Good news / Bad news

The bad news is that sometime along my 55-minute walk into work, I lost my Opus card.

The good news it that there wasn't any money on it yet. Thank goodness for small favours.

Books of 2010: 21. Linchpin, by Seth Godin

I'm ambivalent on this one. A few years ago, I read another of Godin's books, Meatball Sundae, which explained that you cannot use "sundaes" (web 2.0 marketing) to sell "meatballs" (old-school, average products for average people). Which was a good argument, I suppose, except that Godin never really explained how you can transform your "meatballs" into "ice cream."

So when I picked up his new book, Linchpin, I wasn't sure what to expect. Unlike Godin's other books, Linchpin isn't about marketing, not really. It's about you, about asking yourself, "Are you indispensable?" Godin argues that every one of us has been a genius, at least one. We've made a connection no one made before, soothed an angry toddler or customer, delivered something brilliant. The challenge, he says, is to do it again. Godin insists that you -- yes, you -- can become an "artist," someone who does more than just crank out their daily widgets. You can touch people with your work. Indeed, you must. In an analysis reminiscent of A Whole New Mind (by Daniel Pink), Godin argues that just doing your job is no longer enough. If what you do can be reduced to a manual, then it can be outsourced; if it can be automated, it will be. It's the things you do that cannot be written down (your leadership, your human touch, your insights, your passion) that will make you indispensable.

So far, so good. But in typical Godin style, he doesn't actually tell you how to do this. He'd argue that that's the point: if he could tell you in a step by step process how to make yourself indispensable, everyone would be doing it and you wouldn't stand out anymore. But I find that much of the book consists of Godin repeating himself, hoping to drill the message home. Unlike some of my favourite books, Godin doesn't give you any actionable steps, and I think the book loses out because of that.

Rhetorical question of the night

Why is it that I can brainstorm with Marc for and hour and come up with a really awesome background for his roleplaying character, something we're both really excited about, but in three hours of brainstorming for my character, we both feel like we're hitting our heads against a brick wall?