Seth's Blog : It's not a race



It's not a race

Some things are races, but not many.

A race is a competition in which the point is to win. You're not supposed to enjoy the ride, learn anything or make your community better. You're supposed to win. 

At the end of a race, people congratulate the winner, and point out how well she did by winning. The rest of the field, the losers, well, hey, you tried.

Once you see it that clearly, so many things are clearly not races. And when we treat life that way, we cheat our customers, the people we seek to serve, as well as ourselves.

We sometimes abbreviate, "he won a particular race," to, "he's a winner." They're not the same thing.

 

[PS Here's a free e-copy of Steven Pressfield's new book. No strings attached, just a chance to share it early. And Do The Work is worth seeking out.]

       

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Seth's Blog : "Things have gotten a little quiet..."



"Things have gotten a little quiet..."

In the old economy, social connection was done to us.

"There's nothing to do around here." "I'm bored." "Nothing's happening in this place."

You could whine about the fact that your college didn't have enough activities, or that the bar was 'dead'.

Today, though, the obligation is on us to make our own magic. To find two sticks and turn them into a game. To organize our own conversations, find our own connections... most of all, to bring generosity and energy to communities that don't have enough of either one.

Freedom and leverage is great, but it comes with responsibility. We're all curators/concierges/impresarios now.

If the association or the chat room or the street corner isn't what you need it to be, why not make it into the thing we're hoping for?

       

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• The marketing we deserve
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Seth's Blog : Raising the average



Raising the average

Great organizations are filled with people who are eagerly seeking to recruit people better than they are. Not just employees, but vendors, coaches and even competitors.

Most organizations seek to hire, "people like us." The rationale is that someone too good might not take the job, might get frustrated, might be easily lured away. 

A few aim for, "so good she scares me." A few aim for, "it'll raise our game."

This takes guts.

It takes guts for an employee or a group member to aggressively try to persuade people more passionate, more skilled or smarter to join in, because by raising the average, they also expose themselves to the fact that they're not as good as they used to be (relatively).

Can we take it a little further? What happens if we read a book we not quite sure we'll understand, or ski down a slope that's a little too hard or sign up for a project we're not certain we can easily do?

What happens if we go to a school where we think everyone is smarter than we are?

We are each the average of the people we hang out with and the experiences we choose.

The best way to end up mediocre is via tiny compromises.

       

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• Shields up
• "But where's the money?"
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