Book review: Linchpin

This book by Seth Godin is awesome. If you follow my blog at all, I know that I really dig the guy's thoughts and insights so the first sentence really shouldn't surpise you. However, this is probably the best book his has written. This is a sucker-punch of a 'just who are you going to be' book that I think I have ever read.

It basiclly breaks work down into two camps, the cog and the artist. While this might be a slight simplicfication, Seth works at laying out his case. That is that most jobs are done to spec, to the manual and therefore makes the person doing it a cog or an easily replaceable item. An artist on the other hand creates something no one has seen before. They navigate where there is no map. The write their own manuals.

Seth also talks at great length about what he calls 'the lizard brain' that is the hardwiring that we wall have to give up, to not do the radical thing, to run from change. He does give some great examples and thoughts about how to get past this.

The thing about Seth's books is that while they lay out the ideal, which means they are hard.

This has made me really examine what I do and also my motivations for doing my work. I have realized that there is a lot of crap that I let suck up my day (checking email every couple minutes, looking at Facebook on the hour) and also just meetings that I don't miss even though I don't need to be there. So I am looking for ways to stop the time-sucks, to loose myself of the draining 'work' that really doesn't ammount to anything. And looking for ways to make connections. To make art.