Seth Godin - Godinian Inversions

I recently listened to [[Seth Godin]] interviews on The [[Tim Ferris]] Show and [[The North Star]]. As usual, he was very entertaining

• Godinian Inversions
  1. Juggling is about throwing, not catching. Seth's blog post
     • Seth has supposedly taught a good number of people how to juggle. He starts with half an hour of only throwing, and letting the balls drop to the floor every iteration. Once, you get throwing right, catching comes naturally
     • This reminded me of the film Hoosiers, when the coach forces the team to practice with no ball. People make assumptions about the game or the skill, and it holds them back. In juggling, people worry too much about catching
  2. What would you do if you knew you would fail?
     • This is a flip on the classic question "What would you do if you knew you would not fail?"
     • Seth's version asks, what is worth doing even if you knew it would never work out. That is what you should be doing. That's what you truly care about. Failure won't stop you
  3. Writer's Block
     • Writer's Block isn't that you have nothing to say. It is that you have a fear of bad writing. The best way to get to good writing is to get all the bad writing out
     • This also goes along with Seth's idea that you shouldn't wait around for a good idea to hit you. When someone tells him "I want to start a business but I have no good ideas," he answers "show me 20 business plans for the bad ideas you've had." Of course, those people never have business plans for their bad ideas, because they are waiting around for the good one before they get started, which never works. If you had already made 20 business plans for bad ideas, not only will you be more prepared to make one for a good idea, but the process itself will lead you to good ideas.

Vocab Lineage

Seth also does an interesting job of tracing the lineage of words and phrases, and is careful to use them accurately

• Quality: "Meets Spec"
  • Seth argues that with this definition, a Toyota Camry is higher quality than a Rolls Royce, because it more consistently "meets spec." With this same logic, he argues that a bag from REI is better than a bag from Gucci, because it will "meet spec" for longer, because it is more durable
  • People hide behind this word to procrastinate on work. They don't want to release yet because they want it to be higher "quality." However, people are not thinking of quality the right way. Once a piece appropriately meets spec, ship it
• Professionals, Hacks, and Amateurs, described by Seth here
  • Professionals show up to work even when they don't want to. It is their job. They do quality work.
  • A hack is a professional who doesn't care. The magic of their work has been beaten out of them. They do what the customer asks for with no regards to the long term
    • origin: https://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-hac1.htm
    • In the podcast, Seth talks about how [[Joni Mitchell]] could have become a pop star with an easy formula for hits, but railed against that path. She was not a hack. Drake, on the other hand, is probably a hack
  • Amateur: Loved based. Doing what they do because they want to
• Learning vs Education
  • This is a distinction Seth very carefully made in [[The North Star]]. He corrected David, the host, when he misspoked. Seth creates online learning, not education. To him, education has become entirely about the certificate at the end, and not about the learning process. Anything he makes is entirely about learning, not the certificate
• Just Do It
  • Seth turns this term into "merely do the work". "Just do it" fits in with his qualms about authenticity. It implies there is some excuse for doing bad work. With "merely do the work," Seth argues that you are doing the work, with no complaints, to ship a quality product

Something I realized while reading these show notes, is that Seth has already written about most of the ideas he talked about in the show. I used to wonder how he sounded so fluent about all of his ideas. It's because he's already thought through this material enough to write about it on his blog. He is able to talk about such a wide range of topics in this manner because he writes so much (a blog post every day).

• He is part of my inspiration for doing these Daily Notes. A great process to aspire to.
• Something he does very well on his daily blog posts is keeping them succinct. He has one idea he wants to express well, and that's it.

One last thing

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