How Can I Change My Life? Interesting Book to Read – Part 2

I think it’s time to get back to Seth Godin’s book – Linchpin. The part 1 of that review I published in my earlier post.

Any project, if broken down into sufficiently small, predictable parts, can be accomplished for awfully close to free.

wow! isn’t that nice? Lets stop for a moment and think about that. Lets say I want to learn how to speak Swedish, I know that it’s not possible to learn that language within one day, nor one week nor month. But if I decide to create a plan, some kind of agenda how I want to accomplish that – it looks more real. If I decide to study Swedish 30 minutes every day – there is a BIG chance that after 1 year I will be able to communicate in that language.
What I need is 2 things:

• plan/agenda
• consistency

Seth Godin gave a great example of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Wikipedia. A lot of money was spend on Britannica and Wikipedia was built for free and still is – millions of people are building Wikipedia every day.

You don’t become indispensable merely because you are different. But the only way to be indispensable is to be different. That’s because if you’re the same, so are plenty of other people.
The only way to get what you’re worth is to stand out, to exert emotional labor, to be seen as indispensable, and to produce interactions that organizations and people care deeply about.

• what can I offer others (organization, people)?
• what do I have or what can I create?
• am I the answer to organization’s needs?

So what is stopping us from becoming linchpins? Are not good enough? or maybe we are not smart enough (like all those very smart and famous people)? or what? how many more excuses are we able to create? Seth is asking a simple question (and I think those are the worst kind of questions):

You can’t – or you don’t want to?

I can and I want to become linchpin. Am I scared? of course I am but I want to create something, I want to be part of something important (important to me, to organization, etc.). I think that every time I feel that big black monster “fear” I need to remember that I am changing my life and that’s a big deal for me and that fear won’t win.

I love The New American Dream which Seth explained in his book:

• Be remarkable
• Be generous
• Create art
• Make judgment calls
• Connect people and ideas

Have you ever wonder how to do that? I think it’s not that hard to be generous or connect people and ideas. Lets remember about those small steps, that might help.

If you can be human at work (not a machine), you’ll discover a passion for work you didn’t know you had. When work becomes personal, your customers and coworkers are more connected and happier. And that creates even more value.
When you’re not a cog in a machine, an easily replaceable commodity, you’ll get paid what you’re worth. Which is more.

Exactly, where is your passion? ohh I know, what you can say “I have car loan, credit cards to pay. I don’t have time for passion.” But what if we won’t try, what if we stay as those cogs in a machine, what then? We will go through our lives without even knowing that we can do something more. Something which can make us proud.

From my own experience I can say that passion to what we do is fantastic. That passion made me feel way much better, and made my work better. My coworkers and I built a great workplace/team. And I am not sure if we would be able to built that without passion and engagement.

The question is: Do you want to become a linchpin or not? Do you want to try to change your life? You have only one chance to do something with your life…because you have only 1 life.