Linchpin_ Are You Indispensable_ - Seth Godin [42]
factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.
Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.
The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it's a job.
Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act
of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.
I call the process of doing your art "the work." It's possible to have a job and do the work,
too. In fact, that's how you become a linchpin.
The job is not the work.
Can Your Work Become Your Art?
Can the time you spend at work be the place you give gifts, create connections, invent,
and find joy?
What has to change for that to be true--does something external need to change, or is it an
internal decision?
I've found people in every job you can imagine doing art. There are waiters and writers
and musicians and doctors and nurses and lawyers who find art in their work. The job is
not your work; what you do with your heart and soul is the work.
A Few Questions About Emotional Labor
Are you indispensable at home? Would it fall apart without you?
What about at work?
Why are you easily replaceable at one venue but not the other?
Are you charming when you go on a date or meet a handsome guy at a party?
But not at a meeting at work?
I'm wondering why we're so easily able to expend emotional labor off the job, but
uncomfortable expending the same energy on the job.
Artists Are Optimists
The reason is simple: artists have the chance to make things better.
Other people often make the choice to be victims. They can be the flotsam and jetsam
tossed by the waves of circumstance. Until they make the choice to be artists, they sadly
float along.
Artists understand that they have the power, through gifts, innovation, and love, to create
a new story, one that's better than the old one.
Optimism is the most important human trait, because it allows us to evolve our ideas, to
improve our situation, and to hope for a better tomorrow. And all artists have this
optimism, because artists can honestly say that they are working to make things better.
This is why organizations under pressure often crack. All parties can see that their current
system isn't working, but they're unable to embrace a new one because they're certain that
it won't turn out perfectly, that it can't be as good as what they have now. Organizations
under pressure are stuck because their pain makes it hard for them to believe in the
future.
Optimism is for artists, change agents, linchpins, and winners. Whining and fear, on the
other hand, are largely self-fulfilling prophecies in organizations under stress.
The Passion to Spread
Passion is caring enough about your art that you will do almost anything to give it away,
to make it a gift, to change people.
Part of the passion is having the persistence and resilience to change both your art and the
way you deliver it. Passion for your art also means having a passion for spreading your
art. This means being willing to surrender elements that you are in love with in order to
help the other parts thrive and spread. And at the same time, passion means having
enough connection to your art that you're not willing to surrender the parts that truly
matter.
It's a paradox, of course. In order to be true to your art, you must sacrifice the part of it
that hinders the spread of your art.
Deciding what to leave out and what to insist on is part of your art. One author I know is
willing to watch his books sit unsold, because that's a better outcome to him than
changing the essence of what he's written. He has passion for his craft, but no real
passion for spreading his ideas. And if the ideas don't spread, if no gift is received, then
there is no art, only effort. When an artist stops work before his art is received, his work
is unfulfilled.
Fear of Art
How powerful is the art you are able to create? Do genes and upbringing and cultural