Seth Godin's Blog, page 169

Fomo, joy, jealousy and the lizard

Somewhere, right this very moment, someone is having more fun than you.

Making more money than you.

Doing something more important, with better friends, and a happier ending, than you. Or possibly just better at Words with Friends than you are.

You're missing out.

And somewhere, right now, something in your universe isn't right. There's something happening that will affect you, annoy you, make things not "all right."

A crisis is looming.

Of course joy is hard to find, even with all the leverage, assets and privileges we've got. We've set ourselves up to avoid it at every turn. Electronic media profits from connecting us, sure, but mostly it profits from amplifying emotions we don't want in the long run.

FOMO is the fear of missing out. It always existed of course, ever since we were in high school. As freshmen, we knew that some cool kid was at some party that we could have gone to, but didn't.

We've taken this far beyond a story told the next day over lunch, though. The supercomputer in our pocket, amplified by your choice of social media, brings FOMO right to you, wherever you are, with a mere vibration.

At the same time...

The lizard brain is on high alert to make sure that everything is okay. The lizard brain can't rest until it knows that everyone likes us, that no one is offended, that all graphs are ticking up and to the right and the future is assured. But of course, the future (and the present) isn't perfect. It can't be.

The combination of the two, the reverse schadenfreude of FOMO (the pain we may feel from others having good fortune) and the insatiable yet unreachable need for everything to be fine, conspire to make us distracted, unhappy and most of all, somewhere else.

I'm not talking about the dissatisfaction of the artist who wants to challenge herself and to reach new heights. That's an internal discussion, not one that's measured against the instant updates of the world's population.

The only place joy can be found is right here and right now. Everyone who is selling you dissatisfaction is working for their own selfish ends.

(More clicks, saved for the bottom so you could read the above without worrying about what you were missing on other sites: FOMO, XCKD, schadenfreude and the lizard.)

Swagger

One way that marketers (of any stripe) make an impact is by displaying confidence. Consumers figure that if a marketer is confident in their offering, they ought to be confident in the marketer as return. We often assume that confidence means that something big is on offer.

The problem with swagger is that if you're the swaggering marketer, you might run into a competitor with even more swagger than you. When that happens, it's time to show your cards, the justification for your confidence. And if you don't deliver, you've done nothing but disappoint the person who believed in you.

Substance without swagger slows you down. But swagger without substance can be fatal. Right now, we're seeing more swagger than ever—but it's rarely accompanied by an increase in substance...

The rule is simple: it's essential to act the part. And it's even more important for it to be real.

Sometimes, more is not what you want

"Fitting in more than anyone else" doesn't work, even in high school. Seeking to be the most average, the most non-descript and the most inoffensive doesn't lead to growth.

"More informed" wears out too. If you get more news, faster, via Twitter, say, you're not going to have a significant advantage over someone who has just enough news. Understanding what every single person is saying about everything, all the time, leaves you little opportunity to actually make something.

Having more on your to-do list probably isn't the best idea either.

Building your backlist (and living with it forever)

Authors and musicians have one, certainly. This is the book you wrote seven years ago or the album from early in your career. The book keeps selling, spreading the ideas and making a difference. The album gets played on the radio, earning you new fans.

"Backlist" is what publishers call the stuff that got published a while ago, but that's still out there, selling.

The Wizard of Oz, Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits and Starsky and Hutch all live on the backlist

Without a backlist, all book publishers would go out of business in no time. The backlist pays dividends long after the work is over.

Advertisers didn’t used to have a backlist. You paid for that magazine or newspaper or TV ad, and within just one cycle, it was gone, forever.

Today, of course, the work you put on the internet has a good chance of staying there for a very long time. The internet doesn’t easily forget.

That TED talk, then is going to be around for your grandchildren to see. The review of your new restaurant, or the generous connection you made on a social network--they’re going to last.

I almost hired someone a few years ago--until I googled her and discovered that the first two matches were pictures of her drinking beer from a funnel, and her listed hobby was, "binge drinking." Backlist!

Two things are going to change as you develop a backlist:

--You’re going to become a lot more aware of the posterity of the work you do. It’s all on tape, all left behind. Just as you’re less likely to litter in your own backyard, the person aware of his backlist becomes more careful and civic minded.

--You’re going to want people to pay attention to your backlist... in my case, the free videos, various ebooks and printed things I've done over the years. In your case, maybe it's your blog, or the projects you've built or the reputation you've earned.

Your history of work is as important as the work you'll do tomorrow.

Us vs. us

Who would cheat at the church social?

"Hey, I know we were supposed to bring handmade food, but I bought some cheap macaroni salad and dumped it into a bowl and faked it..." "Yeah, well I got in line twice and got more food than anyone else, in fact, one old guy (my cousin!) didn't even get any..." "That's nothing! I didn't bother to bring anything..."

No one brags about subverting a community they care about, because your peers will ostracize you (and why would you hurt a group that you are part of?). No, we feed the community first, then we take our share.

On the other hand, we often return a rental car unwashed, or turn a blind eye to someone sneaking into the movies, or fail to report a mistake in our favor by the credit card company. That's because those institutions are apart from us, not a part of us. They transact with us, charge us interest, take what they can get. This is not a community to be fed, it's merely a way to buy what we need, and the system is impersonal, industrial, apparently made to be gamed.

With online tribes and communities, though, instead of adopting the

principle of not peeing in your own pool, it's easy to slip into the

same mindset of us vs. them. When you sock puppet wikipedia, or vandalize the comments on a blog, who is being hurt?

One way to look at the web is that it's billions of people, anonymous, a shooting gallery of others. The other way is to visualize the smaller circles, the tribes of interdependent human beings helping and being helped.

When we steal or disrupt or game the system of a community we care about, we hurt everyone we say we're connected to, and thus hurt ourselves.

Online communities are quick to form, but they're just as quick to fade, to become less open and to become less trusting because sometimes we have a cultural orientation toward taking, not giving. We forget to feed the network first, to take care of those we care about.

Here's a possible standard: is it open, fair and good for others? If it's not, the community asks that you take your selfish antics somewhere else.

Call me naive, but I think it's possible (and likely) that the digital tribes we're forming are going to actually change things for the better. But not until we embrace the fact that we are us.

Pitch your tent where it's dry

Silly question: Does it snow in Utah because that's where they built the ski areas?

Of course not. It's obvious that you find the snow and then you build the ski runs.

Years ago, a friend was frustrated by the fact that the toy industry wouldn't license her fabulous ideas for new products. She rarely got meetings, was often disrespected and couldn't make anything happen. In a situation like that, it's easy to question the ideas themselves, and to doubt the quality of the work. When I pointed out to her that the toy business actually has a long and dismal history of acquiring and promoting new ideas, she switched--and the book industry (which publishes thousands of new projects every month) opened the door and the market made her a (huge, and deserved) success.

Whether you're a non-profit fundraiser or someone selling b2b, understanding the profile of what's succeeded before you is a little like understanding where it snows. Sure, it's possible to invent an entirely new market dynamic, to persuade the previously unpersuadable. If that's your mission, go for it. But if your goal is to make your project work, to engage in a way that makes a difference right now, you're better off planting seeds in fertile soil.

Insisting that you're "right" isn't nearly as effective as building your organization in a place that's conducive to what you're trying to accomplish. Right is meaningless if it doesn't lead to a connection, and complaining about a wet sleeping bag gets you no sympathy.

Communication is a path, not an event

The other day, I heard the CEO of a large corporation drone on for twenty minutes. He was pitching a large group of strangers, reading them a long, prepared speech that was largely irrelevant to their needs. They weren't there to hear him and in fact, weren't even able to hear him over the buzz in their heads... this was classic interruption, no permission granted.

If you'd interviewed the 150 people in the room an hour later, no one could have told you a single thing about what he had said.

If your tactic is to have a one-shot, the equivalent of a pickup line in a singles' bar, it's pretty hopeless. You can't sell anything complex or risky in this way.

On the other hand, what if he had taken three minutes (just three) to say, "Let's talk." Give out his personal contact info or an easy way (and a good reason!) to engage with his staff. And then give up the podium and let the event go forward.

Don't sell us anything but the burning desire to follow up. The point of his talk wasn't to get a new customer (impossible), nor was it to get through the talk and get it over with (silly and selfish). No, the point of the talk should have been to open the door to have a better, individual conversation soon.

"Let's talk," uses today's interaction to make it more likely you have one tomorrow. And a dialogue leads to connection, which leads to trust which leads to engagement.

Yes, it's surprisingly difficult in today's oversaturated communications world to succeed even with an offer of "let's talk," but it's demonstrably better than the alternative.

Drip, drip, drip.

On feeling small

"To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way." E. M. Forster

The small feeling produced by art comes from dancing with our muse and allowing our inspiration to take us somewhere the resistance would rather avoid. We feel small in the face of magic and connection. Feeling small gives us the guts to create something bigger, bigger than ourselves, the art of human connection and the gift of generosity.

On the other hand, the critic who seeks to beef himself up at our expense diminishes no one but himself.

Important, not very good, could get a lot better

A recipe for personal and brand triage...

We invest our time in hopes of a return, prioritizing the important, but sometimes, we waste it on the urgent instead.

What's worth focusing on improving? How about a combination of these three:

The important

That you currently don't do very well

That you're capable of doing a lot better if you invested effort and time

Eliminate the things that don't matter, that you're never going to get better at or that you're already good at. What's left are the places where you have the opportunity to change your position in the market.

Habit #7

The habit of being easily persuaded by mass media

The habit of doing it right instead of doing it over

The habit of responding to nastiness with nastiness

The habit of failing to trust people who care

The habit of wasting time in meetings

The habit of being on time

The habit of avoiding things that cause fear

The habit of reading ahead

The habit of doing more than promised

The habit of expanding personal knowledge and experience

The habit of skepticism

The habit of close talking

The habit of generosity...

There's a million habits out there, some good, some bad, all learned. Every habit (your market, your family, your organization has) was formed because people got rewarded for it, at least in the short run.

The thing is, every habit is changeable with effort.