The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?

by Seth Godin

Your ability to follow instructions is not the secret to your success. You are hiding your best work, your best insight, and your best self from us every day. We know how much you care, and it’s a shame that the system works overtime to push you away from the people and the projects you care about. The world does not owe you a living, but just when you needed it, a door was opened for you to make a difference. It’s too bad that so much time has been wasted, but it would be unforgivable to wait any longer. You have the ability to contribute so much. We need you, now.

In addition to telling Icarus not to fly too high, Daedalus instructed his son not to fly too low, too close to the sea, because the water would ruin the lift in his wings. Society has altered the myth, encouraging us to forget the part about the sea, and created a culture where we constantly remind one another about the dangers of standing up, standing out, and making a ruckus. Industrialists have made hubris a cardinal sin but conveniently ignored a far more common failing: settling for too little. It’s far more dangerous to fly too low than too high, because it feels safe to fly low. We settle for low expectations and small dreams and guarantee ourselves less than we are capable of. By flying too low, we shortchange not only ourselves but also those who depend on us or might benefit from our work. We’re so obsessed about the risk of shining brightly that we’ve traded in everything that matters to avoid it. The path that’s available to each of us is neither reckless stupidity nor mindless compliance. No, the path that’s available to us is to be human, to do art, and to fly far higher than we’ve been taught is possible. We’ve built a world where it’s possible to fly higher than ever, and the tragedy is that we’ve been seduced into believing that we ought to fly ever lower instead.

If you become someone who is uncomfortable unless she is creating change, restless if things are standing still, and disappointed if you haven’t failed recently, you’ve figured out how to become comfortable with the behaviors most likely to make you safe going forward.

The new, third kind of scarcity is the emotional labor of art. The risk involved in digging deep to connect and surprise, the patience required to build trust, the guts necessary to say, “I made this”—these are all scarce and valuable. And they scale.

The value we create is directly related to how much valuable information we can produce, how much trust we can earn, and how often we innovate.

The connection economy rewards the leader, the initiator, and the rebel. The Internet wasn’t built to

That means that finding people to fix your typos is easy. Finding someone to say “go” is almost impossible.

The search for the right answer is the enemy of art.

Art has no right answer. The best we can hope for is an interesting answer.

What matters now: Trust Permission Remarkability Leadership Stories that spread Humanity: connection, compassion, and humility

LEADERSHIP: Management is almost diametrically opposed to leadership. Management is about generating yesterday’s results, but a little faster or a little more cheaply. We know how to manage the world—we relentlessly seek to cut costs and to limit variation, while we exalt obedience. Leadership, though, is a whole other game. Leadership puts the leader on the line. No manual, no rule book, no überleader to point the finger at when things go wrong. If you ask someone for the rule book on how to lead, you’re secretly wishing to be a manager. Leaders are vulnerable, not controlling, and they are taking us to a new place, not to the place of cheap, fast, compliant safety.

Emotional labor scales in that a little more emotional labor is often worth a lot.

Connection between people is always the result of emotional labor, not physical labor. The assets of trust and leadership and conversation can come only from the difficult work of creating personal art.

care about how much people will miss you if you’re not back here again tomorrow.

Friends bring us more friends. A reputation brings us a chance to build a better reputation. Access to information encourages us to seek ever more information. The connections in our life multiply and increase in value. Our stuff, on the other hand, merely gets cheaper over time.

Our cultural instinct is to wait to get picked. To seek out the permission, authority, and safety that come from a publisher or a talk-show host or even a blogger who says, “I pick you.” Once you reject that impulse and realize that no one is going to select you—that Prince Charming has chosen another house in his search for Cinderella—then you can actually get to work. The myth that the CEO is going to discover you and nurture you and ask you to join her for lunch is just that, a Hollywood myth. Once you understand that there are problems waiting to be solved, once you realize that you have all the tools and all the permission you need, then opportunities to contribute abound. The opportunity is not to have your résumé picked from the pile but to lead. When we take responsibility and eagerly give credit, doors open. When we grab a microphone and speak up, we’re a step closer to doing the work we’re able to do. Most of all, when we buckle down, confront the lizard brain, and ship our best work, we’re becoming the artists we are capable of becoming. No one is going to pick you. Pick yourself.

Why So Many Entrepreneurs Have Dyslexia and ADHD Julie Logan at the Cass Business School found that entrepreneurs are three times more likely than the general public to have dyslexia. And many entrepreneurs credit their ADHD with giving them an edge in making their businesses successful. I’m not sure it’s because their mental differences give them a performance edge. It’s not like there’s a secret code that only dyslexics can read. No, I think it’s because their outlier tendencies made it clear to them early on that they would be less likely to be picked. Less likely to be at the top of their class or chosen by the fancy college or recruited by P&G. Precisely because they didn’t fit in, they had little choice but to pick themselves. And once that choice is made, it becomes a habit.

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Typo Trap Let me show you how pervasive the industrial mind-set is. If I show you a political tract or a blog post or a remarkable new poduct with text that contains a typo, what’s your first reaction? If all you can do is say, “You’re missing an r in the second paragraph,” you’ve abandoned your humanity in favor of becoming a spell checker. Compliance over inspiration. Sure, yes, please, let’s kill all the typos. But first, let’s make a difference.

Correct is fine, but it is better to be interesting.

Author Michael Schrage wants you to ask, “Who do you want your customers to become?” At first this seems like a ridiculous question. Your customers are your customers. Your coworkers are your coworkers. This isn’t true. Connection creates change. Unless you are selling a standard commodity, the interactions you have with the market change the market. Zappos turned its customers into people who demand a higher level of service to be satisfied. Amazon turned its customers into people who are restless with online stores that don’t work quite as well or quite as quickly. Henry Ford turned his customers from walkers into drivers. When you disappoint someone (or exceed their expectations), that interaction is going to color all the interactions that person has tomorrow and next year. Apple is talked about more than any other company for one simple reason: They have huge aspirations for who they want their customers to become, and they deliver on them. Who will your customers become after they interact with you? Who will you become as a result? The industrialist doesn’t think a lot about interactions or change. He focuses on filling today’s need at the highest yield. The artist, though, is obsessed with connection and thus change. You are not the same person you were a year ago. Are you more cynical? More skilled? Who have you become?

There’s a huge difference between the shallow pleasure of instant applause and the long-lasting impact of true connection. It’s easy to market and manipulate your way into the quick smile or the Broadway-theater obligatory standing ovation. What’s more difficult is to do the less-congratulated work of getting under someone’s skin, of changing the conversation, and of being missed when you’re gone. Who decides if your work is good? When you are at your best, you do.