Seth Godin's Blog, page 137

Shopping

We've been doing it all our lives, and it's easy to misunderstand. Shopping feels like the method we use to get the things we need.

Except...

Except more than a billion people on earth have never once gone shopping. Never once set out with money in their pockets to see what's new, to experience the feeling of, "maybe I'll buy that," or, "I wonder how that will look on me..."

Shopping is an entertaining act, distinct from buying.

Shopping is looking around, spending time in search of choosing how to spend money. Shopping is buying something you've never purchased before.

For many people, shopping is nothing but a risk. The risk that one might buy the wrong thing, waste money, waste time, become indebted. For many, replenishment, buying what your parents bought, getting enough to live on... that's all there is, that's enough.

If we're going to shop, then, there's an imperative to make it engaging, thrilling and worth the resources we put into it. The shopping mall (what a concept) is less than a hundred years old, and in the States anyway, they're not building many more of them. 

Shopping on the internet is pushing this dichotomy. The idea of subscribing to household goods (like razors and soap) eliminates the chore of shopping and makes buying automatic. On the other hand, Kickstarter wants nothing to do with needs and with replenishment--the entire site is about the thrill of shopping, with meaning and stuff intermingled.

In a culture dominated by consumerism, it's our shopping choices that consistently alter our world.

            

Three elements to go beyond hourly freelancing

Hourly freelancing generally involves finding a task that many people can do, and doing it slighly better or slightly cheaper (or slightly more conveniently) than others can. It's not a bad gig, but with some planning, you can do better.

Start by focusing on three things (and a bonus):

1. An audience (organizations or individuals) that has money to invest in having you solve their problem

2. An audience that realizes it has a problem that needs to be solved

3. A skill, a service, a story, a resource or a technology that only you can provide

4. (A bonus): An outcome that your customers will choose to tell other people about

When any of these elements are missing, you're likely to be seen as a replaceable cog, without the leverage you seek. The challenge is in finding an area where you can grow and the committing to earning that asset.

If you find yourself saying, "you can hire anyone, and I'm anyone," then you're selling yourself short. And if you find yourself arguing with potential clients about what this sort of work is worth, it may be that you've chosen the wrong clients.

You are not a task rabbit. You're a professional doing unique work that matters.

[More on this in my freelancer course.]

            

Centered and complete

These are not the conditions for creativity.

Creative people ship remarkable work because they seek to complete something, to heal something, to change something for the better. To move from where they are now to a more centered, more complete place.

You don't get creative once everything is okay. In fact, we are creative because everything isn't okay (yet).

            

When things go wrong

A protocol for moving forward:

0. Double check the work to make sure that there are no other problems within it.

1. Alert the relevant parties.

2. Take responsibility for what went wrong. This doesn’t mean that you intentionally did it wrong, or that doing it right was part of your job description. It means that you know something went wrong, you’re unhappy about it, and you accept responsibility for letting it get by you and you accept responsibility for making sure it won’t happen again.

 3. Apologize. Not because it’s your fault, but because the incident cost other people time or money or upset them, and you’re sorry that they have to deal with that.

4. Come up with a plan to ameliorate the impact of the problem. If you can’t come up with a plan, say so and ask for suggestions.

5. Come up with a plan to avoid the problem in the future.

6. Gather feedback.

7. Thank everyone for their patience and goodwill.

Either that, or you could hide, dissemble, blame, shuffle along, scowl, depersonalize and then move on.

            

Light on your feet

To walk lightly through the world, with confidence and energy, is far more compelling than plodding along, worn down by the weight on your shoulders. When we are light on our feet we make better decisions, bring joy to those around us and find the flexibility to do good work.

There are two ways to achieve this.

The first is take the weight away. To refuse to do work that's important. To not care about the outcome. Whatever.

The second is to eagerly embrace the weight of our commitment but to commit to being light, regardless. This is the surgeon who can enjoy doing brain surgery, not because surgery isn't important, but because it is.

The work is the work, regardless of whether you decide to be ground down by it.

It might be tempting to try to relieve yourself of responsibility, but it's a downward spiral, a path to banal industrialism. Better, I think, to learn to dance with it.

To take it seriously, not personally.

            

Quantum content and blurred lines

Twenty years ago, cookbooks were cookbooks. Almanacs were almanacs. There were no thrillers that were also coming-of-age diet books.

Twenty years ago, jazz was jazz and polka was polka. Jazz polka wasn't really a thing.

The reason is simple: The publisher of the work needed to get it to the store, the store needed to put it on a shelf and the consumer had to find it. Most of the time, publishers would push back (hard) on creators to make sure that the thing they created fit into a category. No category, no shelf space. No shelf space, no sale.

In our long tail, self published, digital world, there is of course infinite shelf space. And there is no retailer that needs to be sold, because since there's no shelf space issue, they will carry everything.

As a result of no one pushing back on the self-published writer or musician, there's a huge blurring going on. The design of websites, for example, is all over the map in ways that magazines and books never were. 

Quantum theory posits that an electron is either here or there. Not in between. And for a long time, content was pushed into quantum buckets. But the shift to digital has blurred all of that.

Except...

Except that the consumer of content still thinks in terms of buckets. She's judging your podcast in the first eight seconds, "what does this remind me of?" She's searching for famous names, scanning the bestseller list, moving sideways within a category.

Yes, of course we need your post-categorization genius. We need you to blend and leap and integrate new styles to create new forms.

But while you're busy not being pigeonholed, don't forget that we pigeonhole for a reason. And if it's too difficult to figure out how to pay attention to you, we'll decide to ignore you instead.

Make your magic, and make it easy for us to figure out...

What is this thing?

What does it remind me of?

Do people like me like stuff like this?

            

Making a new decision

It's almost impossible to persuade someone that he's wrong. Almost impossible to make your argument louder and sharper and have the other person say, "I was wrong and I will change my mind."

Far more effective: Help someone make a new decision, based on new alternatives and a new story.

Arnold got it right in this passionate invitation to (re) think about our future.

            

The last minute

I'm not good at the last minute. It's really fraught with risk and extra expense. I'm much better doing things the first minute instead.

On that topic: If you're hoping for copies of my latest book, What To Do When It's Your Turn, delivered in time for holiday gift giving, you'll need to order it by the end of day tomorrow. Thanks for sharing it.

            

Full speed, then stop, gracefully

Quitting slowly doesn't serve you well.

At work or in anything else you do, people will remember how you ended things. All in, then out is the responsible way to participate and to end that participation. Too often, we seduce ourselves into gradually backing off, in removing ourselves emotionally and organizationally, as if making ourselves unuseful for a while makes it easier for everyone.

Professionals bring their A game to work. Every time. (Rare sports analogy: this is how good hockey players skate. Full speed, then stop.)

Of course you will need to close things down, quit your job, move on someday. The responsible way to do that, though, is not to act things out while you agonize over a decision. Decide, give notice, make the transition work.

Dropbox fell into the gradual trap with the Mailbox app they published for the Mac. They didn't support it well for nearly a year, and the last iteration of it broke many of its features. It's as if they wanted people to quietly disappear so they would have an easier time shutting it down.

If you want people to believe your promises tomorrow, it helps if you kept them yesterday.

            

The joy of whining

Before starting, a question: Will it help?

Like holding a grudge, or like panicking, whining rarely helps. If anything, any of the three make it far less likely that you'll make progress solving the problem that has presented itself.

And, like knuckle cracking, it's best enjoyed alone.