Seth Godin's Blog, page 306

Different kinds of work

If your boss asks you to move a box from point a to point b, it's probably not okay to say, "I don't feel like it right now."

If you work on the chain gang and it's time to dig a ditch, you don't get a reprieve if you roll your eyes and say, "that's not what they pay me for."

And if you're a dishwasher, you don't get a chance to say, "I guess I'm just not the kind of person who's good at putting his hands into really hot soapy water all day."

And yet.

And yet when we ask you to look people in...

Save the date: January 15 in New York for the book launch

I'm doing a live presentation on the morning of January 15th in New York. The low price for general admission is basically the retail price of the new book, and we're giving ticket buyers a copy of the book as well.

Arrive as early as 9:20 am to get your ticket checked, doors open at 9:30, we start at 9:45 sharp.

Hope to see you there. Tix are limited (and there are a few VIP tickets as well, which also include a small Q&A session after).

Thanks.

Dancing with entropy

It's far easier to mix up a Rubik's cube than to solve one.

People are often paid to enforce compliance. The job is to ensure that everything is in its place, that errors are zero, that things are delivered on time and as expected. The random event is a problem, something to be feared an extinguished.

A few people (not many) get paid to create a ruckus, to insert the random, to yell 'fire' and to shake things up.

Most people, though, the ones with great jobs, are in the business of dancing with ...

8 questions and a why

Who are you trying to please?

What are you promising?

How much money are you trying to make?

How much freedom are you willing to trade for opportunity?

What are you trying to change?

What do you want people to say about you?

Which people?

Do we care about you?

(and after each answer, ask 'why?')

It's still too difficult

If you read the previous post this morning, you saw tons of links, many from some of the smartest people I know. And too many were broken (they're all fixed now... click through to see the accurate list, which I'll update all day, and thanks for clicking). Apologies for the hassles.

We keep adding all this power to the web, but with the power seems to come complexity. I wish it were easier. Maybe it will be one day, but I'm getting less optimistic.

What Matters Now: get the free ebook

Now, more than ever, we need to shake things up.

Now, more than ever, we need a different way of thinking, a useful way to focus and the energy to turn the game around. I hope a new ebook I've organized will get you started on that path. It took months, but I think you'll find it worth it the effort.

Here are more than seventy big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year. From bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert to brilliant tech...

define: Brand

A brand is the set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer's decision to choose one product or service over another.



If the consumer (whether it's a business, a buyer, a voter or a donor) doesn't pay a premium, make a selection or spread the word, then no brand value exists for that consumer. 

A brand's value is merely the sum total of how much extra people will pay, or how often they choose, the expectations, memories, stories...

A free supersimple to-do list tool

Here it is.

Alas, it doesn't work for groups, won't even let you share a username. That's what we need. Everyone on your team adds items, everyone can cross off items. Go.

Maybe next revision. In the meantime, it's so pretty you'll cross stuff off just because you can.

Discover the truth about a site's online traffic

You can find the traffic of a popular website (and compare it to another site) by entering the URL into compete.com. Or quantcast. This data is far more accurate than the charts Alexa offers, because most of the sites being measured cooperate. I'm pretty proud of Squidoo hitting the top 100 sites in the US.

You can see the referrals and traffic to an individual bitly twitter URL by copying the URL and adding + sign to it. For example, if you see something like this in a tweet: a

Who controls your media?

1966: NBC, CBS and ABC decided what I did every night at 8 pm.

Today: are you still ceding control to others?

It's easy to allow 'them' to dictate how (and how often) you friend or post or follow or tweet...

Shouldn't you be the one who decides?

If your Facebook circle is draining your energy and not pushing you forward, why, precisely, is it there? If you are spending more than a few minutes a day on Twitter, is it because you can't stop or because stopping will cost you your goals? Which is...