Seth Godin's Blog

2016-07-29 20:57:54 Just because you're right...

You may be right, but that doesn't mean that people will care. Or pay attention. Or take action.

Just because you're right, doesn't mean they're going to listen.

It takes more than being right to earn attention and action.

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2016-07-28 16:05:26 Your best shot

Should you put all your best material up front?

Later seems really far away. Now is far more urgent.

But what if it's a marathon, not a sprint?

A fast start is often overestimated. If you're truly capable of delivering world-class work later (as opposed to merely stalling), you might discover that in a world of quick hits, your ability to keep showing up with work that gets better and better is precisely what the market wants from you.

The people who are swayed by the fast start and the shiny new thing aren't going to stick with you for very long, are they?

Promises, kept.

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2016-07-26 14:43:22 In search of palliatives

A palliative is a treatment that soothes even if it can't cure the illness.

By all means, whenever you can, fix the problem, go to the root cause, come up with a better design...

But when you can't (and that's most of the time, because the straightforward problems have already been solved), the effort you put into providing a palliative will not go unnoticed or unappreciated.

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2016-07-25 20:03:43 What have we become? (And what are we becoming?)

Every day, we change. We move (slowly) toward the person we'll end up being.

Not just us, but our organizations. Our political systems. Our culture.

Are you more generous than the you of five or ten years ago? More confident? More willing to explore?

Have you become more brittle? Selfish? Afraid?

Grumpy and bitter isn't a place we begin. It's a place we end up.

Do we intentionally choose the optimistic path? Are we eagerly more open to change and possibility?

Every day we make the hard decisions that build a culture, an organization, a life.

Since yesterday, since last week, since you were twelve, have you been making deposits or withdrawals from the circles of supporters around you?

People don't become selfish, hateful and afraid all at once. They do it gradually.

When we see the dystopian worlds depicted in movies and books, are we closer to those outcomes than a generation ago? Do we find ourselves taking actions that make our conversations more considered, our arguments more informed, our engagements more civil? Or precisely the opposite, because it's easier?

Your brand, your company, your community: it has so much, is it still playing the short game? 

When your great-grandfather arrives by time machine, what will you show him? What have you built, what are you building? When your great-grandchildren remember the choices we made, at a moment when we actually had a choice, what will they remember?

We are always becoming, and we can always make the choice to start becoming something else, if we care.

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2016-07-24 17:07:19 "So simple it doesn't need instructions"

Eager (and less-talented) designers often get confused about this instruction, turning it into: "It doesn't have instructions, therefore it's simple.

Consider a hotel shower . It has 11 things that might be dials, and five that actually are. The alert person, standing under cold water, at 5 in the morning, in a dark hotel room, will probably (???) realize that the bottom dial, all the way near the floor, is actually the one that controls the temperature.

The lack of instructions doesn't make something simple.

I used to write the manuals for the educational software we shipped in the mid 1980s. The goal was clear: write exactly enough that no one would call us on the phone. 

Today, of course, instructions are really cheap to provide. On a shower, all you need is a simple label. But just about anything else you produce ought to come with digital instructions, written or on video.

Don't make us read your mind. 

[Yes, it's true, almost no one reads the instructions... people are so self-absorbed and hurried that they plunge first. One more reason to build something simple. But at least you can post instructions so that after they fail the first time, they have a shot at getting it right the second time.]

PS if you truly care, list your phone number/email address on the instructions. Not an unattended mailbox. You.*

(*the single best way to improve just about any communication...)

Your designs (and your instructions) will get better faster.

[I limit myself to just one post per year about how bad hotel showers are, fwiw. Mostly, they're a symptom of a significant lack of care in the face of the rush to make more stuff faster.]

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2016-07-23 14:13:16 Managing the gap

There's a space between where you are now and where you want to be, ought to be, are capable of being.

A gap between your reality and your possibility.

Imagine that space as a gulf or a chasm and you'll become paralyzed, stuck in the current situation.

And refuse to see it at all and you'll merely be self-satisfied, and just as stuck.

The magic of forward movement is seeing the space as leap-sized, as something that persistent, consistent effort can get you through.

The most likely paths are the ones where you can see the steps.

Your problem might not be that you're not trying hard enough. It might be that you're seeing the opportunity in the wrong way.

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2016-07-22 20:00:46 "You can not make a spoon that's better than a spoon"

Umberto Eco said that when he was talking about the form of paper books.

But I think it raises a challenge for just about anyone who seeks to do something truly great in the world of design (in any of its forms):

Can you invent a thing for which no one will ever invent a better version of it?

Certainly, Dylan has done that for dozens of his songs.

And Frank Lloyd Wright did it with 'Falling Water'. No one will ever build a better version of it.

But Like A Rolling Stone and Falling Water are specific instances of general ideas (songs and houses). Not quite the same as Eco had in mind.

But you know what, that's probably worth aiming for regardless.

Can you make the thing you make next to be spoonlike in its unimprovableness?

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2016-07-21 13:19:51 Singular isn't about scale

Tracy Chapman was outsold by the Doobie Brothers by 40:1. But the Doobie's aren't 40 times as singular an artist as she is.

Lou Reed was outsold by Van Morrison at least 40:1. But again, our image and memory of Lou compares to Van's, it's not a tiny fraction of his.

Singular is the one that we can tell apart, the one we remember, the one we will miss when it's gone.

It's entirely possible that creators with scale are also singular (like Van, or Miranda), but it's not required. Many of the artists, leaders and teachers that have had an impact on you and on me have done so with very little popular acclaim.

It doesn't pay to trade your singular-ness for scale.

Singular might lead to scale, but popular is not enough.

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2016-07-21 01:34:23 Living with what happens next

Most people are okay with living with the consequences of what happens.

The hard part is living with our narrative about how it happened and why.

If your plane is late and you miss the meeting and you don't close the sale, well, you didn't get the work.

But if your meeting is missed because you planned poorly, the story you tell yourself about why you didn't get the sale might just be worse than the business impact of not having been to the meeting.

Stress in a typical job isn't the stress of losing or being killed in action, it's the stress of imagining the narrative of failure in advance, the self-shaming and the what-ifs. When we leave those out, we get a chance to do our real work, undistracted by drama, cliffhangers and blame.

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2016-07-19 13:46:53 The very same software

Something rare is happening, and it might not last long.

Today, right now, anyone with a $300 laptop can use the very same tools as the people at the top of just about any industry.

If you want to write, you have the same writing tools available to you as the most successful writers in the world.

If you want to join a social network, well, the software that connects the titans of your industry is the very same software you can use.

If you want to learn, do research, make a ruckus... your local library has access to the same tools as you'll find in a skyscraper in a big company.

Of course, we haven't democratized access to closed off circles, we haven't changed the inherent and unstated biases of those in traditional seats in power.

But we've definitely given you the tools.

If you can, pick yourself.

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