This Is Strategy: Make Better Plans (Create a Strategy to Elevate Your Career, Community & Life)

by Seth Godin

Tamsen Webster points out that people rarely get “believer’s remorse.” Instead, they will do almost anything to defend their identity and the system they’re in.

Professionals obtain assets with intent.

Every day we trade time, opportunity and money to obtain assets. If we do this without intent, we’ll simply get our tasks done and waste whatever assets we could have earned.

Leaded gas didn’t go away because car engineers came up with better engines. It went away because governments banned it.

Without boundaries, the free market races to the bottom because it finds shortcuts and the competitive system we live with forces many organizations to take those shortcuts. Actual defenders of the free market understand that the market rests on a foundation. It turns out that community action can raise the bar for all, taking away incentives from people with nothing to lose who seek to race to the bottom.

The price of dog food goes up, but the dogs don’t seem any happier. We’re happy to buy a story. Promotions and ads work. Systems work. The culture reinforces itself.

“Despair isn’t very productive. That’s the problem with it. Like a replicating virus, all despair can make is more of itself.” But how do we get from here to there?

Persistent, leveraged action.

We’ve been trained to feel helpless when considering the future.

“Today, the primary function of our scientific and educational institutions is to take in young people and lower their ambitions.” We can do better than that.

The future is actually many futures, and our future is not impervious to our actions. In fact, our actions (or inactions) are a cause of our future. And our attitude about the present, the story we tell ourselves about what just happened, is totally in our control. The game continues, with many players, and it’s always new (but it rhymes).

Meetings are real-time memos that waste everyone’s time and leave no commonly accepted record behind. Organizations that struggle with strategy also seem to have a lot of meetings.

291. Ignoring Sunk Costs: A Simple But Uncomfortable Idea When making a new decision, we must ignore what we acquired yesterday.

It’s one of the most profound and difficult lessons every MBA is taught: Ignore sunk costs. Money and effort you spent yesterday should have nothing to do with decisions you make tomorrow, because each decision is a new one.

Part of what it means to be a creative artist is to dive willingly into work that might not work. And the other part, the part that’s just as important, is to openly admit when you’ve gone the “wrong” direction, and eagerly walk away, even (and especially) when it’s personal.

That law degree is a gift from your former self. If it’s not going to help you get to where you seek to go, you don’t have to accept it. “No thank you.” Walk away. Defending the decision you made to go to law school simply throws more good days after bad ones.

What happened yesterday already happened. It’s a gift and an asset from your previous self. You don’t have to accept it if you don’t want to.

The question is: How long should you mourn the missing clown? How much more of your party are you ready to sacrifice?

Tension comes with change the same way shadows come with sunlight.

How big is my circle of us and circle of now? What can I do to expand them? What about my audience’s circles?

You’ve always had what you needed to make a difference. But now you can see the systems, understand the games, and ask the questions to turn your project into work with impact. Persistently over time, person by person, day by day. Go make a ruckus.