266 1.3 What are you uniquely qualified... for?
James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
268 1.2 The importance of IQ
Matthew 12:30 NIV — “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
Today’s worksheet
podcast
SETH GODIN Bullies
Bullies use intimidation and power to force others to act against their best interests.
Bullies blame the victim, assuring everyone that they wouldn’t have to use force if people would simply go along with what they want. Effective bullies organize a small mob to enforce their wishes.
Living and working with bullies is no fun. And it’s not productive or resilient.
The blame that bullies spread is divisive. As a result, the bully separates the community instead of connecting it, using the power of the mob to harm the outliers.
And a bullied community often cowers in fear instead of leaning into possibility.
Most of all, bullies are weak. They can’t tolerate change and refuse to listen or improve.
Resilient, generative and productive approaches to problems are always a better path forward.
JULY 16, 2024
266 1.1 "We call it Monday morning!"
John 14:27. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
Today’s worksheet
podcast
SETH GODIN The page-a-day calendar
Time passes. And humans have always kept track.
Distribution and technology combined to create a few decades where the tear off daily calendar was nearly ubiquitous (read on for details on my new one, a collaboration with Debbie Millman).
First, the industry needed to efficiently produce a block of 365 pages, each being easy to tear off.
And then it needed a culture that would be attracted to a long tail of cartoons, brands, hobbies and personalities.
Finally, publishers would need a nationwide chain of stores to merchandise and promote the perfect gift item for a few weeks of the year, just before New Year’s.
A day-to-day calendar is a lovely gift, even if you’re not stuffing a stocking. It is just frivolous enough, thoughtful enough and specific enough to give the recipient a smile, without incurring too much of an obligation.
The timing for calendars was a miracle. Each year, the new year starts just a week after the biggest gift-giving holiday.
As you can imagine, they sold a lot of calendars.
Now, distribution has changed, and so has tech. People don’t need a calendar to know what day it is, and their desk is a very different place than it was before everything was on a device. The lead time for calendars is still long, but the ability of a nationwide chain to display them isn’t what it used to be.
Not the best time for me to start creating calendars, but that’s okay. Last year’s calendar ended up being the fourth bestselling one the company published, and we’re back this year.
Almost all of the calendars made now sell online, and most of the orders happen months before the holidays. They don’t sell nearly the way they used to, but I still like the way they ground us in the moment.
This year, I created the calendar with my friend Debbie Millman. She’s the original podcaster, a dean at SVA, and a gifted and generous artist.
Here’s the link to check out the calendar.
Debbie has been reading this blog for decades, and she picked some of her favorite riffs, then hand-lettered each on an iPad. It’s already a #1 bestseller in at least one category.
The publisher prints their entire supply all at once and won’t make any more. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks, Debbie!
JULY 15, 2024
4.7 264 G.school #54 They shot President Trump
Mark 1:15. NIV and saying, “The time has come, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.
SETH GODIN The distribution of character
Along the way, we have been taught to associate character skills like honesty, rationality, agreeableness, grit and care with surface metrics like wealth or power.
That’s almost certainly incorrect. And if we make assumptions based on vague measures of class, we’re going to get tricked.
In any village, cabal or cadre, you’ll probably see a similar percentage of bad actors. If anything, the fancy people might overindex for selfishness.
Shoplifting is not that different from cheating on your taxes.
JULY 14, 2024
4.6 263 G.school #53 Unclean spirits? (Mark 6:7)
John 14:27. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
Today’s worksheet
podcast
SETH GODIN Giving up vs. quitting
Shrug your shoulders, care less, phone it in.
One software company I used to depend on has sort of given up. They have plenty of cash in the bank, but they simply stopped trying. You can feel it in their updates, their customer service, their approach to the future.
Giving up is a waste.
Quitting, on the other hand, is a fine thing to do. Because quitting gives you tomorrow back. It opens the door for the next contribution you are able to make.
In or out.
The top of the fence is no place to hang out.
JULY 13, 2024
269 4.5 TGIF (! ? !)
James 2:15-17 ESV — If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.
Today’s worksheet
podcast
SETH GODIN Student coach
Big football at colleges in the US costs more than $5 billion a year. And none of these programs has a student acting as a coach.
The same analysis, at a much smaller scale, applies to school theater directors and producers, conductors of the jazz band or orchestra and even the coach of the chess team.
We learn by doing, not by winning.
What happens if we embrace this and make education about learning? What would happen if the head of the football program simply taught students how to be coaches? Or the head of the music program challenged kids to conduct?
My most important learning experiences in organized schooling came from the random moments when I actually got to organize instead of being organized.
JULY 12, 2024
270 4.4 Moral Virtue (?)
John 15:12 ESV — “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
Today’s worksheet
podcast
SETH GODIN How, why and hyperbole
There are three trends in copywriting that have been so overused they should now be avoided. The first two:
Headlines with “why” for articles that don’t actually explain why.
Headlines with “how” that don’t really teach you how.
Explaining why is difficult, which is where the value lies. People would like to understand things that confuse them, so they search for ‘why’ or click on it when an apparently reputable source promises the answer. Even major newspapers are discovering that this is a fine way to get attention. Alas, it’s not a promise that’s easily kept.
And ‘how’, which should be a simpler promise to honor, falls into a similar trap.
With the rise of AI and LLMs, these headlines have gone from fake promises to redundant. We can simply ask an AI for the How and the Why and we’re likely to get better insight than a content farm can offer us… so the few trusted brands that are left ought to make these promises more carefully.
The third trend is becoming more pernicious. I got an email yesterday from a founder I respect, and there was an astounding promise or claim in every third line. The YouTube videos that the email pointed to all had headlines that could have come out of a supermarket tabloid or a late night informercial ad. There was no way the reality could match the hype, and it’s a shame, because the reality was actually useful.
The pressure is real. The argument is that if you don’t follow the trend and out-hype everyone else (“you’ll never believe this secret!”) then you won’t get traffic and you’ll fail.
But the evidence clearly points in the other direction. Trust is what’s in short supply, not attention.
You can always create a short-term commotion to get a bit of attention. But you can’t possibly hype your way into being trusted.
JULY 11, 2024
268 4.3 Practical Leadership (daily drudgery)
Matthew 7:21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
Today’s worksheet
SETH GODIN Projects and the long haul
Rome was built in a day.
It wasn’t finished in a day. In fact, it’s still not finished.
But the day someone said, “this is Rome,” and announced the project, it was there.
Sometimes we get hung up on the beginning, unwilling to start Rome unless we’re sure we can finish it without incident.
Sometimes we get hung up on the finishing, starting things all the time but blinking in the face of Resistance and wandering away.
The long haul is simply your list of completed projects. A career is not a series of tasks. It’s the chance to build things.
JULY 10, 2024
272 4.2 Pure Leadership? what?
Matthew 25:35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.
SETH GODIN Sudare sette camicie
Sweating through seven shirts…
That was the definition of work when work was the same thing as physical labor.
For many of us, the physical labor is no longer the way we add value.
And it’s tempting to imagine that we simply have to show up for the coffee.
But it’s still called work.
Adding value isn’t easy. As soon as it is, everyone will do it, and our participation becomes less useful.
We need to look for the hard parts, not avoid them.
JULY 9, 2024
264 4.1 What's the incentive?
John 14:27. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
Today’s worksheet
SETH GODIN Kazoo lessons
Knowledge and technique used to be closely guarded secrets. Admission to the guild was reserved for a few, and crafts like typesetting, plumbing and medicine were off limits to most folks.
One of the reasons for the explosion in productivity and innovation in the last century is that more tools and leverage are available to more people than ever before.
But, along the way, we began to prize tools that were convenient, easy to engage with and flat. Flat in that more experience didn’t always lead to better results. Five minutes with a kazoo sounds a lot like five hours with one.
We can find more upside when we choose to lean into something worth leaning into.
Just because it feels easy at first doesn’t mean that it’s a worthwhile career path.
JULY 8, 2024
Let’s pray…
Jesus said, "Repent, and believe in the good news!
The kingdom of God is in your midst; it is within you."
Let's fuel that presence with the power and audacity
to imagine better versions of ourselves and our communities:
To love God with all our Heart, and mind, and soul;
To love one another as Jesus loved us; and
To love ourselves with no conditions.
Let's nurture and share that presence to seek the courage
to go to the margins to join those whose burdens are more than they can bear
because, it's the only way that we'll stop throwing people away, and
remind ourselves that we belong to one another.
[We pray for those people living on the margins of society, in inhumane life conditions; may they not be overlooked by institutions and never considered of lesser importance.]
In the name of the father, son and holy Spirit,
Amen.
Today’s worksheet
SETH GODIN Blame your tools
Blame the clients. And blame the conditions.
But then, you’re on the hook to get better tools, find better clients and work in better conditions.
It’s not convenient, but it’s possible.
If it’s not worth the effort, we can simply accept what we’ve chosen and get back to work.
JULY 7, 2024
2.7 302 G.school #51 That's what the Pharisees said (!)
Galatians 6:9 Don't give up
Today’s worksheet
SETH GODIN Can you draw it on a graph?
Explain it with quadrants?
Translate it into Spanish?
It’s easy to memorize a few words that purport to explain something, but all they do is relabel it.
If you truly understand something, you can use different modalities to help someone else understand it.
The magic of a good graph is that it makes the concept itself visible.
That’s why most graphs aren’t any good. They’re made by folks who don’t actually understand the concept they’re trying to explain.
JULY 6, 2024
276 3.5 TGIF...?
Matthew 12:30 NIV — “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
Today’s worksheet
SETH GODIN The paradox of lessons
The people most likely to sign up for coaching or additional learning are the folks who are already good at their craft.
“I’m terrible at this,” can lead to, “and I don’t want to be reminded of it.” Or perhaps, “I don’t want to waste their time,” or, “I’m never going to get better.”
When it’s possible to get better, embracing mediocrity isn’t a useful strategy.
I’d rather have a surgeon who regularly attends trainings, wouldn’t you?
Read a book, find a coach, organize a group. If you’re serious about getting better, you’ll improve.
Learning creates more competence but first, it amplifies our feelings of incompetence.
JULY 5, 2024
276 3.4 Why is there suffering?
Luke 17:21 … behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
SETH GODIN Cat and mouse games
I hope that most of us would agree that driving 50 mph in a school zone where little kids cross the street is a significant safety problem. The speed limit is there for good reason, and if you selfishly and recklessly blow through the crosswalk, you ought to get a summons.
Municipalities can now hire a service that uses an automated speed camera to find the scofflaws and issue summonses directly, without the random luck of getting away with it as a factor.
But of course, cars now have computers in them, and GPS as well, so a car could easily be built so that it cut out the middleman and simply warned the driver and then issued itself a summons.
We’re inconsistent about how we interpret freedom and responsibility. The status quo gets the benefit of the doubt, simply because it’s what we’re used to.
Freedom’s fabulous, but as soon as we interact with others, it comes with responsibility.
As our communities become ever more interwoven and the surveillance of our actions becomes more complete, the cats and mice aren’t going to be nearly as relevant as to what sort of balance we all seek to strike between freedom and responsibility.
It should not be controversial for us to be responsible for the impact of what we say and what we do. Cats and mice have nothing to do with it.
JULY 4, 2024
286 3.3 What do people buy?
John 14:27. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
Today’s worksheet
SETH GODIN Avoiding the trap questions
A trick question is designed to fool us into proposing the wrong answer (example below).
A trap question, on the other hand, stops the train completely.
A trap question demands an answer, and the answer will paralyze us and keep us from the work at hand.
“Yes, but how many followers does your brand have on Insta?” is a trap question. So is, “Are you sure you’re prepared enough for the talk you have booked next week?”
Trap questions bring out demands for perfectionism, or amplify feelings of shame. Trap questions ought to be ignored, avoided, or, if we must respond, simply say, “it’s not a priority.”
Time spent on trap questions is time you’ll never get back.
[Here’s the trick question, much easier now that you know that’s what it is. It was in the first batch of questions I created for Guts, the online game launched on Prodigy in 1989…]
Which of the following was a world boxing champion?
Lyndon Johnson
Ronald Reagan
Jimmy Carter
Franklin Delano
Abraham Lincoln
Pat Paulsen
None of the above
˙ɹǝʇɹɐƆ ʇɐɥʇ ʇou ʇsnſ ˙(Ɛ) sᴉ ɹǝʍsuɐ ǝɥ┴ ˙(ㄥ) pǝʞɔᴉd ǝldoǝd ʇsoW
JULY 3, 2024
298 3.2 Small woke minds?
James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
Today’s worksheet
SETH GODIN Plasticity
It’s pretty easy for some kids to switch gears. They can go from sad to ebullient in seconds, and switch contexts without much fuss. Others have more trouble.
As we get older, our natural ability to thrive in a new situation can decrease. But, like a muscle or a skill, it responds to practice.
The same is true for organizations. As the world changes faster and faster, it seems clear that organizations that prize plasticity will thrive.
JULY 2, 2024