Background Image

...

The Object Isn't To Be Perfect. The Goal Isn't To Hold Back Until You've Created Something Beyond Reproach. I Believe The Opposite Is True. Our Birthright Is To Fail And To Fail Often, But To Fail In Search Of Something Bigger Than We Can Imagine. To Do Anything Else Is To Waste It All.

-Seth Godin

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Object Isn't To

Seth Godin

...

The Object Isn't To Be Perfect. The Goal Isn't To Hold Back Until You've Created Something Beyond Reproach. I Believe The Opposite Is True. Our Birthright Is To Fail And To Fail Often, But To Fail In Search Of Something Bigger Than We Can Imagine. To Do Anything Else Is To Waste It All.

Views: 6

Topic

More From Seth Godin

Marketing Begins Before The Product Is Launched.

Be Relentlessly Generous, Without Focusing On When It Will Come Back To You.

Leaders Lead When They Take Positions, When They Connect With Their Tribes, And When They Help The Tribe Connect To Itself.

I Find That It's Almost Essential To Fall In Love With An Idea To Invest The Time It Takes To Make It Good And Worth Sharing. And Then, The Hard Part: Deleting That Idea When It's Just Not What It Could Be. Too Often, Organizations Are Good At The First Part, But Struggle With The Second. And So We Defend Expired Business Models, Support The Status Quo And Have A Knee-jerk Inclination To Preserve What We've Got.

Falling In Love

Facts Are Irrelevant. What Matters Is What The Consumer Believes.

Surprise And Differentiation Have Far More Impact Than Noise Does.

Differentiation

Seizing New Ground, Making Connections Between People Or Ideas, Working Without A Map-these Are Works Of Art, And If You Do Them, You Are An Artist, Regardless Of Whether You Wear A Smock, Use A Computer, Or Work With Others All Day Long.

Inspirational Life

Authenticy In Marketing Is Telling A Story People Want To Hear.

Emotions Are Far More Contagious Than Any Disease. A Smile Or A Panic Will Spread Through A Group Of People Far Faster Than Any Virus Ever Could. When You Walk Into The Office Or A Negotiation, Then, Wash Your Bad Mood Away Before You See Us. Don't Cough On Us, Don't Sneeze On Us, Sure, But Don't Bring Your Grouchiness, Your Skepticism Or Your Fear In Here Either. It Might Spread.

If You're Not Willing To Get Your 'worst One Ever' Out Of The Way, How Will You Possibly Do Better Than That?

The Only Way To Consistently Grow In B2b Is To Be Better Than Very Good.

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.

The Way I Understand Gifts Is That The Giver Must Make A Sacrifice, Create An Uneven Exchange, Bring Himself Closer To The Recipient, Create Change And Do It All With The Right Spirit.

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

Market-driven Design Builds The Success Of The Product's Marketing Into The Product Itself.

The Next Thing You Do Today Will Be The Most Important Thing On Your Agenda, Because, After All, You're Doing It Next. Well, Perhaps It Will Be The Most Urgent Thing. Or The Easiest. In Fact, The Most Important Thing Probably Isn't Even On Your Agenda.

An Artist Is Someone Who Uses Bravery, Insight, Creativity, And Boldness To Challenge The Status Quo. And An Artist Takes It Personally.

Ideas That Spread Win.

Perfect Can't Possibly Be The Goal, We're Left With Generous, Important And Human Instead.

One Way To Work The System Is To Work The System. The Other Way Is To Refuse To Work It.

Organizations That Destroy The Status Quo Win. Whatever The Status Quo Is, Changing It Gives You The Opportunity To Be Remarkable.

Fear For A Linchpin Is A Clue That You're Getting Close To Doing Something Important.

Little Changes Cost You. Big Changes Benefit You By Changing The Game, But Only If You Go First.

All Artists Are Entrepreneurs. All Entrepreneurs Are Artists.

One Key To Moving Forward Is Knowing What To Leave Behind.

Normal Is Fading Away. Governments And Industries And Schools Like Normal, Because It's Easier, It Scales And It's Profitable. But People Don't Like It - We Want To Be Who We Are, Not Who Some Marketer Tells Us To Be.

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

I Find That I Have About Six Bloggable Ideas A Day. I Also Find That Writing Twice As Long A Post Doesn't Increase Communication, It Usually Decreases It. And Finally, I Found That People Get Antsy If There Are Unread Posts In Their Queue.

The Tragedy Is That Society (your School, Your Boss, Your Government, Your Family) Keeps Drumming The Genius Part Out. The Problem Is That Our Culture Has Engaged In A Faustian Bargain, In Which We Trade Our Genius And Artistry For Apparent Stability.

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

If You Can't Be Remarkable, Perhaps You Should Consider Doing Nothing Until You Can.

Believe In What You Do, Because You May Have To Do It For A Long Time Before It Catches On.

Remember The Bob Dylan Rule: It's Not Just A Record, It's A Movement.

When We Intentionally Seek Out The Difficult Tasks, We're Much More Likely To Actually Create Value.

Difficult Tasks

You Know, If I Look At An Auditorium Full Of High School Students And The Big Man On Campus And His Girlfriend Are Busy Talking While The Lecture's Going On, The Rest Of The Room Is Going To Do It Because They're Powerful Sneezers. They Have Influence. They Reach Out To A Whole Bunch Of People In A Way That Makes The Idea Of Being Disrespectful Spread.

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.

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.

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.

Art Is A Personal Act Of Courage, Something One Human Does That Creates Change In Another.

The Resistance Is The Voice In Your Head Telling You To Use Bullets In Your Powerpoint Slides...it’s The Voice That Tells You To Leave Controversial Ideas Out Of The Paper You’re Writing, Because The Teacher Won’t Like Them. The Resistance Pushes Relentlessly For You To Fit In.

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

Asking Permission

Asking For Forgiveness

The Danger Of The Web Is That You Can Go From Idea To Public Announcement In Under Ten Minutes.

And It Doesn't Matter To Me Whether You're Running A Coffee Shop Or You're An Intellectual Or You're In Business Or Flying Hot Air Balloons. People Who Can Spread Ideas, Regardless Of What Those Ideas Are, Win. But Consumers, They Got Way More Choices Than They Used To And Way Less Time.

Leaders Who Set Out To Give Are More Productive Than Leaders Who Seek To Get.

Permission Marketing Turns Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Loyal Customers. It's Not Just About Entertainment - It's About Education. Permission Marketing Is Curriculum Marketing.

Loyal Customers

While You May Have Made Money Doing Something A Certain Way Yesterday, There's No Reason To Believe You'll Succeed At It Tomorrow.

Excellence Isn’t About Working Extra Hard To Do What You’re Told. It’s About Taking The Initiative To Do Work You Decide Is Worth Doing.

When We Think Of Design, We Usually Imagine Things That Are Chosen Because They Are Designed. Vases Or Comic Books Or Architecture... It Turns Out, Though, That Most Of What We Make Or Design Is Actually Aimed At A Public That Is There For Something Else. The Design Is Important, But The Design Is Not The Point. Call It "public Design"... Public Design Is For Individuals Who Have To Fill Out Our Tax Form, Interact With Our Website Or Check Into Our Hotel Room Despite The Way It's Designed, Not Because Of It.

The Competitive Advantages The Marketplace Demands Is Someone More Human, Connected, And Mature. Someone With Passion And Energy, Capable Of Seeing Things As They Are And Negotiating Multiple Priorities As She Makes Useful Decisions Without Angst. Flexible In The Face Of Change, Resilient In The Face Of Confusion. All Of These Attributes Are Choices, Not Talents, And All Of Them Are Available To You.

The Reason They Want You To Fit In... Is That Once You Do, Then They Can Ignore You.

You Don't Need More Time In Your Day. You Need To Decide.

The Cul-de-sac ( French For "dead End" ) ... Is A Situation Where You Work And Work And Work And Nothing Much Changes

Go Ahead And Act As If Your Decisions Are Temporary. Because They Are. Be Bold, Make Mistakes, Learn A Lesson, And Fix What Doesn't Work. No Sweat, No Need To Hyperventilate.

The People That Are Doing Work That Matters Aren't Doing Work Thats Popular. They're Just Doing Work That Changes Some People.

Great Innovations, Powerful Interactions And Real Art Are Often Produced By Someone In A State Of Wonder. Looking Around With Stars In Your Eyes And Amazement At The Tools That Are Available To You Can Inspire Generosity And Creativity And Connection

You Want It To Be Hard. If It's Hard, Then That Means Others Can't Do It Easily And You Can Charge For That Value.

If You're Different Somehow And Have Made Yourself Unique, People Will Find You And Pay You More.

Just About Every Great, Brave Or Beautiful Thing In Our Culture Was Created By Someone Who Didn't Do It For Money.

It's Possible That Your Next Frontier Isn't To Get More Efficient, It's To Get More Brave.

Competition Validates You. It Creates A Category. It Permits The Sale To Be This Or That, Not Yes Or No.

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

A Book Is A Souvenir Of An Idea.

You Have To Find A Group That Really Desperately Cares About What It Is You Have To Say. Talk To Them. They Have Something I Call Otaku. It's A Great Japanese Word. It Describes The Desire Of Someone Who's Obsessed To, Say, Drive Across Tokyo To Try A New Ramen Noodle Place 'cause That's What They Do, They Get Obsessed With It.

Somewhere In The World, Someone Is Doing Something That You Decided Couldn't Be Done.

As Soon As You Are Willing To Say 'it's Not For You', You're Freed Up To Make Art.

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

Marketing Is A Contest For People's Attention.

Great Projects, Like Great Careers And Relationships That Last, Are Gardens. They Are Tended, They Shift, They Grow. They Endure Over Time, Gaining A Personality And Reflecting Their Environment. When Something Dies Or Fades Away, We Prune, Replant And Grow Again.

Most People With A Big Idea, Great Talent And/or Something To Say Don't Get Lucky At First. Or Second. Or Even Third. It's So Easy To Conclude That If You're Not Lucky, You're Not Good. So Persistence Becomes An Essential Element Of Good, Because Without Persistence, You Never Get A Chance To Get Lucky.

Risking The Appearance Of Weakness Takes Strength. And The Market Knows It.

Too Often, We Don't Give People The Opportunity To Fill In The Blanks.

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.

Please Stop Waiting For A Map. We Reward Those Who Draw Maps, Not Those Who Follow Them.

If You're Passionate, Be Passionate Enough To Fail. Fail Small, Accept Responsibility, Repeat. The People Who Make Change Are The Survivors Of Serial Failure.

Many People Believe That Great Designers Get Great Clients. It's The Other Way Around.

Earn Trust, Earn Trust, Earn Trust. Then You Can Worry About The Rest.

The Goal, Then, Isn't To Draw Some Positioning Charts And Announce That You Have Differentiated Your Product. No, The Opportunity Is To Actually Create Something That People Choose To Talk About, Regardless Of What The Competition Is Doing.

Self Sufficiency Appears To Be A Worthy Goal, But It's Now Impossible If You Want To Actually Get Anything Done. All Our Productivity, Leverage And Insight Comes From Being Part Of A Community, Not Apart From It. The Goal, I Think, Is To Figure Out How To Become More Dependent, Not Less.

The Only Reason To Buy A Paper Book Any Longer Is To Own It And Cherish It And Remember It And Tell A Story About It.

It Takes Confidence And Guts To Intentionally Create Tension.

The People Who Are The Best In The World Specialize At Getting Really Good At The Questions They Don't Know.

That's Your Opportunity - To Approach Your Work In A Way That Generates Unique Learning And Interactions That Are Worth Sharing.

Most Of Your Competition Spend Their Days Looking Forward To Those Rare Moments When Everything Goes Right. Imagine How Much Leverage You Have If You Spend Your Time Maximizing Those Common Moments When It Doesn't.

Marketing Is No Longer About The Stuff That You Male, But About The Stories You Tell.

Developing Expertise Or Assets That Are Not Easily Copied Is Essential; Otherwise You're Just A Middleman.

You Cannot Create A Piece Of Art Merely For Money. Doing It As Part Of Commerce So Denudes Art Of Wonder That It Ceases To Be Art.

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

There's No Shortage Of Remarkable Ideas, What's Missing Is The Will To Execute Them.

Good Advice Is Priceless. Not What You Want To Hear, But What You Need To Hear. Not Imaginary, But Practical. Not Based On Fear, But On Possibility. Not Designed To Make You Feel Better, Designed To Make You Better. Seek It Out And Embrace The True Friends That Care Enough To Risk Sharing It. I'm Not Sure What Takes More Guts-giving It Or Getting It.

Communication Is The Transfer Of Emotion.

The Essence Of Marketing Today Is To Tell A Story To People Who Want To Hear It, In A Way That Resonates With Them So They Are Likely To Either Respond Or Connect To You, Or Tell Their Friends.

School Is At Its Best When It Gives Students The Expectation That They Will Not Only Dream Big, But Dream Dreams That They Can Work On Every Day Until They Accomplish Them-not Because They Were Chosen By A Black-box Process, But Because They Worked Hard Enough To Reach Them.

... Outsiders Are Way More Likely To Approach Your Organization With Fabulous Projects If They Think They're Likely To Both Get A Good Reception And Succeed When They Get To Market.

Before You Promise To Change The World, It Makes Sense To Do The Hard Work Of Changing Your Neighborhood.

Sharing An Idea You Care About Is A Generous Way To Change Your World For The Better.

The Mirror We Hold Up To The Person Next To Us Is One Of The Most Important Pictures She Will Ever See.

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.

Those That Spend The Most Effort In Search Of Shortcuts Are Often The Most Disappointed And The Least Successful.

Nobody Says, 'yeah, I'd Like To Set Myself Up For Some Serious Criticism!' And Yet, The Only Way To Be Remarkable Is To Do Just That.

Competence Is No Longer Scarce.

The Public Square Is More Public Than Ever, But Minds Are Rarely Changed In 140 Character Bursts And By Selfies.

Transformation Al Leaders Don't Start By Denying The World Around Them. Instead, They Describe A Future They'd Like To Create Instead.

Not Changing Your Strategy Merely Because You're Used To The One You Have Now Is A Lousy Strategy.

Think Big. Start Small.

Seeing, Despite The Name, Isn’t Merely Visual.

You Get To Keep Making Art As Long As You Are Willing To Make The Choices That Let You Make Your Art.

It Always Feels Too Soon To Leap. But You Have To. Because That's The Moment Between You And Remarkable.

No, The Only Way To Know What People Think Is To Watch What They Do, Not What They Say. Do They Come Back For More? Do You Cause Them To Change Their Behavior? Can You Make Them Smile?

Tribes Makes Our Lives Better, And Leading A Tribe Is The Best Life Of All.

By All Means, Fire The Customers Who Aren't Worth The Time And The Trouble. But Understand That The Moment You Insist The Customer Is Wrong, You've Just Started The Firing Process.

Two Elements Of Successful Leadership: A Willingness To Be Wrong And An Eagerness To Admit It.

The Second Person To Write A Story About A Young Boy And An Escaped Slave On The Mississippi Wasn't A Novelist, He Was A Typist.

So By Giving People A Tool That They Can Share And Benefit From, It's A Form Of Media That Isn't Controlled By Rupert Murdoch Or The Guys At Viacom. It Is A Form Of Media That Is Earned Every Single Time It Spreads.

I Don't Think There's A Shortage Of Remarkable Ideas. I Think Your Business Has Plenty Of Great Opportunities To Do Great Things. Nope, What's Missing Isn't The Ideas. It's The Will To Execute Them.

No, Everything Is Not Going To Be Okay. It Never Is. It Isn't Okay Now. Change, By Definition, Changes Things

When In Doubt, Tell Yourself The Truth.

Being An Artist Isn't A Genetic Disposition Or A Specific Talent. It's An Attitude We Can All Adopt. It's A Hunger To Seize New Ground, Make Connections, And Work Without A Map. If You Do Those Things, You're An Artist.

Inspirational Life

No More Than Six Words On A Slide. Ever. There Is No Presentation So Complex That This Rule Needs To Be Broken.

Don't Save The Canary. Fix The Coal Mine.

No One Knows More About The Way You Think Than You Do.

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

What Makes Someone An Artist? I Don't Think Is Has Anything To Do With A Paintbrush. There Are Painters Who Follow The Numbers, Or Paint Billboards, Or Work In A Small Village In China, Painting Reproductions. These Folks, While Swell People, Aren't Artists. On The Other Hand, Charlie Chaplin Was An Artist, Beyond A Doubt. So Is Jonathan Ive, Who Designed The Ipod. You Can Be An Artist Who Works With Oil Paints Or Marble, Sure. But There Are Artists Who Work With Numbers, Business Models, And Customer Conversations. Art Is About Intent And Communication, Not Substances.

Do You Believe In What You Do? Every Day? It Turns Out That Belief Happens To Be A Brilliant Strategy.

The Thing Is, The Future Happens. Every Single Day, Like It Or Not. Sure, Tomorrow Is Risky, Frightening And In Some Way Represents One Step Closer To The End. But It Also Brings With It The Possibility Of Better And The Chance To Do Something That Matters.

Skepticism Doesn't Help You Hear.

In A Digital World, The Gift I Give You Almost Always Benefits Me More Than It Costs.

At The Heart Of Art Is Learning To See

It's Much Easier To Spend A Lot Of Time Making Your Microphone Louder Than It Is Working On Making Your Message More Compelling.

You Succeed Because You've Chosen To Be Confident. It's Not Really Useful To Require Yourself To Be Successful Before You're Able To Become Confident.

You Can Risk Being Wrong Or You Can Be Boring.

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

Most People Have Been Brainwashed Into Believing That Their Job Is To Copyedit The World, Not To Design It.

Sooner Or Later, The Ones Who Told You That This Isn't The Way It's Done, The Ones Who Found Time To Sneer, They Will Find Someone Else To Hassle. Sooner Or Later, They Stop Pointing Out How Much Hubris You've Got, How You're Not Entitled To Make A New Thing, How You Will Certainly Come To Regret Your Choices. Sooner Or Later, Your Work Speaks For Itself. Outlasting The Critics Feels Like It Will Take A Very Long Time, But You're More Patient Than They Are.

Art Isn't Only A Painting; It's Anything That Changes Someone For The Better, Any Nonanonymous Interaction That Leads To A Human (not Simply A Commercial) Conclusion.

Now, Before Sliced Bread Was Invented In The 1910s I Wonder What They Said? Like The Greatest Invention Since The Telegraph Or Something. But... The Thing About The Invention Of Sliced Bread Is This - That For The First 15 Years After Sliced Bread Was Available No One Bought It; No One Knew About It; It Was A Complete And Total Failure.

Mass Marketing Means Appealing To The Masses Which Means Appealing To The Average.

The Sound Of A Small Bell During A Dark Night, Is Louder Than The Din Of Traffic Outside Your Window During Rush Hour. Surprise And Differentiation Have Far More Impact Than Noise Does.

The Secret To Being Wrong Isn't To Avoid Being Wrong! The Secret Is Being Willing To Be Wrong. The Secret Is Realizing That Wrong Isn't Fatal.

Here's The Fascinating Part, Call It The Golden Shoulder: We Have No Idea In Advance Who The Great Contributors Are Going To Be. We Know That There's A Huge Cohort Of People Struggling Outside The Boundaries Of The Curated, Selected Few, But We Don't Know Who They Are.

Real Change Comes From Finding And Embracing And Connecting And Amplifying Those That Are Inclined To Like You And Believe In You. Ideas Spread From Person To Person, Not So Much From You To Them. So Find Your Biggest Fans And Give Them A Story To Tell.

Today, Not Starting Is Far, Far Worse Than Being Wrong. If You Start, You've Got A Shot At Evolving And Adjusting To Turn Your Wrong Into A Right. But If You Don't Start, You Never Get A Chance.

It's Easy To Pretend Expertise When There's No Data To Contradict You.

Own Your Dreams. There Is No Better Way To Make Them Happen.

Traditional Sales And Marketing Involves Increasing Market Shares, Which Means Selling As Much Of Your Product As You Can To As Many Customers As Possible. One-to-one Marketing Involves Driving For A Share Of Customer, Which Means Ensuring That Each Individual Customer Who Buys Your Product Buys More Product, Buys Only Your Brand, And Is Happy Using Your Product Instead Of Another To Solve His Problem. The True, Current Value Of Any One Customer Is A Function Of The Customer's Future Purchases, Across All The Product Lines, Brands, And Services Offered By You.

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

Piracy Is Not The Problem, Obscurity Is.

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.

If You Use Your Money To Create Exceptional Products And Services, You Won't Need To Spend It On Advertising.

Catering To The Passionate Is Exactly What You Should Do.

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.

If You Hesitate To Map Out Your Future, To Make A Big Plan Or To Set A Goal, You've Just Gone Ahead And Mapped Your Future Anyway.

Without A Specific Reason For The Consumer To Behave, Without A Reward Or Benefit, The Overwhelmed Consumer Will Refuse.

It's Almost Impossible To Have Fun Playing Ping Pong With Someone Who Doesn't Care, Won't Try Or Isn't Any Good.

It's Never Too Late To Start Heading In The Right Direction.

Heading In The Right Direction

The Most Successful Givers Aren’t Doing It Because They’re Being Told To. They Do It Because Doing It Is Fun. It Gives Them Joy.

I Don’t Think The Shortage Of Artists Has Much To Do With The Innate Ability To Create Or Initiate. I Think It Has To Do With Believing That It’s Possible And Acceptable For You To Do It. We’ve Had These Doors Open Wide For Only A Decade Or So, And Most People Have Been Brainwashed Into Believing That Their Job Is To Copyedit The World, Not To Design It.

By My Definition, Most Art Has Nothing To Do With Oil Paint Or Marble. Art Is What We're Doing When We Do Our Best Work.

The Notion That I Do My Work Here, Now, Like This, Even When I Do Not Feel Like It, And Especially When I Do Not Feel Like It, Is Very Important. Because Lots And Lots Of People Are Creative When They Feel Like It, But You Are Only Going To Become A Professional If You Do It When You Don't Feel Like It. And That Emotional Waiver Is Why This Is Your Work And Not Your Hobby.

We Don't Become Mediocre All At Once, And We Rarely Do It On Purpose.

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.

No Organization Ever Created An Innovation. People Innovate, Not Companies.

Play A New Game, Not The Older Game But Faster.

Laptop Computers Dramatically Increased The Time People Spend Doing Work. (the Internet Dramatically Decreased It, So We're Even).

Low Price Is A Great Way To Sell A Commodity. That's Not Marketing Though, That's Efficiency.

If You're Going To Invest A Valuable Asset (like Time), Go Ahead And Make It Productive. Use A Postit Or Two, Or Some Index Cards Or A Highlighter. Not To Write Down Stuff So You Can Forget It Later, But To Create Marching Orders. It's Simple: If Three Weeks Go By And You Haven't Taken Action On What You've Written Down, You Wasted Your Time.

A Brilliant Author Or Businesswoman Or Senator Or Software Engineer Is Brilliant Only In Tiny Bursts. The Rest Of The Time, They’re Doing Work That Most Any Trained Person Could Do.

The Nature Of Revolutions Is That They Destroy The Perfect And Enable The Impossible.

Incrementalism Ceases To Be A Good Strategy When There's A Cliff On The Route.

Reputation Is What People Expect Us To Do Next. It's Their Expectation Of The Quality And Character Of The Next Thing We Produce Or Say Or Do. We Control Our Actions (even When It Feels Like We Don't) And Our Actions Over Time (especially When We Think No One Is Looking) Earn Our Reputation.

Way More Productive, I Think, To Push Yourself To Be More In The World, Not To Encourage Yourself To Hide.

I Think That The Economics Of Book Publishing Favor Hits With Long Book Runs. You Make All Your Money On The Last Bunch Of Books, Not The First.

We Need Students Who Can Learn How To Learn, Who Can Discover How To Push Themselves And Are Generous Enough And Honest Enough To Engage With The Outside World To Make Those Dreams Happen.

The Only Thing All Successful People Have In Common Is That They're Successful, So Don't Waste Your Time Copying "the Successful Strategies" Of Others.

Do Your Art. But Don't Wreck Your Art If It Doesn't Lend Itself To Paying The Bills. That Would Be A Tragedy.

Ideas Don't Get Smaller When They're Shared, They Get Bigger.

Studying Entrepreneurshi P Without Doing It... Is Like Studying The Appreciation Of Music Without Listening To It.

Great Work Is Always Shunned At First.

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.

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

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 Work In An Urgent-only Culture, The Only Solution Is To Make The Right Things Urgent.

Employee Engagement

Sooner Or Later, Many Idealists Transform Themselves Into Disheartened Realists Who Mistakenly Believe That Giving Up Is The Same Thing As Being Realistic.

If You Think Cat Food Is For Cats, How Come It Doesn't Come In Mouse Flavor?

Doing Justice To The Work Is Your Task, Not Setting A World Record.

If You're Not Upsetting Anyone, You're Not Changing The Status Quo.

Will You Succeed Because You Are More Well-rounded Than Others? Because You Fit In Better Than Everyone Else? Bloody Unlikely. We Succeed When We Are Trusted To Be The Best At What We Do.

Stop Trying To Find The Formula That Will Instantly Make Your Idea Into A Winner. Instead Of Being Scientists, The Best Marketers Are Artists. They Realize That Whatever Is Being Sold Is Being Purchased, Because It Creates An Emotional Want, Not Because It Fills A Simple Need.

Personalizatio N Wasn't Supposed To Be A Cleverly Veiled Way To Chase Prospects Around The Web, Showing Them The Same Spammy Ad For The Same Lame Stuff As Everyone Else Sees. No, It Is A Chance To Differentiate At A Human Scale, To Use Behavior As The Most Important Clue About What People Want And More Important, What They Need.

When We Think About What Might Go Wrong, We're More Likely To Design Something That Goes Right.

It’s Okay. Let Your Ego Push You To Be The Initiator. But Tell Your Ego That The Best Way To Get Something Shipped Is To Let Other People Take The Credit. The Real Win For You (and Your Ego) Is Seeing Something Get Shipped, Not In Getting The Credit When It Does.

You Can Use Social Media To Turn Strangers Into Friends, Friends Into Customers And Customers Into Salespeople.

Gratitude And Opportunity Create More Of The Same.

Mostly, The Best Way To Be The Next Mark Zuckerberg Is To Make Difficult Choices.

Difficult Choices

There's A Huge Difference Between Being A Replaceable Cog On The Assembly Line And Being The One Who Is Missed, The One With A Unique Contribution, The One Who Made A Difference.

Your Best Customers Are Worth Far More Than Your Average Customers.

Ideas Aren't A Sideshow That Make Our Factory A Little More Valuable. Our Factory Is A Sideshow That Makes Our Ideas A Little More Valuable!

There's No Correlation Between How Good Your Idea Is And How Likely Your Organization Will Be To Embrace It.

If You're Not Proud Of Where You Work, Go Work Somewhere Else.

If You Can't Sell To 1 In 1000, Why Market To A Million?

Just As We Don't Spend A Lot Of Time Worrying About How All Those Poets Out There Are Going To Monetize Their Poetry, The Same Is True For Most Bloggers.

Trending Author

Category