Seth Godin - Work Quotes

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It's not enough to be aware of the domain you're working in, you need to understand it. Noticing things and being curious about how they work is the single most common trait I see in creative people. Once you can break the components down, you can put them back together into something brand new.

Seth Godin
The joy of art is particularly sweet, though, because it carries with it the threat of rejection, of failure, and of missed connections. It's precisely the high-wire act of "this might not work" that makes original art worth doing.

Seth Godin
Art is frightening. Art isn't pretty. Art isn't painting. Art isn't something you hang on the wall. Art is what we do when we're truly alive. An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it (all of it, the work, the process, the feedback from those we seek to connect with) personally.

Seth Godin
How often do our heroes stand still? It's hard to imagine Spock and Kirk landing on a planet and just relaxing for a month or two. Just hanging out has nothing to do with boldly going where no one has gone before. What makes us different from every other creature is that we go places, places we've not gone before. We do it willingly, and often. What makes our work and our life interesting is discovery, surprise, and the risk of exploration.

Seth Godin
Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you'd rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, tunnel under that barrier, drive through the other barrier. And after you've done that, to do it again the next day

Seth Godin
The one path that never works is the most common one: doing nothing at all.

Seth Godin
Seizing new ground, making connections between people or ideas, working without a map-these are works of art, and if you do them, you are an artist, regardless of whether you wear a smock, use a computer, or work with others all day long.

Seth Godin
The job is not your work; what you do with your heart and soul is the work.

Seth Godin
Many people are starting to realize that they work a lot and that working on stuff they believe in (and making things happen) is much more satisfying then just getting a paycheck and waiting to get fired (or die).

Seth Godin
Anxiety is experiencing failure in advance. Tell yourself enough vivid stories about the worst possible outcome of your work and you'll soon come to believe them. Worry is not preparation, and anxiety doesn't make you better.

Seth Godin
Excellence isn't about working extra hard to do what you're told. It's about taking the initiative to do work you decide is worth doing.

Seth Godin
Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.

Seth Godin
All great programmers learn the same way. They poke the box. They code something and see what the computer does. They change it and see what the computer does. They repeat the process again and again until they figure out how the box works.

Seth Godin
It turns out that the people who like their jobs the most are also the ones who are doing the best work, making the greatest impact, and changing the most.

Seth Godin
If your team is filled with people who work for the company, you'll soon be defeated by tribes of people who work for a cause.

Seth Godin
The next time you have a choice between chasing the charts (whichever charts you keep track of) and doing the work your customers crave, do the work instead.

Seth Godin
If you're not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it's almost certain you're not reaching your potential as a leader.

Seth Godin
Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.

Seth Godin
The librarian isn't a clerk who happens to work at a library. A librarian is a data hound, a guide, a sherpa and a teacher. The librarian is the interface between reams of data and the untrained but motivated user.

Seth Godin
Once you free yourself from the need for perfect acceptance, it's a lot easier to launch work that matters.

Seth Godin
If it were any other way, it would be easy. And if it were any other way, everyone would do it and your work would ultimately be devalued. The yin and yang are clear: without people pushing against your quest to do something worth talking about, it's unlikely it would be worth the journey. Persist.

Seth Godin
I think art is the ability to change people with your work, to see things as they are and then create stories, images, and interactions that change the marketplace.

Seth Godin
A brilliant author or businesswoman or senator or software engineer is brilliant only in tiny bursts. The rest of the time, they're doing work that most any trained person could do.

Seth Godin
Everyone will think it's stupid!" "Everyone says it's impossible." Guess what? Everyone works in the balloon factory and everyone is wrong.

Seth Godin