Start Something Tomorrow. Here's How.

Seth Godin is a man of enormous ideas and little tiny blogposts, which when cobbled together make for a fast and fulfilling book. Poke the Box---one of Godin's many fast, fulfilling reads---serves as a pamphlet on getting things done, like propaganda for the shipping of things.Here's a quick taste:

Imagine that the world had no middlemen, no publishers, no bosses, no HR folks, no one telling you what you couldn’t do. If you lived in that world, what would you do? Go. Do that.

... and ...

Soon is not as good as now.

... and ...

Poking doesn’t mean right. It means action.

It's this last point that's a good one to hold near and dear. Of the many fears that might keep us from producing work, fear of getting it right is always at or near the top. I know this is true for me; I imagine it might be true for others.Poking the box, shipping things, etc. is more about trying and less about perfection.

If you can’t fail, it doesn’t count.

The point is not in failing, succeeding, or floundering somewhere in between. The point is starting.

We can schedule for starting. Thursday, April 3rd, 3:05…start something.

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Leftover nuggets and quotes from Poke the Box

Starting means you’re going to finish. If it doesn’t ship, you’ve failed. You haven’t poked the box if the box doesn’t realize it’s been poked.Annie crossed a bridge that day. She became someone who starts something, someone who initiates, someone who is prepared to fail along the way if it helps her make a difference.Like a rock in a flowing river, you might be standing still, but given the movement around you, collisions are inevitable. The irony for the person who prefers no movement is that there’s far less turbulence around the log floating down that same river. It’s moving, it’s changing, but compared to the river around it, it’s relatively calm. The economy demands flux.Another way, probably a better one, is to have each member of the team announce what he’s afraid of.Whether you’re polishing a piece of furniture or an idea, the benefits diminish quickly. The polishing turns into stalling.The bizdev team has no fixed agenda, no easy way to decide what’s next. The bizdev team is in charge of starting things.If you had a chance to do a TED talk, what would it be about? What have you discovered, what do you know, what can you teach? You should do one. Even if you don’t do one, you should be prepared to do one.One reason organizations get stuck is that they stick with their “A” players so long that they lose their bench. In a world that’s changing, a team with no bench strength and a rigid outlook on the game will always end up losing.During the early days, though, no one is sure of exactly what needs to be done. It’s not a job; it’s a passion, a mission, and an experiment. The staff is mixed up, confused, and cross-pollinating like mad, trying to survive. When an initiative starts to work, the company hires in that direction.Image via Pattern Library