Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? How to drive your career and create a remarkable future

by Seth Godin

In the Pacific Northwest, Native American tribe leaders established their power by giving everything away. They could afford to give everyone a gift, because they were so powerful and the gifts were a symbol of that power. Any leader who hoarded saw his power quickly diminish. Mauss argued that there is no such thing as a free gift. Everyone who gives a gift, he asserts, wants something in return. Then, quite suddenly, this ancient tradition changed. Money and structured society flipped the system, and now you get, you don’t give.

The remarkable thing about Hawk’s rise is that his pictures are licensed under the Creative Commons license and are freely shared with anyone, with no permission required for personal use.

Pizzeria Delfina outfitted its servers with T-shirts emblazoned with the most ridiculous one-star criticisms the place had received. The idea spread, and the T-shirts have shown up online around the world.

linchpin thinking is about delivering gifts that can never be adequately paid for.

As soon as it is part of a system, it’s not art.

Becoming a linchpin is not an act of selfishness.

There are plenty of bosses who fear the idea of indispensable employees and would instead encourage you to focus on teamwork. “Teamwork” is the word bosses and coaches and teachers use when they actually mean, “Do what I say.”

An artist paints his painting without knowing if someone is going to buy it.

Gifts not only satisfy our needs as artists, they also signal to the world that we have plenty more to share.

The act of giving the gift is worth more to me than it may be to you to receive.

quickly. I give you some money to buy seeds, your farm flourishes, and now we both have money to give to someone else to invest.

(The Catholic Church wanted to keep local lords, princes, and kings weak, of course, because it was built around a strong universal leader, the pope.)

“the merchant has no homeland.” If everyone is a stranger, it’s a lot easier to do business. If everyone is a stranger, then we can charge for things that used to be gifts.

For the last five hundred years, the best way to succeed has been to treat everyone as a stranger you could do business with.

Three circles have traditionally defined the cycle of art among fine artists, such as painters and sculptors.

first circle represents true gifts—

second circle is the circle of commerce.

the Internet creates a third circle, the circle of your tribe,

It means that you can share your gift with more people, cheaper and quicker, than ever before.

as you give more and more to the friendlies, the list of people willing to pay you to do your work always grows.

Artists are indispensable linchpins.

Three Ways People Think About Gifts

Metcalfe’s law says that the value of a network increases with the square of the number of nodes on the network. In English? It says that the more people who have a fax machine, the more fax machines are worth (one person with a fax is useless). The more people who use the Internet, the better it works.

Most artists, though, are seeking some sort of feedback. They want to know that the art they are creating is causing a change, that it’s working.

Every artist I’ve ever met wants to build bonds, wants to cause connections to be made.

Money isn’t the way to show respect. Money is an essential element of making a living in this world, but money is a poor substitute for respect and thanks.

“Do this and I’ll pay you” is a contract, not

understand the challenges before them, without carrying the baggage of expectations or attachment.

The diamond cutter doesn’t imagine the diamond he wants. Instead, he sees the diamond that is possible.

You can’t make a map unless you can see the world as it is. You have to know where you are and know where you’re going before you can figure out how to go about getting there.

A Buddhist might call this prajna.

A life without attachment and stress can give you the freedom to see things as they are and call them as you see them. If you had this skill, what an asset you would be to any organization.

Seeing clearly means that you’re smart enough to know when a project is doomed, or brave enough to persevere when your colleagues are fleeing for the hills.

If you accept that human beings are difficult to change, and embrace (rather than curse) the uniqueness that everyone brings to the table, you’ll navigate the world with more bliss and effectiveness. And make better decisions, too.

The ability to see the world as it is begins with an understanding that perhaps it’s not your job to change what can’t be changed. Particularly if the act of working on that change harms you and your goals in the process.

We assign motivations and plots and vendettas where there are none.

prajna

If you’re able to look at what’s happening in your world and say, “There’s the pattern,” or “Wow, that’s interesting, I wonder why,”

then you’re far more likely to respond productively than if your reaction is “How dare he!”

situation. If there’s no way in the world you can please that customer with a reasonable amount of effort, perhaps it’s better to accept the situation than it is to kill yourself trying (and failing) to change that person’s mindset.

emotional connection to the outcome blinds her to the choices that are available to her.

Linchpin. The linchpin is enlightened enough to see the world as it is, to understand that this angry customer is not about me, that this change in government policy is not a personal attack, that this job is not guaranteed for

The linchpin has no time or energy for whining or litigation. Instead, she’s obsessively focused on the projects that have a likelihood of changing the outcome.

Scarcity creates value, and what’s scarce is a desire to accept what is and then work to change it for the better, not deny that it exists.

Worldview and attachment always color perceptions.

Artists can’t get attached to the object of their attention. The

A brilliant negotiator does her art by understanding the other side as honestly as anyone can.

Successful people are able to see the threads of the past and the threads of the future and untangle them into something manageable.

The linchpin has figured out that we get only a certain number of brain cycles to spend each day. Spending even one on a situation out of our control has a significant opportunity cost.

To explore, to follow hunches, to see the landscape and plot a new course. Setting