WINNER WILL BE DECIDED JANUARY 29th at 6pm PT
WINNER IS… http://www.twitvid.com/I23RJ
I’ve been slowly working my way through the book “Linchpin” by Seth Godin for the last 4-5 months. I’ve been taking my time with it simply because it’s that good. So good, that at times I really don’t like it.
If you don’t know who Seth Godin is let me summarize him a bit. He’s one of the most influential bloggers out there. He deals with subjects of marketing, leadership and even a few other things. He’s a sought after public speaker and he’s a proficient pot stirrer and he takes on that role again in his book “Linchpin”.
I picked up this book on the hopes of reading something fresh and new. I had read “Tribes” and loved it, so my hopes for “Linchpin” were high. It’s taken me months to almost finish it, yes, almost. I’m still working through it, simply because I keep going back and reading parts of it again.
My highlights of the book would have to be a few things:
- No matter what it is we do, we can make it art. WE NEED to make it art. Whether you are serving coffee, building houses or going to school, make it art. Your work is your art.
- The world today needs people that are emotionally invested in their work. There needs to be a deeper connection in the work we are doing. On the other side of that, employers need to offer working environments and roles for people to thrive, grow and develop into their art. That is how you develop as a linchpin and develop linchpins. Get invested.
- Gift giving needs to come back. I loved Seth’s insight on this. We’ve lost the idea of what a gift is. Often when people get a gift they feel they need to give something back. Real gifts don’t demand reciprocation.
- Set a shipping date. No matter what it is you do, set a shipping date. Set a date where you deliver whatever it is you’re doing/making. This pushes you to get it done. Don’t delay the date, don’t push it back, set it and stick with it. You get more done this way and you learn about how you do things.
- The lack of need for a road map. Sticking with a set route or previous way of doing things isn’t good. Be open and ready for whatever direction it is you need to go. Blaze the trail before you.
- The resistance. Seth talks a lot about the lizard brain. He discusses how we have to sides to our brain – to fight or flee. I can’t summarize it here, but it’s worth reading just for this.
Those are just a few of my notes. I have a few pages and notes I wrote in my book.
One of other thing I learned from Seth is about books in general and I’ve started to adopt this policy. Too many of us have books sitting on our shelves. They just sit there. Looking pretty. I think it’s an ego think, people want to show off how many books they have or how many shelves they can fit in their office. People need to read those books. Give them away when you’re done with them. I take notes on the books I read (most of them) and I store those for later use. I rarely pick up old books and flip through them again. If I need to read it again, I just borrow it from someone else for a bit. ALL THAT SAID, I’ll give away my Linchpin copy to someone who comments here. I’ll even ship it to you. It has notes in it, pages have been ear marked but the cover is still perfect (I keep it off when I read books). Just comment and I’ll pick a random person.
OR if you want, go buy your own copy and share it with someone when you’re done
