Linchpin_ Are You Indispensable_ - Seth Godin [57]
The Work
Your real work, then, what you might be paid for, and what is certainly your passion, is
simple: the work. The work is feeding and amplifying and glorifying the daemon.
Your work is to create art that changes things, to expose your insight and humanity in
such a way that you are truly indispensable.
Your work is to do the work, not to do your job. Your job is about following instructions;
the work is about making a difference. Your work is to ship. Ship things that make
change.
Built to Ship
The habit that successful artists have developed is simple: they thrash a lot at the start,
because starting means that they are going to finish. Not maybe, not probably, but going
to.
If you want to produce things on time and on budget, all you have to do is work until you
run out of time or run out of money. Then ship.
No room for stalling or excuses or the resistance. On ship date, it's gone.
Using Resistance as a Weather Vane
When you set out to do something that generates easy profits, indulges your temper, is
selfish or shortsighted, it's unlikely you'll hear from the resistance. When the lizard brain
is getting what it wants, it is definitely not going to slow you down.
You feel like yelling at your admin. Your conscience tells you not to, but you want to.
The resistance is not a factor here. The voice telling you not to yell is your conscience,
not your lizard brain.
You might feel the same feeling before you cheat on your taxes, go off your diet, or
double-cross your partner. Listen to that feeling. It's not the resistance.
Every now and then you might hear from your conscience or you might hear your mom's
voice in the back of your head, but you and I both know that this voice is different from
the numbing paralysis of the resistance.
When you feel the resistance, the stall, the fear, and the pull, you know you're on to
something. Whichever way the wind of resistance is coming from, that's the way to head-directly into the resistance. And the closer you get to achieving the breakthrough your
genius has in mind, the stronger the wind will blow and the harder the resistance will
fight to stop you.
I stopped writing this book a dozen times. Each time, the force that got me to pick it up
again was the resistance. I realized that my lizard brain was afraid of this book, which is
the best reason I can think of to write it.
Eating ice cream is easy. Making something that matters is hard. The resistance will help
you find the thing you most need to do because it is the thing the resistance most wants to
stop.
It's obvious. The resistance is afraid. The closer you come to unleashing the thing it fears,
the harder it will fight.
Throwing Yourself Under the Bus
Actor John Goodman was interviewed about his role in Waiting for Godot. He had
planned to spend the spring fishing and watching TV with his family in New Orleans, and
he was prepared to turn the gig down. Here's his take on challenging the resistance:
"You're an idiot. This is a once-in-a-lifetime deal. It will never come by again . . . I didn't
think I was up to it all. I had no confidence in myself. So it's just a matter of throwing
myself under the bus and crawling my way out."
This posture of always challenging the resistance is what makes him a star.
"Right now, I'd rather be here than anywhere. I'd rather be here, trying to find the
goddamn part, and I hope I never do find it, because I don't want to slide into
complacency. What would I do then? Start cockfights in my dressing room?"
Steeper Near the Top
The closer you get to surfacing and then defeating the resistance, the harder it will fight
you off.
If shipping were easy, you would have done it already.
Why the Lizard Brain Wants You to Be Stuck
In The Dip, I talk about how hard it is to quit a project (a job, a career, a relationship),
even if the project is going absolutely nowhere.
It occurs to me that part of this pain comes from the resistance.
If it appears that you're fighting