4.6 359 G.school #85 Bible history (pt 1) (?)
Matthew 6:24 No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
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SETH GODIN Choose your fuel wisely
If worrying about paying the mortgage gets you motivated to lean hard into the next project, don’t be surprised if that sort of fear arises every time you have hard work to do.
If your goal is to teach the naysayers a lesson, remember that you’ll need to find people who you want to defeat every time you need to do important work.
If you are measuring a false proxy, a metric you say you don’t care about, it’s quite likely you’ll start caring about it.
When we pick our fuel, we pick our companions for the journey ahead.
Choosing to care about what other people care about surrenders your agency. You’ll find that success feels hollow, because it’s their success, not yours. And blaming the false metrics for losing your way is not as useful as simply walking away from them in the first place.
We thrive when we find a goal and a metric that’s resilient and easily replenished. It turns out that making a contribution is something we can do, again and again, and it never gets old.
November 2, 2024
4.5 354 Stress breaking point (?) (!)
Matthew 5:16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
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SETH GODIN “Won’t get fooled again”
Alas, we probably will.
Recurring scams, hustles and deceptions work because we’re eager to be fooled by them.
Vaporware, false deadlines, fake budgets, unrealistic promises and straight out con jobs persist because at some level, we demand them. Divisive arguments, mob enthusiasm and simple lies work surprising well.
False hope delivers a benefit in the moment, while the reality we have to live with doesn’t arrive for weeks or months.
If you don’t want to get fooled again, think about why you got fooled last time.
November 1, 2024
4.4 353 What if you go deeper? (!)
Romans 12:21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
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SETH GODIN Wearing the costume
There’s a huge difference between carrying a stethoscope and being a doctor.
And being a clown requires far more than getting a clown suit.
Entrepreneurs with business cards, slick websites and mission statements are confused. That’s not the hard part.
If the costume puts you in the right frame of mind, that’s great. But the hard part is the important part.
Can you list the parts that matter? (hint: they might be the parts you’re avoiding.)
October 31, 2024
4.3 349 A man after our own heart (?)
1 John 2:15-17 NIV — Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.
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SETH GODIN The run-on sentence
Periods were an extraordinary invention. It took thousands of years of writing before we settled on this simple convention.
The most direct way to improve your writing is to make your sentences shorter.
I was reading a magazine article yesterday and was rapidly losing interest. The topic appealed to me, but I couldn’t keep reading. Then I noticed that halfway through the first column, I was still on the same sentence.
We have trouble keeping that long a string in our heads at once.
You can make sentences too long.
But it’s hard to make them too short.
October 30, 2024
4.2 340 The formula for Success (!)
Galatians 5:22-23 NIV — But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
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SETH GODIN What do we owe the future?
You are someone’s ancestor.
Most immediately, you are the ancestor of the you of tomorrow.
That’s why we don’t spend every penny in our bank account, why we put leftovers in the fridge, why we earn a degree–it’s a gift to the you of tomorrow.
Each of us have a way of thinking about our ancestorhood.
The circle of now is how far into the future you’re hoping to make an impact. Do you care enough to invest in a thousand tomorrows? What will you invest in (or sacrifice, depending on your point of view) to receive in the future?
And the circle of us is how many people you’re considering in the actions you take today.
The most convenient, easiest and visceral choice is to make no choice at all. Keep your circles small, focused on pleasure and the short-term win. If we don’t think about it, this is what we might collide with. No friend at all to our descendants, including our future self.
When we’re at our best, though, we expand those circles, creating generative possibility for ourselves and those around us. Everyone feeds their circles, the opportunity is to make them bigger.
Bina Venkataraman has written about this better than I ever could.
Choose to choose the circle you want to be part of. Become the ancestor you’d like to thank.
October 29, 2024
4.1 333 The winner effect (?) (!)
Galatians 2:20—“It is Christ who lives in me” “I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.”
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SETH GODIN Promises and our best
There is a significant difference between, “I promise,” and “I’ll do my best.”
Promises are difficult to keep and ought to be offered with that in mind. Doing our best is assumed.
October 28, 2024
3.7 334 G.school #84 Rewind to 10-27-1521
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.
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SETH GODIN “I didn’t see you there”
Someone I’ve worked with over the years happened to be driving down my street. I called out and said hello…
They ignored me. So I repeated myself.
“Oh,” they said, recognizing me. “It’s you.”
We’re more likely to see, hear and care if the person over there is actually a person. A person we know, or admire, or recognize.
If you write a nasty email to a company, it might make you feel sheepish if someone actually responds. “I didn’t know you were going to read it…”
It’s easy to exclude people who aren’t like us, who might have a disability or come from a different background or group.
Not just exclude them, but not design for them, account for them, listen to them or see them with dignity.
October 27, 2024
3.6 325 G.school #83 What are the problems for the church of the future?
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.
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SETH GODIN Boring to who?
Sometimes, marketers, musicians or speakers dig themselves into a solipsistic rabbit hole.
They’ve heard their stuff before. They think everyone else has too.
So they bury the lede, look for new laughs and most of all, try to avoid boring themselves.
Which often leads to confusion or controversy or, most of all, a muddy message.
You’re not speaking up to entertain yourself. You’re here to teach the next group of people who need to hear from you.
Empathy in communication requires you to repeat the stuff that works as you continue to explore the next layer of what might work even better.
In the words of my late friend Jay Levinson, “Don’t change your story when you’re bored, or when your partner is bored, or when your team is bored. Change your story when your accountant is bored.”
October 26, 2024
3.5 314 What's your intuition quotient? (!)
1 Corinthians 6:19 RSV — Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God? You are not your own;
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SETH GODIN Intuition
Intuition is simply a theory we haven’t yet put into words.
Once we write down and share our intuition, it becomes more resilient, focused and useful to others.
October 25, 2024
3.4 309 why smart people get what they want
John 17:21-22 that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us,[a] so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one,
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SETH GODIN Important problems
Some problems are easy to solve, others are difficult, requiring a lot more labor, willpower, resources and coordination.
Some problems have simple solutions, while others are complex in what it takes to move forward.
The trivial problems are fun. They’re simple to solve and don’t require much effort. Yes, please, go solve them.
We’re tempted to focus on the problems that are complicated but apparently easy. Somehow, a tweet or a scientific paper or some other announcement is all that it will take to unknot this situation. Tempting, but unlikely. If all it took to solve an easy problem was telling people the solution, we probably would have solved it already.
The other temptation is to seek out problems that are difficult to solve and complicated to organize around. After all, a herculean problem like this is so hard that no one can fault you if you don’t succeed.
What truly matters, though, are the important problems. The ones that aren’t rocket science, but need a significant amount of guts, emotional labor and community coordination to solve. They’re here. Right in front of us. Simple but difficult. But worth it.
October 24, 2024
3.3 304 "How will (new things) change (essential things)?”
John 15:12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you
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Prayer: Stay with us, Lord Jesus,
be our companion on our way.
In your mercy inflame our hearts and raise our hope,
so that, in union with our brothers and sisters,
we may recognize you in the scriptures and in the breaking of bread,
who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
3.2 282 are you nudged (?)
ohn 14:21 They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”
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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 use that presence; seeking 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, seeking the courage to go from here to the margins:
-- To help the hungry, the thirsty, the unhoused, the unwashed, the incarcerated, and the sick because we belong to one another;
-- To join those whose burdens are more than they can bear because, it's the only way that we'll stop throwing people away;
-- To pray for our orphans and widows, living at the margins of society, especially in inhumane conditions, overlooked by institutions and considered of lesser importance.
In the name of the father, son and holy Spirit,
Amen.
3.1 280 Focus groups (?)
John 14:20 you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.
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SETH GODIN The challenge of focus groups for bold ideas
“We’re thinking of having a holiday every year where kids of all ages go door to door unescorted and beg for candy, and adults dress up in expensive and revealing costumes and get drunk. Would you be likely to participate?”
It’s not really a helpful question. (Yes, Halloween is mostly dumb, but it’s clearly popular).
Instead of focus groups, creators make assertions. They look for how the people they hope to engage with and serve have previously scratched whatever itch they hope to scratch. They look for emotions expressed and needs met instead of tactics or preferences.
Cultural change is incremental, but it begins with a leap, not a focus group.
2.7 277 G.school #82 Why is there suffering? (pt 2) (!)
John 10:30 “I and the Father are one”
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SETH GODIN Foundering or floundering?
Floundering is flopping around and making little progress. A Dutch word for getting mired and lost.
Foundering is what we call it when the ship goes down. It’s an ancient French word based on bottom.
Too often, in our desperate attempt to not founder, we flounder.
Better, I think, to go down with energy and direction than to simply meander. It turns out that calmly executing a plan makes it less likely you’ll sink.
October 20, 2024
2.6 273 G.school #81 Why is there suffering? (!)
John 7:37-39 Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”
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SETH GODIN Confused about good
How often do we assume that popular things are good, and that good things become popular?
If your work doesn’t catch on, does that mean it wasn’t good?
In almost every field, people with insight, taste and experience admire and emulate good things that aren’t popular, and are surprised by popular things that aren’t good.
Perhaps we need to broaden our definition (or narrow it) so we can be clear about what we mean.
October 19, 2024
2.5 261 Fail to succeed (!) (?)
John 7:37-39 Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’”
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SETH GODIN Moving toward ease
“Ease” isn’t the same as “easy.”
In fact, they’re often at odds.
Easy work is hardly worth our effort. It can deaden us instead of giving us the chance to bring our best selves to life.
Ease, on the other hand, is the feeling of doing something worthwhile, and doing it well.
When we choose a project where the stakes are too high, where stress is our fuel, where conflict is at the heart of the work–we’re unlikely to find ease.
Ease is a combination of purpose, effort and skill. It can feel like confidence, even if we’re not sure it’s going to work. Especially then.
Change your project, change your future. And your project is a direct result of the clients you choose to serve.
October 18, 2024