Ways: With Research (your Own Or Reporting On Others), By Building And Describing Conceptual Structures, Or With Stories That Resonate.

Getting Picked Is Fine If It Happens To You. But It's Not A Plan. It's A Version Of Waiting And Hoping.

I Don't Like Offending People, And It's Easy To Offend People When You Don't Know As Much As They Do. This Group Knows More About What It Takes To Lead In This Way Than I Ever Will. My Goal Is To Push People, But I Need To Do It From A Place Of Respect.

And The Reason Is That Until Wonder Came Along And Figured Out How To Spread The Idea Of Sliced Bread, No One Wanted It. That The Success Of Sliced Bread... Is Not Always About What The Patent Is Like, Or What The Factory Is Like - It's About Can You Get Your Idea To Spread, Or Not.

Kickstarter Isn't A Profit Center, It's An Organizer And An Instigator.

If You Hear My Idea But Don't Believe It, That's Not Your Fault; It's Mine. If You See My New Product But Don't Buy It, That's My Failure, Not Yours. If You Attend My Presentation And You're Bored, That's My Fault Too.

People Rarely Buy What They Need. They Buy What They Want.

To Make A Product, To Market An Idea, To Come Up With Any Problem You Want To Solve That Doesn't Have A Constituency With An Otaku, Is Almost Impossible... There's A Hot Sauce Otaku, But There's No Mustard Otaku.

The Universal Truth Is Beyond Question-the Only People Who Excel Are Those Who Have Decided To Do So.

Universal Truth

More And More People Now Have Jobs That Require Them To Confront The Risk Of Appearing Stupid On A Regular Basis.

No Is The Foundation That We Can Build Our Yes On.

Excellence Isn’t About Meeting The Spec, It’s About Setting The Spec. It Defines What The Consumer Sees As Quality Right This Minute, And Tomorrow, If You’re Good, You’ll Reset That Expectation Again

Choose Your Customers, Choose Your Future.

If I Fail More Than You Do, I Win.

If The Game Is Designed For You To Lose, Don't Play That Game. Play A Different One.

What Is School For? If You're Not Asking That, You're Wasting Time And Money.

Leaders Have Followers, Managers Have Employees. Managers Make Widgets, Leaders Make Change.

Too Often, The Person Who Wrecks Our Work Is Us.

If You Don't Get It Built, The Work Doesn't Matter.

We're Often In A Hurry To Finish. Or In A Hurry To Close A Sale. What Happens When We Adopt The Posture Of Being In A Hurry To Be Generous? With Resources Or Insight Or Access Or Kindness... It's An Interesting Sort Of Impatience.

The Challenge Of Our Time Is To Find A Journey Worthy Of Your Heart And Your Soul.

Acknowledge To Yourself That The Factory Job Is Dead. Having A Factory Job Is Not A Natural State. It Wasn't At The Heart Of Being Human Until Very Recently. We've Been Culturally Brainwashed.

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.

Excellence Isn't About Meeting The Spec, It's About Setting The Spec.

Leading Is A Skill, Not A Gift. You're Not Born With It, You Learn How.

Products That Are Remarkable Get Talked About.

The Opportunity Is Not In Being Momentarily Popular With The Anonymous Masses. It's In Being Missed When You're Gone, In Doing Work That Matters To The Tribe You Choose.

The Problem With Taking Offense Is That It's Really Hard To Figure Out What To Do With It After You're Done Using It. Better To Just Leave It On The Table And Walk Away. Umbrage Untaken Quietly Disappears.

The Future Isn't So Much About Absorbing Or Tolerating Change, It's About Making Change.

Nothing About Becoming Indispensable Is Easy. If It's Easy, It's Already Been Done And It's No Longer Valuable.

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