Tag / seth godin

by Nathan Coumbe

Is your work artistic?

Do you have to be skilled with words, a paintbrush, or a musical instrument before you can call yourself an artist?

What about our work in the business world? Can marketing, sales, or leadership be artistic endeavors? It depends on your definition of art. 

Art is the act of creation. What you create doesn’t determine whether or not you’re artistic. 

Seth Godin defines art as “creating change in another person for the better.” 

If that’s our definition of art, then marketing, sales, leadership, customer service, and every other potential job we have is artistic…

But only if we take the leap and use our work to make people better.  

You are already an artist. Focus on creating change rather than your medium. 

by Nathan Coumbe

The inauthentic hero

The people we admire most are the ones who act the most inauthentic in the moment. 

Being authentic: the idea that you should do or say whatever it is you’re thinking or feeling in the moment. This is what we glorify. 

Vs.

Being inauthentic: doing things we’d rather not. Doing them because we promised we would. Doing things regardless of how we feel in the moment.

War heroes, the type of people we admire for their bravery and selfless acts, are those who act decidedly inauthentic in the moment. 

If they were being authentic—when the rounds cracked overhead or the grenade dropped in the middle of their buddies—they’d run as fast and far away as they could. 

But instead, they make a conscious decision to act despite how they feel in the moment. They run towards the sound of battle, or throw themselves on the grenade to save their friends. 

They do these things despite feeling terrified, exhausted, or pained. And we admire them for that. 

We admire the same traits in people from all walks of life: athletes, leaders, writers, musicians.

We want them to do what they signed up to do. Imagine going to a concert where the musician didn’t play because “they just didn’t feel like it” when they got on stage.

So, in fact, we don’t want authenticity. We want professionalism, decency, integrity—for people to keep the promises they make… To do the things that need doing regardless of how they’re feeling in the moment. 

In terms of behavior, authenticity leads to tantrums and inaction. 

Inauthenticity, on the other hand, leads to professionalism. 

(H/t to Seth Godin for inspiring this post.) 

by Nathan Coumbe

The weeds don’t need your help

If you leave a garden unattended, weeds will grow in abundance.

They do best when left alone. They don’t need any nurturing, nutrients, watering, or attention from you. They’ll grow just fine on their own.

But if you want a garden full of beautiful flowers or delicious fruits and vegetables, you must be intentional.

You must dig, plant, water, fertilize, nurture… And rip up the weeds by the root!

The same is true for the thoughts in your head, the story you’re telling yourself on a daily basis.

The negative thoughts are weeds.

“I can’t…”

“They won’t let me…”

“This won’t work…”

“I’ve failed before so why should I try again?”

“I’m not good enough…”

These thoughts will spring up naturally and strangle the garden of your mind if you sit idly. And they’ll take over without any action on your part.

So, just like with the garden in your backyard, you must be intentional and put in the difficult, caring work. Rip out the weedy thoughts by the roots. Replace them with the good stuff, whatever that is for you.

Positive mental attitudes, affirmations, visualizations… Or my favorite: someone else’s encouraging words playing on repeat in your head. (I’d recommend starting here.)

Whatever you want to grow in your mind, treat it with the same care and attention you would with a beautiful garden of your own.

by Nathan Coumbe

Collective action, taxes, & plastic

How do we discourage the plastics companies—and all of the companies that use their products—from creating and using MORE plastic? Without the burden of cost ending up on the consumer?

Seth Godin mentions that the only real change will come through collective action on the part of us as citizens or via the government through taxation. (Check out his great podcast episode on the topic here.)

It worked for cigarettes; I assume it would work for plastic reduction as well.

But I feel that, in the short run, it would hurt all of us as consumers… because we really don’t have a choice. And you’d better believe that the people with money invested in plastic will make sure WE feel it before they do…

Individual Action

A couple of years ago, my wife and I went on a no-plastic, “reduce our waste” crusade.

We stopped buying drinks in plastic bottles…

We only used reusable grocery bags at the store…

We severely cut back on food and packaged goods…

We went to a more whole-foods diet (good for our health AND for the environment)…

We started using compostable garbage bags that we could compost ourselves.

My wife even persuaded a local restaurant to start selling glass bottles for to-go sauces that people could bring in and refill for a reduced price.

This is only a smattering of what we did to reduce waste…

The problem that we ran into was no matter what we did, we couldn’t get most of our food without massive amounts of plastic.

Our stores didn’t sell eggs in cardboard cartons. Nor did any of the local farmers we knew.

Every single piece of meat that we bought was wrapped in a pound of plastic. They wouldn’t allow us to bring in containers of our own… Or even follow our request for it to be wrapped in paper instead.

We couldn’t even go vegetarian—getting our protein through beans, yogurt, and other non-meat sources—without having it packaged in plastic bags or plastic cartons. All our stores had also gotten rid of the giant dispensers for grains and such… So we couldn’t bring our own bags for that either.

The Nail in the Coffin

The futility of it all became clear when I saw what a major corporation (which will remain nameless) was doing with plastic.

They were shipping tiny pieces of hardware—each of which was about the size of a pencil tip…

Each wrapped in plastic… Each sealed in its own plastic, Ziplock bag…

Mailed in its own bubble-wrap-lined mailing envelope.

And they were shipping hundreds of these to hundreds of locations around the world… On a regular basis.

I knew then and there that our individual action wouldn’t make even the tiniest of dents in the waste problem we faced.

Individual Action vs. Systemic Problems

We’ve continued our personal waste-free crusade, simply because it makes US feel better about our actions. But the discouragement is real.

I don’t really have any answers today. Because taking individual action to solve systemic problems doesn’t make much of a difference…

So I pose the question again: how do we dissuade these companies from using plastic without the burden of the cost—and all the work—ending up on consumers?

We aren’t creating the waste—those are the massive corporations who save money by using it. And who are doing it without thinking of the second- and third-order consequences of their actions.

There aren’t many alternatives for individual consumers… And the plastic is being created ANYWAY. So it feels like we don’t have a choice.

And when we have no choice, there’s nothing that we can do, and it doesn’t look like there will be better choices for quite a while.

by Nathan Coumbe

Getting paid for what’s easy

It doesn’t happen. At least, not in the ways or amounts we want it to.

People don’t want to have to think for a living. They want to make money for easy work…

And thinking, making decisions, being creative—none of that is easy.

But those are precisely the things that people get paid the most for. They’re the only things that’ll help us survive in the modern economy.

The easy work is disappearing… We must embrace the hard work—the work that isn’t easy to measure.

by Nathan Coumbe

What’s it for?

A great question I learned from Seth Godin is asking: what’s it for?

The book you’re buying—what’s it for?

That certification you’re trying to earn—what’s it for?

Is it the credibility that goes with having read this or obtained that? If so, that’s just a signaling strategy—though possibly a necessary one.

What about going to medical school and getting an MD—what’s that for?

Is it to get the credibility and authority that goes with the letters after your name? Is it to keep the generational legacy going…even though you’d rather be teaching?

Or is it to actually learn how to help people lead healthier lives?

Back to buying a book—what’s it for? What am I hoping to get out of it? An answer to what I’m supposed to do with my life? Knowledge that I can use to help myself or other people?

Or that certification I’m thinking about. Am I doing it because it actually helps me get where I want to go? Or am I doing it because it’ll look good on a resume?

Begin with the end in mind. That’s where this question leads you.

Begin with the end in mind.

If you don’t know what you want or where you’re going, how will you know what that “thing” is for?

by Nathan Coumbe

What single superpower would you want?

As you can tell (because I keep quoting it), I’ve been reading and re-reading Seth Godin’s newest book.

Here’s the latest one that’s had my brain buzzing:

“The problem with the model of the well-rounded superhero [talking about Superman being able to solve any problem] is that there are very few well-rounded superheroes. It’s much more likely that we’ll succeed by overinvesting [emphasis added] in just one or two skills.

He continues by giving us a challenge:

“The challenge, then, is to have one superpower. All out of balance to the rest of your being. If, over time, you develop a few more, that’s fine… [But] begin with one.”

My first thought was: “I don’t know what superpower I want to invest all my time in.”

And then it came unbidden: writing.

So what about you? If you could only choose one, what superpower would you want to invest in?

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by Nathan Coumbe

Hit the buzzer before you know the answer

The secret to winning Jeopardy?

Hit the buzzer before you know the answer

If you wait until you know the answer, that split second hesitation lets the other person get ahead of you.

If you hit the buzzer first, you’ll at least have a chance of getting it right.

But if you wait, the opportunity to succeed instantly passes you by.

(H/t to Seth Godin for reminding me of this principle.)

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by Nathan Coumbe

“You’re not sick… You don’t get a day off”

I’ve had a migraine all day long… I’ve been so miserable it’s been tough to get anything done.

And yet, in the back of my head, I’ve heard Seth Godin’s voice from one of his best podcast episodes:

“You’re not sick… You don’t get a day off.”

Sadly, when we’re creators, artists, people trying to change the world—essentially, because we’re human—we don’t get a day off from our responsibilities.

It would be so easy to use something as a reason not to do the work I desperately need to do for myself and others.

But I don’t get a day off from being human. So I put in the time, however small or insignificant the progress might seem.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Infinity makes your career difficult

“Infinity” overwhelms us. We aren’t wired to understand or cope with it.

When we humans are faced with a seemingly infinite number of choices, most of the time we make no choice at all.

We freeze up, afraid to make the wrong one…

Or we just walk away…

Or, sometimes, we just go with whoever or whatever happens to be #1 that day—the “industry leader”.

And today, we have an infinite number of career choices. We grow up being told we can be anything… and in many cases that’s true. Most of the gatekeepers are gone.

But we’re also pushed to develop competence in many areas, rather than expertise or remarkability in just one or a few. We have to get Bs in everything, rather than an A+ in our favorite area and some Cs in the others.

This need to be good at everything, combined with too many choices, paralyzes us. Because we don’t want to pick the “wrong thing”. We don’t want to dedicate years of our lives and massive amounts of money to something that might not be a good fit.

So we don’t pick at all… Or we just pick the one that has the highest possible salary, the best job prospects, or the most security.

We don’t consider who we are, how we’re wired, what we love, what changes we’d like to see in the world…

We just go with whatever comes our way… but we can do so much better than that. We can contribute so much more.

But we have to choose what we’re going to focus on… and what we’re going to quit.

So what do you do? How do you overcome the paralysis of analysis? The overwhelm we experience when faced with too many choices?

Tell me your thoughts in the comments.

(H/t to Seth Godin for inspiring this post)

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