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Amazon.co.uk Review
Poke the Box is a manifesto by bestselling author Seth Godin that just might make you uncomfortable. It’s a call to action about the initiative you’re taking-– in your job or in your life. Godin knows that one of our scarcest resources is the spark of initiative in most organisations (and most careers)-– the person with the guts to say, “I want to start stuff.”
Poke the Box just may be the kick in the pants you need to shake up your life.
Love the ideas in Poke the Box? Be sure to visit TheDominoProject.com for the latest news and special offers.
A Q&A with Seth Godin
Question: What does it mean to Poke the Box?
Seth Godin: Conformity used to be crucial--fitting in, not standing out. Compliance used to be the heart of every successful organization, every successful career. The reason? We all worked for the system, in the factory, doing what we were told. Now, though, compliance is no longer a competitive advantage.
Poke the Box is about the spark that brings things to life. We need to be nudged away from conformity and toward ingenuity, toward answering unknown questions for ourselves. Even if we fail, as I have done many times in my life, we learn what not to do by experience and doing the new.
This isn’t the same thing as taking a risk. In fact, the riskiest thing we can do right now is nothing.
I’ve had an extraordinary run, creating a dozen nationwide bestsellers, starting Internet companies and giving speeches around the world. The key thing I bring to the projects I take on is not more talent than most (I don’t) or even more hours than most (hardly). My contribution is a willingness to poke, to start, to lean into the project and to get it out the door.
Question: What will I learn from reading Poke the Box?
Seth Godin: Hopefully you will learn lots but do more. Start thinking about when you’ve taken initiative in a way that really meant something to you and your team, your family. When was the last time you did something for the first time? How did it feel?
There are no step-by-step how-to instructions in Poke the Box. Instead, you’ll find a series of layers, a foundation for taking a different approach to your work. Instead of learning to be more compliant, I want to push you to be the one who takes initiative.
Question: Why did you write this book?
Seth Godin: I’ve been fortunate enough to hear from almost a million people over the years, to talk with CEOs and bosses and customers around the world. And they all tell me precisely the same thing: it’s the motive force they demand, the person who will shake things up and move them forward.
Static is not an acceptable state. The status quo is no longer something we want at work or in politics or in any organization we care about.
The market is just waiting for people to step forward. I wrote the book for those people, the ones who’ve been hesitating to take the leap.
Question: Why did you start The Domino Project?
Seth Godin: The Domino Project is my latest attempt at "poking." It’s an independent publishing imprint founded by me and powered by Amazon. This is an opportunity to publish "idea manifestos" committed to readers, rather than being bookstore friendly. It’s named after the domino effect--where one powerful idea spreads down the line, pushing from person to person.
I have two audacious goals: I want to change the people who read (not enough do) and I want to change the way books are published (they’re too hard to find and spread). I honestly believe that a book can change a mind like nothing else, and that’s our focus. To help anyone to do work they’re proud of and to make a difference.
Question: Why Amazon?
Seth Godin: I partnered with Amazon so we could leverage what we both do best--Amazon is the leader in global distribution, multiple format production capabilities, and reaching people in the right way, and I want to spread powerful ideas to the people who want to read them.
For 15 years, Amazon has been building an audience and gaining our trust. Many surveys identify them as the most-trusted new brand in the world. Now that Amazon is interacting with more people more often, they have a chance to bring those customers new ideas in innovative ways. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to bring ideas worth spreading to a huge and eager audience.
Question: Who is Seth Godin?
Seth Godin: I’m an author, entrepreneur, and a person who starts things.
Review
“It’s easy to see why people pay to hear what he has to say.” --Time Magazine
One word reviews for Poke the Box
“Embarkable.” --Annie Duke, world poker champion, author and talk show host
“Rut-reversing.” --Sarah Jones, playwright
“Essential.” --Jill Greenberg, photographer, manipulator.org
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Customer Reviews
Here is a typically profound excerpt from a section titled 'How to Walk to Cleveland':
'You decide to walk to Cleveland. So you take a first step in the right direction. That's starting. You spend the rest of the day walking toward Cleveland, one step at a time, picking your feet up and putting them down. At the end of the day, twenty miles later, you stop at a hotel. And what happens the next morning? Either you quit the project or you start again, walking to Cleveland. In fact, every step is a new beginning. Sure, you're closer than you were yesterday or last week, but you're still heading toward Cleveland. Keep starting until you finish.'
If you found that excerpt inspiring, I thoroughly recommend the rest of the book.
This manifesto is aimed at nudging people, ordinary hard done by grafters, in run of the mill jobs to just instigate and do. No matter what our profession or even unemployed we can all start something every day. We aren't paid to open the door for the lady struggling with the baby buggy, but maybe we should, thats instigating in it's most basic format.
As Godin says, theres lots of hard workers, lots of ideas people, lots of things we could and should do, but until we do two things, instigate and ship, we have done nothing.
The economy has changed, the world has changed, this is our shot at moving with the world or being driftwood, our choice. Godin addresses our fears, our lizard brains and why doing nothing is probably the scariest thing of all to do!
As it turns out, he views himself as a "box" and has poked it to begin, to complete, and then (his term) to "ship" (i.e. publish) a book in which he affirms his thoughts and feelings about why it is (his word) "essential" for all of us to take the initiative to accomplish something (anything) "that really matters." No more waiting for approval and permission from anyone else. No more self-serving alibis. No more delusions and denials.
Long ago in a book he titled The Book, Alan Watts observes: "We need a new experience -- a new feeling of what it is to be 'I.' The lowdown (which is, of course, the secret and profound view) on life is that our normal sensation of self is a hoax, or, at best, a temporary role that we are playing, or have been conned into playing -- with our own tacit consent, just as every hypnotized person is basically willing to be hypnotized. The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego."
Here we are, 41 years later, and Godin encourages, indeed strongly urges his reader to cast aside what Watts views as a "temporary role" and come out from behind a "mask" that conceals a "separate, independent, and isolated ego." Build something really special. Try lots of stuff. Find a need and fill it as best you can. Seek out unfamiliar territory. Be careful but not cautious. Be bold but not foolish. Expect to fall down and then get up. Expect to make lots of mistakes and learn from each. Ignore "them" and what "they say." In "Song Of Myself," Walt Whitman acknowledges that he contradicts himself: "I am large, I contain multitudes." So are we, including Godin. So what? Get on with it!
He poked himself and produced this book and now hopes that what he shares in it will poke those who read it to poke themselves to DO something special. With all due respect to Godin's street smarts and iconoclastic thinking, Godin remains an incurable idealist with a steadfast faith in the human race. "And that's why I published this rant...."
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