Quotes from Seth Godin

If all you do at work is hope to survive, your day can't be much fun. We're all working too hard. Putting in more hours than we'd like, nervous about the future, uncertain about our roles and our goals. We work too hard to hope for mere survival. Our goal must be to thrive and prosper, not just get by.

It's all a risk. Always. That's not true, actually. The only exception: it's a certainty that there's risk. The safer you play your plans for the future, the riskier it actually is. That's because the world is certainly, definitely, and more than possibly changing.

When we try to drill and practice someone into subservient obedience, we're stamping out the artist that lives within.

People don't believe what you tell them. They rarely believe what you show them. They often believe what their friends tell them. They always believe what they tell themselves. What leaders do: they give people stories they can tell themselves. Stories about the future and about change.

The only purpose of starting is to finish, and while the projects we do are never really finished, they must ship. Shipping means hitting the publish button on your blog, showing a presentation to the sales team, answering the phone, selling the muffins, sending out your references. Shipping is the collision between your work and the outside world.

The goal is to quit the tasks you're doing because you're hiding on behalf of the lizard brain and to push through the very tasks the lizard fears. Is

Stories (not ideas, not features, not benefits) are what spread from person to person.

For the frequent user, the impact of a cooler, better, easier-to-use input device is profound – so profound that many users are happy to proselytize to their peers. More sneezing of a Purple Cow.

Do extremely difficult work. That seems obvious, right? If you do something that's valued but scarce because it's difficult, you're more likely to be in demand and to be compensated fairly for what you do. The implication is stunning, though: When designing a project or developing a skill, seek out the most difficult parts to master and contribute. If it's easy, it's not for you.

Your work is too important to be left to how you feel today.

How many people would reach out and wonder (or complain) if you didn't send out that next email blast? That's a metric worth measuring and increasing.

One way to become creative is to discipline yourself to generate bad ideas. The worse the better. Do it a lot and magically you'll discover that some good ones slip through.

Going out of your way to find uncomfortable situations isn't natural, but it's essential.

Extraordinary benefits accrue to the tiny minority of people who are able to push just a tiny bit longer than most.

It doesn't hurt to ask Actually, it does hurt. It does hurt to ask the wrong way, to ask without preparation, to ask without permission. It hurts because you never get another chance to ask right.

consumers, we're too busy to pay attention to advertising, but we're desperate to find good stuff that solves our problems.

just about every company forgot the lesson of the Cow. Instead of taking the money and using it to create a series of innovations that could lead to the next Cow (at a higher, bigger level), these companies took profits.

The only thing that makes people and organizations great is their willingness to be not great along the way. The desire to fail on the way to reaching a bigger goal is the untold secret of success.

We sell feelings, status, and connection, not tasks or stuff.

Don't be different just to be different. Be different to be better.

Great work is not created for everyone. If it were, it would be average work.

Art is the unique work of a human being, work that touches another.

If times are tough, your peers and your boss may very well say that you can't afford to be remarkable. After all, we have to conserve, to play it safe; we don't have the money to make a mistake. In good times, however, those same people will tell you to relax, take it easy; we can afford to be conservative, to play it safe.

It's human nature to quit when it hurts. But it's that reflex that creates scarcity.