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Seth Godin
Posts
Out of control
It’s negative when we say that someone is out of control. They’ve lost their self-restraint, and they’re doing things that they’ll regret later. And it’s...
Willfully uninformed
Access to information used to be scarce. We ranked college libraries on how many books they had, and time at the microfilm reader was booked...
In search of incompetence
Learning is about becoming incompetent on our way to getting better. If you’re not open to the tension that is caused by knowing you could...
“For what purposes will it be useful?”
In 1840, at the dawn of the information age, the king of Sardinia asked Charles Babbage what nearly instant messaging like the telegraph could possibly...
Later or now?
When we feel like doing something selfish, indulgent, hurtful or short-term, we can simply decide to do it later. And when it occurs to us...
Naming is part of marketing
A name is a hook for us to hang a story on. We need to begin with empathy and a useful story… useful to the...
Curation (vs the road to junk)
The independent bookstore down the street is carefully curated. Each book takes up the spot that a different book could inhabit, so the owner makes...
Holding on for dear life
That’s a cliche from the movies. Dangling from a railroad bridge, only determination and firm grip can save the hero. In our modern world, we...
Hiding the ‘aha’
The most effective persuasion happens when we persuade ourselves. The purpose of the memo or the table or the graph or the presentation is to...
Preference and utility
Taste varies. That’s why we don’t call it utility. Taste is individual preference, not absolute truth. In team settings, then, it’s much more helpful to...
