I’ve been recommending this book many times since I attended Seth Godin‘s conference in Laguna Beach about 2 years ago. I read it a couples times and finally even bought the audio version, no need to say how I stick into it.
So I’m gonna try to select the parts and ideas I appreciated the most about: Education - Fear of change and leading – Art.
Wood Wilson about public education:
“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks”
The essential thing measured by school is whether or not you are good at school.
What they should teach in school:
1. Solve interesting problems
2. Lead
The Resistance at Work
“See, I told you it would never work.” You’ve presented your great idea, and people hate it. They ridicule you and threaten you and tell you to go away. Your subconscious speaks up. It says something like, “You should have listened to me. You really blew it.” Or perhaps it says, “I knew you shouldn’t have done that.”
Who, exactly, is “you”? And whom is this voice addressing?
The voice in your heard has revealed the resistance. It is trying to teach the daemon a lesson, encouraging it to be more careful nest time. The lizard hates your genius, and tries to stamp it out. When you hear this dialogue, don’t listen to it. Remember that it serves as proof of the resistance, and guard yourself even more diligently to ignore it.
The Lichpin, The Artist, and the Map
You must become indispensable to thrive in the new economy. The best ways to do that are to be remarkable, insightful, an artist, someone bearing gifts. To lead. The worst way is to conform and become a cog in a giant system.
What does it take to lead?
The key distinction is the ability to forge your own path, to discover a route from one place to another that hasn’t been paved, measured, and quantified. So many times we want someone to tell us exactly what to do, and so many times that’s exactly the wrong approach.
Diamond cutters have an intrinsic understanding of the stone in their hands. They can touch and see exactly where the best lines are; they know. The greatest artists do just that. They see and understand the challenges before them, without carrying the baggage of expectations or attachment. The diamond cutter doesn’t imagine the diamond he wants. Instead, he sees the diamond that is possible.
Of course, I definitively give 5/5 as overall score. If I really had to find a negative point, the only thing I could say is that Seth Godin miss a bit in linking all the dots into a story. If in one way or another, he could develop the big picture like he tells a story, I think he could have even larger audience.
