Linchpin_ Are You Indispensable_ - Seth Godin [56]
Produce deliberately outlandish work product that no one can possibly embrace.
Ship deliberately average work product that will certainly fit in and be ignored.
Don't ask questions.
Ask too many questions.
Criticize anyone who is doing something differently. If they succeed, that means you'll
have to do something differently too.
Start a never-ending search for the next big thing, abandoning yesterday's thing as old.
Embrace an emotional attachment to the status quo.
Invent anxiety about the side effects of a new approach.
Be boring.
Focus on revenge or teaching someone a lesson, at the expense of doing the work.
Slow down as the deadline for completion approaches. Check your work obsessively as
ship date looms.
Wait for tomorrow.
Manufacture anxiety about people stealing your ideas.
When you find behaviors that increase the chances of shipping, stop using them.
Believe it's about gifts and talents, not skill.
Announce you have neither.
This list is unusual in that I'm highlighting the up and the down, the left and the right.
Any direction you go instead of the direction that succeeds is the work of the resistance.
It's interesting to say it out loud. "I'm doing this because of the resistance." "My lizard
brain is making me anxious." "I'm angry right now because being angry is keeping me
from doing my work."
When you say it out loud (not think it, but say it), the lizard brain retreats in shame.
"I Don't Know What to Do" and Other Classic Quotes from the Resistance
"I don't have any good ideas" --actually, you don't have any bad ideas. If you get
enough bad ideas, the good ones will take care of themselves. And as every successful
person will tell you, the ideas aren't the hard part. It's shipping that's difficult.
"I don't know what to do" --this one is certainly true. The question is, why does that
bother you? No one actually knows what to do. Sometimes we have a hunch, or a good
idea, but we're never sure. The art of challenging the resistance is doing something when
you're not certain it's going to work.
"I didn't graduate from [insert brand of some prestigious educational institution
here]" --well, MIT is now free online, for anyone who wants to learn. The public library
in your town has just about everything you need, and what's not there is online. Access to
knowledge used to matter. No longer.
"My boss won't let me" --of course she won't. Why would she? You're saying, "I want to
do some crazy thing, and if it doesn't work, I want you to take all the blame. Of course, if
it does work, I'll get the credit. Okay?" No, not okay. Nothing in this book argues that
you need the perfect boss to become indispensable. I'm saying that if you become
indispensable, you'll discover that you get a better boss.
"Well, that's fine for you, but my gender, race, health, religion, nationality, shoe
size, handicap, or DNA don't make it easy" --Can't you just hear the lizard brain behind
every word in this question? Precisely how many counterexamples do you need before
you get over this excuse?
The Cult of Done
Bre Pettis wrote this manifesto on his blog:
1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are
doing, so accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you're done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the Internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the