Last month I was given the opportunity to get a sneak-peek at Laura Stack‘s new book “Super Competent” (to be released on 9 August).

I sat down with it a while back and started to read, keeping notes on the parts that struck me. I really enjoy reading business and personal development books, and there have been a few lately that were real stinkers, I didn’t bother to finish a couple of them.

This book is not like that, it has some very useful and actionable information.

The 6 Keys to Perform at Your Productive Best

“Success with come to those who can accomplish more in less time & consistently perform at their productive best. The people who achieve their fullest potential are not simply competent; they’re SuperCompetent.”

Stack defines what she calls the 6 key areas for achieving super competency:

1. Activity – Determine what you should be working on
2. Availability – Make time for it
3. Attention – Focus on those tasks
4. Accessibility – Organize the information needed to complete it
5. Accountability – Be responsible for your results
6. Attitude – Never give up

To anyone familiar with the principles of Getting Things Done (which most of you reading this should be after following this for 3 years!) these are the essential steps to accomplishing your tasks and goals.

Managing Your Activities

Crossing things off your list means that you actually need to sit down and do the things that need to get done. Stack calls this the Activity Key and recommends the following for your List Management:

1. Start with your smallest key tasks
2. Clean up your workspace
3. Prioritize the rest of your tasks, focusing on valuable activities
4. Delete the things you know that you are not going to do
5. Preserve your energy for the things that advance your goals
   

I know that most of this is familiar territory, but it is interesting to see it arranged in this order. GTD tells us to clean up our workspace first, then move on to prioritizing ( In the workflow: Collect, Process, Organize), where Stack starts off by applying the “Two-minute Rule” (if it can be accomplished in two minutes, do it now) to those small key tasks. I am not sure that I agree with that, as quite a few people that I have spoken to about being productive complain about getting bogged down in those little Two-minute activities. Many actually spending a big chunk of their day on them and not having the energy to tackle the big stuff, which Stack leaves until last on the list. I think that you need to consider your energy levels earlier in the process.

Managing Your Attention

The strongest chapter in the book covers your “capacity to concentrate on what you are doing.” Stack covers all of the bases, including:

• Avoid multi-tasking
• Capture your thoughts on other topics that come up while you are working on something, then put them aside
• Pay closest attention to the tasks that have the greatest return on your investment of time

Accessibility or Having a Unified Filing System

Unfortunately, in her effort to make all six start with the letter “A”, she runs into a bit of a contextual problem with the chapter on Accessibility. Stack uses the term to describe your ability to access your information and archives, while the term has a different meaning for me that made this chapter difficult.

Accessibility, to me, has to do with managing the way that others can interact with you, gaining access to your attention. But this is a small quibble and I suppose simply my own weakness.

Organizing your filing system and having access to your data and archives is an essential part of your productivity practice, and Stack provides some useful tips on creating and maintaining such a system.

Not Just another Productivity System

Super Competent is not just another system that you have to learn in order to become wealthy and influential overnight. Stack builds on and explains how you can learn from other systems to find the right way for you to get done with your tasks and achieve your goals. When this book hits the shelves next Monday I recommend that you give it a look. It is well worth your investment of time.

Here are my hand-written notes that I took while reading the book, click on the thumbnail to see it full-sized:

[Editor's note to the FTC: I did receive a copy of this product for free in exchange for writing a review, no other compensation or expectation of a positive review was expressed or implied.]

Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky

I purchased this book on 12 June, and started reading it shortly thereafter. It is an amazing book, a thorough and well-though-out expansion of the ideas in this presentation by Shirky (Link to Clay Shirky on Cognitive Surplus). He has been thinking about this for a couple of years and it shows.

Means, Motive, Opportunity and the Current Economic Crisis

Cognitive Surplus is the term Shirky uses for our free time, or the time that we are not spending making a living. In this book Shirky describes the history of cognitive surplus and the massive potential for its use and development.

Shirky describes the background of events and technological developments that have allowed humans to spend less time doing the things they need to do to survive – the creation of “free time”.

Before the invention of television people used a great deal of this time for social interaction. The advent of TV, and the marketing that financed its production, pulled people away from social and group activities and into passive consumption of entertainment.

People also started to turn to TV and favored programs if they were lonely (of course they were lonely, no one gets together for ice cream socials or barn-dances any more!), with the on-screen cast replacing or standing in for their personal, real-world, social network.

As an aside, I find it interesting that TV broadcast companies are called “networks”…

Social Networks in the Internet Age

With the explosive growth of the Internet, however, we find that people still have a fundamental need to connect and share with others. Suddenly people have the opportunity to be sociable again, with an incredibly low barrier to entry. In addition people are creating and nurturing connections to other people that share very narrow interests. In the past it could be difficult for a person interested in, say, model trains, to find and interact with others that share that interest. The Internet has destroyed the barriers of geography and publicity, enabling these people to find each other easily and have conversations, create relationships, and share their experiences.

Today it is only a matter of investing a few minutes in searching Google (or Flickr or Facebook or Twitter…) to find others actively sharing their thoughts on any topic imaginable. This is having a revolutionary impact on the use of free time, the active employment of our cognitive surplus, because people really do want to share, to collaborate, to create things.

Two Thousand Wikipedias

One of the most amazing examples of the potential of applying our cognitive surplus to something other than TV involves the collaborative effort that is Wikipedia. According to an estimate, Wikipedia represents the result of the application of about 100 million hours of human thought. To give that some context, 100 million hours is about 50 thousand full-time jobs lasting one year. All of it is contributed by volunteers for free. In their spare time, putting their cognitive surplus to good use.

“Sure“, you might say, “but how much free time, this cognitive surplus, is there anyway?”

Well, Americans watch 200 billion hours of television each year, or the equivalent of two thousand Wikipedia projects. Think about that for a minute…

Imagine if even a fraction of that passive consumption of TV could be re-directed toward something productive. It makes me feel guilty about the one evening a week that I spend in front of the TV with my Lovely Bride.

Moving Away from TV

Recent studies indicate that for the first time ever there are groups of young people that are actually watching less TV than their elders. I would be willing to bet that these groups probably fall into fairly specific demographics: 20-something, early adopters of technology, largely self-educated (learning more in their free time than they do in “lowest-common-denominator public schools), web-savvy, and completely uninterested in getting a “job” and working for The Man. I say this because in this time of recession where about 1 in 6 people are out of work, creating your own stimulus is undeniably attractive.

In my own experience I know half a dozen young people like this that are preparing to start their own business. They work hard and don’t watch TV. One young man I know doesn’t even own a TV, but he does have a computer and a great idea for a business.

Means, Motive, Opportunity

So here we are, faced with economic uncertainty, a depressed economy, and an amazing asset – our collective cognitive surplus – sitting idly by watching “Real Housewives of New Jersey“. Couldn’t we put this asset to better use? Shouldn’t we? Is it not a moral imperative? Perhaps not, but I think that we should all be putting at least one hour a week into creating something amazing. And remember, amazing is what you say it is.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Learn something – Read a book, take a class, go online, whatever, but learn something new. How to paint with watercolors, how to tie a fly, how to create YouTube videos to promote your business.
• Make something - Create a new product or service for your business, or an online store.
• Teach something to another person – Could your neighbors or co-workers benefit from learning about something that you know how to do? Drag them away from their TVs too, and share your knowledge.

What are your thoughts on how to use your own cognitive surplus? Please share in the Comments.

[Editor's note: This post should have come out much earlier, I apologize for the delay. The book is fantastic!]

This is my review of 99%: “Making Ideas Happen” , the new book from Behance. What the authors have to say:

Making Ideas Happen book review

Ideas don’t happen because they are great – or by accident. Ideas are made to happen through a series of other forces.

But what are these miraculous and mysterious “forces”? And why are certain people and teams able to consistently defy the odds and push their ideas to fruition, time and time again? I have spent over four years meeting these creative powerhouses and asking them how they do it.

The result of this quest – Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision & Reality (Penguin, Portfolio Imprint) – will land in bookstores [soon], on April 15th. In about 250 pages, the book collects a series of pragmatic tips, tools, and anecdotes about the art (and science) of making ideas happen.

I share the insights and methods of uber-productive creative leaders and teams – companies like Google, IDEO, and Disney, and individuals like authors Seth Godin and Chris Anderson, RISD President John Maeda, and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, among others.

This book is tremendous. I received a review copy last month and dove right in. I was so excited to take a look at the anecdotes and examples from people that I have learned so much from already. I strongly recommend that you pick up a copy of this book.

[Editor's note to the FTC: I did receive a copy of this product for free in exchange for writing a review, no other compensation or expectation of a positive review was expressed or implied.]

Rework, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson is one of the best business books that I have read this year. To echo Seth Godin’s blurb on the jacket, “Ignore this book at your peril”.

Rework is a collection of short essays on business, but it is more than that. The essays turn into something greater than the sum of their parts – because they point out that the world has changed. The business environment has changed, and the old way of doing business is essentially gone. The companies that cleave to the “old way” are going to get crushed by faster, smarter, more agile companies that do business the “new way”.

Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson are the founders of 37signals, the software company behind Highrise HQ and Basecamp (and more), and the book is enhanced by the work of illustrator Mike Rohde. Here Rohde talks about how Basecamp‘s “View all of these images at once” made reviewing the illustrations a snap.

Once a batch of inked illustrations were completed in Photoshop, I would export lower-res versions of the pieces as JPG files, and post them to the Basecamp project for Jason’s review. Basecamp’s handy “View all of these images at once” feature allowed Jason to scan an entire batch and approve or suggest tweaks…Illustrating REWORK was a fun, interesting and challenging project from start to finish. It’s amazing what we were able to produce in just 16 weeks, all while I worked nights and weekends and had a baby in the middle of the project. Our constant communications and use of Basecamp really made the difference.

Yes, they talk about their products. Yes, they talk about their actual practices. That is a big part of what makes this book so valuable, they walk the walk (and the 37signals products are really good). The real value of the book is in its structure as a collection of essays that are tied together but aren’t necessarily sequential. You can pick up this book, open it anywhere, and find something useful. Or peruse the table of contents for the section that you need to read right now.
For instance, are you feeling bogged-down in your work? In the Productivity section there are 11 essays:

Productivity

* Illusions of agreement
* Reasons to quit
* Interruption is the enemy of productivity
* Meetings are toxic
* Good enough is fine
* Quick wins
* Don’t be a hero
* Go to sleep
* Your estimates suck
* Long lists don’t get done
* Make tiny decisions

Here is a short piece from “Don’t be a Hero“:

“A lot of times it’s better to be a quitter than a hero.
For example, let’s say you think a task can be done in two hours. But four hours into it, you’re only a quarter of the way done. The natural instinct is to think, “But I can’t give up now, I’ve already spent 4 hours on this!”
So you go into Hero mode … sometimes that kind of sheer effort overload works. But is it worth it? Probably not. The task was worth it when you thought it would cost 2 hours, not 16…”

There is a lot more of this common-sense-yet-counter-intuitive information in Rework. Get this book. Read it. It will make your business better.

Here is my Amazon link, thanks for supporting this blog.

[Editor's note to the FTC: I bought this book myself, the only potential compensation is 4% of any Amazon sales through the above link.]

The War of Art, by Stephen Pressfield, is a remarkable book. Not only was it a huge source of inspiration for Seth Godin’s latest work (Linchpin – see my review here), but it has affected artists of all kinds in a really positive way. When this book was first published I did not think of myself as an artist of any sort, but my thinking has changed over the past couple of years. My frame of mind has changed enormously since I started my own little business and became an entrepreneur for real.

A real wake-up call

I will admit that I only went out and bought this book after reading Linchpin, and am I ever sorry that I waited so long. This book is a real kick-in-the-pants:

As artists and professionals it is our obligation to enact our own internal revolution, a private insurrection inside our own skulls. In this uprising we free ourselves from the tyranny of consumer culture. We overthrow the programming of advertising, movies, video games, magazines, TV, and MTV by which we have been hypnotized from the cradle. We unplug ourselves from he grid by recognizing that we will never cure our restlessness by contributing our disposable income to the bottom line of Bullshit, Inc., but only by doing our work.

Doing Our Work

What does it mean to do our work? I have suspected it for years, and have read about it in other places, but our work is not necessarily the thing that we go do every day to make a buck. No, our work is much more important than that – unless you happen to be lucky enough to be really passionate about your J-O-B, or have turned a hobby into a business (in which case you probably don’t need this book).

Our work is the piece of art that we have inside of us that we really, desperately, achingly long to take out and show the world. That novel, or painting, or whatever. Everyone has a restless need to do something amazing, and the War is how we fight and scratch and kick and get it out.

Or we give up and go with the flow, letting The Resistance win. Because that is easier. Giving up is easy. Blaming your failure on someone-, or something-, else is easier. Telling ourselves that we just don’t have the time or energy or talent to do something amazing is easier than doing it.

Be a Professional

Pressfield gives us a list of qualities that define the professional at work (in a J-O-B):

• We show up every day.
• We show up no matter what.
• We stay on the job all day.
• We are committed over the long haul.
• The stakes for us are high and real.
• We accept remuneration for our labor.
• We master the technique of our jobs.
• We have a sense of humor about our jobs.
• We receive praise or blame in the real world.

Wow. These are the things that we do in order to make a living, isn’t our real passion worth this same level of commitment? Of course it is. Which is why this book is so amazing. It is full of inspirational reminders like this, reminders that we need to be just as professional about our passions as we are about our jobs.

Order the book here from Amazon:

“Systems Thinking!?!” Yikes, what is that? Is it like calculus?

Well, yes and no. Systems Thinking is an approach to problem-solving and project management that encompasses, er, the entire system of inputs and their transformation into outputs that you are, ah, thinking about. While it would seem that this is a difficult subject to tackle (like calculus), it really isn’t. My friend and doppleganger Timothy Johnson (@carpefactum on Twitter) has written a brilliant book about the subject:

The book (and a cup of tea)

Systems Thinking and GTD

Getting Things Done is a form of systems thinking, a way of looking at your entire workflow – your inputs (things that you need to do) and how they get transformed into the outputs (successful accomplishments). GTD for your own workflow is a focused, personal way of using systems thinking. It is also useful to consider how you can utilize this format of problem-solving in a larger view – that of the complete environment in which you are working.

Whatever your job is (your own personal system) you will have interactions with other systems (co-workers and other departments) that have an effect on your inputs and outputs. Call it an orbital-level perspective.

I finished the book earlier today, and wanted to share my thoughts in a little video (click more to see it):

Share your thoughts in the Comments and buy the book from Amazon here (aff link)

[Editor's note to the FTC: I did receive a copy of this product for free in exchange for writing a review, no other compensation or expectation of a positive review was expressed or implied.]

For more info on Seth Godin’s new book, Linchpin, which comes out in bookstores today (order your copy from my Amazon link here – Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?), here are a few more reviews:

Linchpin by Seth Godin Review | Flat Frog Blog

In the current economic situation, it’s good to be a linchpin. “I couldn’t have written this book ten years ago, because ten years ago, our economy wanted you to fit in, it paid you well to fit in, and it took care of you if you fit in,” Mr Godin writes. Now is the perfect opportunity to begin sculpting businesses based on the passion of linchpins. The age of outfitting your company with minimally skilled, minimally paid, easily replaceable workers is over. While successful essential companies ride the roughest economic waves and come out ahead through the merits of their linchpin employees, businesses that hirer cheap easily replaceable labor race to the bottom of the competitive market as others easily copy their method.

But this book isn’t about failing businesses. It’s about encouraging every reader – who currently sits complacently at his desk, doing just what’s necessary to keep from being fired – to speak up, step up, and give more. It’s about ignoring your urge to just survive and embracing your ability to create art. Artists create something extra, something that doesn’t easily fit within the mold of “a day’s work for a day’s pay.” Artists have passion, they have ideas, and they do more with their skills.

Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog

As Seth Godin is gifted at doing, he puts his finger on some vital truths that we all may have sensed at certain moments but that haven’t been able to grap on a conscious level, articulate fully or act upon. If you are someone in a hurry to do good in this world, read this book because it will encourage you to pursue that goal in a way that makes a far bigger difference for you, your organization and the world. It will help you break out of the email inbox, the fear of failure and the spinning of wheels and galvanize you to pursue your genius instincts. In short, it’s a good kick in the butt and shot of bravery for the start of the new year.

Here are some key ideas from the book:

1. The people of greatest value in this economy and to your organization are linchpins. A linchpin is a person who walks into chaos, creates order and invents, connects, creates and makes things happen. People who work automatically, by rote and define what is and is not their job are disposable.

Here is a fun graphic (as in graphic novel) review by Joshua Fultz:
I am the Linchpin

Seth Godin’s Linchpin: Book Review « Books I Read

The linchpin is an individual who can walk into chaos and create order, someone who can invent, connect, create, and make things happen. Every worthwhile institution has indispensable people who make differences like these.

To me, this is a book that will make you question the following:

* Am I happy with what I am doing at my job? In my life?
* If I am not happy, is there anything I can do about it? (The answer is a resounding yes!)
* Am I undervalued where I work? If so, is there anything I can do to stand out?
* What if I am afraid of changing the status quo? How can I fight the resistance?
* What can I do to start making a difference?
* Can I become the linchpin?

Is this book for everyone? I think so. Seth Godin offers tips to the worker who feels his job is boring or monotonous to the boss who is perhaps not engaging his workers to their fullest potential. Here’s a key question that Seth Godin asks: would your company/business/organization be more successful if your employees were more obedient or if your employees had more leeway to be more creative, passionate, and artistic? The question is legitimate, as Seth Godin argues that we have moved away from the age of production (think of factory workers/laborers during the Industrial Revolution) and management (think of your boss) to an era of creativity and art.

Reading this book, I have come away thinking more about being creative, connecting with people, and bringing art to the masses.

My lizard brain wants me to stop… « rich work life

I love the central idea behind this book and the logic of the call-to-action. Your choice:

* Take the apparently risky and courageous path of becoming an indispensable human, and in the meantime discover meaning and lifelong employment, or
* Follow the indoctrination of many years of society and education and remain a faceless cog in the machine, increasingly dispensable, and at the mercy of your employer and the forces of globalization

If you accept the hypothesis that we all have this choice (and Seth argues that regardless of nature or nurture that we all have genius within us), or even that it’s better to die trying than not, it’s pretty obvious which is actually the less risky path.

Much like Dan Pink’s wonderful A Whole New Mind, which I reviewed previously, Godin passionately argues that times have changed, and a new approach is the key to success. The good news is the new approach should make you not only more successful but happier and wealthier at the same time. Bring it on!

In the last few weeks, I’ve reflected on my life and current work. There is no doubt that when I’ve put in that extra effort at work or home it’s typically yielded noticeably better outcomes, and been warmly acknowledged by the recipients, which has given back to me a sense of fulfillment far in excess of that extra effort. In the same few weeks, by actively pursuing ways to go above and beyond I’ve significantly elevated my value in what becomes a marvelous positive feedback loop – do something unexpected and great, be acknowledged, feel great, create and give more art. This concept is not new, but the imperative for action is arguably stronger than ever.

Linchpin | Benjamin Hysell – Software, Projects, and People

Seth asks, “What if we all were artists? What if our workplaces were full of artists?”

He passionately argues that we can all be artists, that we have the choice to either follow a map and work ourselves out of a job, or we can choose to become very difficult to replace by becoming invaluable, by being artists.

I’m choosing in this review to focus on Seth’s idea that we should all choose to be artists, I will leave it to the reader to read Seth’s book to understand why we struggle as a species to make it happen.
What Does it Mean to be an Artist?

Several of the common artist themes Seth lays out in Linchpin are:

* Art doesn’t mean you work with paint and canvas, artist create, regardless of medium.
* Artist give gifts.
* Artist produce output.

Paints, Pencils, and Watercolors

Seth argues art doesn’t have to be paint and canvas. Seth points to several examples of famous artists who worked in the conventional “art” mediums and asks aloud what would they be doing today? If the Internet was available to Shakespeare would he have still written his plays? Would Picasso still have painted? Would Shakespeare and Picasso team up for the next great Xbox game?

When asking yourself if you can become an artist, Seth challenges us to not confine ourselves to the classic definition of artist. Seth points out excellent customer service is an art, an amazing chef is an artist, a business owner who can make a million dollars a year is an artist.

I can’t draw for beans, but I can organize a team of freshly minted developers to create a data management system that organizes 50 plus gigabytes of data a month.

I can’t mix primary colors to create just the right shade of orange to paint a sunset, but I know how to architect a bare bones iPhone alarm application.

I can’t play an instrument to save my life, but I write a pretty darn good blog about software, project management, and managing people.

I can’t do anything a classical artist can, but at Seth’s urging I consider myself an artist.

You need to read Seth Godin’s Linchpin. Or be a cog in the machine. Your choice.

In my mind, one of the most valuable things in this book is a chart on page 181. There are two axes. The x-axis goes from passive to passionate. The y-axis goes from attachment (that is, inflexible dedication to your own world view) to discernment (knowing what to live with and what to seek change in). I would call that y-axis “wisdom”. Seth wants you to aim for the upper left, high passion plus high wisdom, the realm of the linchpin.

From my years of experience working with people, passion is a trait most visible in the young. Wisdom is a trait that is more visible in people who are more experienced. This is why there are so few wise and passionate linchpins. Seth would never be so crass as to typecast people by age, but I know there are plenty of experienced and wise but passive people (he calls them bureaucrats, you know the type) and plenty of young, passionate, and inflexible people (he calls them fundamentalist zealots.) This is why the wise, passionate person stands out.

The real reason I like this book is that after nearly 30 years of work I have arrived in a place Seth would describe as a linchpin and I am loving it. I have always been as passionate and creative as I can, just to amuse myself, why work if it’s boring. This is a childish quality but I retain it at age 51. On the other hand, I have learned some discernment that I sure didn’t have in 1982. Every quarter, my boss (and I have had many) sets goals with me related to what the company needs. At the end of the quarter, often, what I accomplish is very different from what we thought would be useful. But typically, that boss looks at what I did and says “that was what we needed” and rewards me anyway. I cannot be a cog, and fortunately, they have recognized that a cog is not what they need. In the long term, all of my success so far has come from this sort of thinking.

Again, here is my Amazon affiliate link. I highly recommend this book, it can change your life and work – by changing the way that you look at both. I will be writing on this topic regularly from now on.

Let me start this review by saying that I have been a huge fan of Seth Godin for a long time. I have read most of his books, and all of them have been very valuable in building my various business ventures and learning about the internet-based economy of the future. (Keep in mind that, as William Gibson said, “…the future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed.“)

Linchpin is different. It is less of a business book, more of a personal development book. Like Tribes before it, Linchpin describes the essential qualities needed for success in the world to come but it is not an instruction manual. Linchpin will be generally available on 26 January, you can pre-order your copy from my Amazon link here – Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

There are 2 very special things about this book, the first is how Godin has gone about marketing it, the second is how it pulls together a lot of information-threads and weaves them into a new design.

Internet Marketing and Philanthropy

As part of the launch of this book, Seth Godin is sending out 3,000 copies to the first 3,000 people to donate at least $30 USD to the Acumen Fund. He wrote about it on his blog (Get a Review Copy of Linchpin…) and it only took 49 hours for the stock to run out, raising $108,000 for Acumen. 49 hours. That is amazing. Both the speed in which Godin’s fans (like me, that is where I got my copy) snapped at the chance to get his new book before everyone else, and the fact that some people paid more than the $30 minimum.

Why did he do it this way? As Godin wrote in his original blog post:

… because you have a network. You blog. You tweet. You talk things up at meetings or recommend things to friends.

And there are a lot more than a hundred of you.

One solution is to give everyone a free copy. Publishers and authors could do this and try to make money doing something else. Another solution is to let the best of this group, the most committed, the most interested… let them stand up and identify themselves.

So, that’s what we’re experimenting with on Linchpin. For a select group of motivated readers, I want to send you a copy of Linchpin (at my expense) three weeks before anyone else can buy one. My US publisher is not sending free review copies to magazines (the few that are left), newspaper editors, TV shows, any of the usual media suspects. Instead, we’re allowing people like you to raise their hands and, if they like the book, asking them to tell the world about it in January.

So I suppose that this means that I am already a sort of Linchpin…and after reading the book, I am convinced that if I am not one quite yet, I certainly want to be.

The War Against Excellence

The first half of the book is a bit of a history lesson where Godin describes, in horrifying detail, exactly how the government, business world, and public school systems have let down generations of students. This blog is not the place where I want to discuss my feelings on this topic, I have done a lot of reading and research on the history and politics of this situation – if you ‘d like to talk about it more, send me an e-mail.

This is some very important reading, but the really important stuff is in the second half of the book. This is where Godin describes what you need to do to win the War Against Excellence and “create your own stimulus”.

The Resistance vs Your Creativity

The second half of the book, starting on page 101, is where it gets exciting and inspirational. First, Godin describes the effect of your “Lizard Brain” on your creativity, your motivation, your ability to actually finish things.
Your lizard brain is the oldest part of your brain. It’s the part that keeps you alive while you are thinking about other things, and the part that keeps humanity going via procreation, etc. The lizard brain is “the reason you’re afraid, the reason you don’t do all the art you can, the reason you son’t ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of the resistance.”

Godin writes quite a bit about the source of this fear – why we don’t do the things we are capable of and why we prefer safety to actually getting up off our butts and doing the work. A few of the examples and anecdotes that he shares hit pretty close to home for me, and I suspect they will for you as well. This is good. It means that we have the same problems as everyone else and that we are able to see them. Which means that we can change them.

Measure the Resistance and Direct Your Creativity

There is a lot of talk these days about the ROI of various parts of a business: staffing levels, marketing efforts, social media engagement. Godin describes how his own resistance made him stop writing this book “a dozen times”, which meant that his lizard brain was afraid of the book, which inspired Godin to pick it up again. The greater the resistance to a project, an idea, the work that you do – likely means that the return is greater as well. It means that it is something that scares you deep inside and your safety-seeking lizard brain wants to run away as fast as it can.

Remember, doing your work is not the same as doing your job. Your work comes from a passion to create something amazing. Your job is (or maybe not, and if not, for Pete’s sake, change it!) where that happens.

Where is all of this going?

The title of the book is Linchpin: Are you indispensible? The core message of the book is this: In order to thrive in the new economy you must become a Linchpin, that part of your organization that is utterly invaluable – the part that holds the entire enterprise together.
The problem is, there is no one set of instructions for this.

• There is no guidebook.
• There is no map.
• There is no checklist.

Godin does share some stories about people that have done amazing things, and they share a few qualities that anyone can nurture and develop. Of, course, these qualities will vary from person to person and according to your field of endeavor.

A short list of the basics:

• Impatience with things “as they are”
• Discernment, the ability to really see what is happening
• Motivation to create something special
• The ability to make a genuine connection
• A greater desire to give than to receive

I believe that most people would agree that these are simply “good qualities” for anybody to have. But as the old saying goes, “Anybody could have, everybody should have, nobody did.”

That is the heart of the matter. We all need to take a good, hard look at what we do, our work not our jobs, and make a conscious decision to become indispensable. Read the book. Think about your work and your fear.

Then do something about it. I know that I will. Stay tuned.

Extras: You can see people Tweeting about #Linchpin here and learn a lot more about it at the Squidoo Lens for Linchpin Reviews. Check out the audio excerpt here – You Are a Genius.

You can pre-order the book via Amazon, and help me pay for hosting too:

[Editor's note to the FTC: I did receive a copy of this product for free in exchange for a donation to the Acumen Fund and writing a review, no other compensation or expectation of a positive review was expressed or implied.]

From Seth Godin’s blog, a new e-book for the new decade.

Now, more than ever, we need to shake things up.

Now, more than ever, we need a different way of thinking, a useful way to focus and the energy to turn the game around. I hope a new ebook I’ve organized will get you started on that path. It took months, but I think you’ll find it worth the effort. (Download here, at Seth’s Blog).

Here are more than seventy big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year. From bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert to brilliant tech thinker Kevin Kelly, from publisher Tim O’Reilly to radio host Dave Ramsey, there are some important people riffing about important ideas here. The ebook includes Tom Peters, Fred Wilson, Jackie Huba and Jason Fried, along with Gina Trapani, Bill Taylor and Alan Webber.

This is an amazing resource. As Seth writes in the introduction:
“If you make a difference, people will gravitate to you. They want to engage, to interact and to get you more involved.
In a digital world, the gift I give you almost always benefits me more than it costs.
If you make a difference, you also make a connection. You interact with people who want to be interacted with and you make changes that people respect and yearn for.”

I could not agree more whole-heartedly!

One of the contributors is Stephen Pressfield, one of my favorite authors and a brilliant blogger (see It’s the Tribes, Stupid to see what I mean) whose essay is on Tough-mindedness. Here is a quote:

“…what produces real work (and happiness for each of us, in my opinion) is depth, focus, concentration and commitment over time.“

Indeed. Please share your thoughts.

Let me start with this: I met these gentlemen in May of 2008 at SOBCon and they are two of the most knowledgeable and sincere people that I have encountered. I really didn’t know who they were or what they did, but I have sure learned a lot from them since then.

In fact, I have spent about 3 years learning about what is in this book:

You need to go to Amazon and order this book right now. It’s okay, I’ll wait.

This book is a complete course in how to do business online in today’s world. There is quite a bit of buzz about this book, it is a NY Times best-seller after all. But that is not why I want you to go out and buy it, or why I gush a little about how cool Chris and Julien are. No, the reason is that you can save yourself a lot of time and effort learning the things that I learned the hard way – reading lots and lots of blog posts and e-books and whatever else I could get my hands on.

Trust Agents – Find out what Social Media is really all about

Chris and Julien have put together a reference book and instruction manual for gaining the background and skills that you need to bring your business into the world of Web 2.0 and beyond. To quote from the introduction:

“Trust Agents is the answer to the question,”What do I do now?” It is full of actionable information, supported by research and strategies, studies, and an explanation of the thought process behind what we do on the web. We love all the great “idea” books out there, and we do have lots of ideas packed in here as starting points. In addition to these, we give you actionable tasks that you can execute.”

Ideas and actionable tasks for business

The book starts off with a couple of stories about building trust, social capital, and the state of media today (and this will probably be the only business book you read this year that has stories about mobsters and student loans). Basic Social Media Literacy, followed by an in-depth explanation of what they call the six principles of trust agents.

Now, since this is a review and not a summary, I am just going to tell you about one of these principles:

The Archimedes Effect

This is my favorite, primarily because it is about leverage, a word that lots of marketing people hate to use. Which is too bad, because – even though it may be badly overused, it is the best word to describe the effect.

“Everyone uses leverage every day: Business owners hire employees so that their business can do more; people use technology such as cars to help them get to work faster; companies have systems that allow them to be more efficient. Yet millions use the Web every day and ignore how best to use the tools at their disposal to bring the greatest benefit.”

This chapter has page after page of examples on using leverage to increase the power of your online (and offline) efforts:

• Build on one success to fuel another
• Arbitrage and Pay Per Click advertising
• Applying these principles for online gaming and business
• Building your network and strengthening relationships
• Create your own niche
• Using your time effectively – delegate
• Get creative with your business marketing, be bold
• Protect your community

If you can’t find something in this chapter to apply to your business, well, it’s likely that one of your competitors will. Guess what happens then?

Buy Trust Agents at Amazon, now.