INTRODUCTION

THE NEW WORLD OF WORK

We Are Surrounded by Bureaucrats, Note Takers, Literalists, Manual Readers, TGIF Laborers, Map Followers, and Fearful Employees (Location 137)

What we want, what we need, what we must have are indispensable human beings. We need original thinkers, provocateurs, and people who care. (Location 149)

Artists are people with a genius for finding a new answer, a new connection, or a new way of getting things done. (Location 153)

Where Were You When the World Changed?

The easier people are to replace, the less they need to be paid. And so far, workers have been complicit in this commoditization. This is your opportunity. The indispensable employee brings humanity and connection and art to her organization. She is the key player, the one who’s difficult to live without, the person you can build something around. (Location 166)

If a Purple Cow is a product that’s worth talking about, the indispensable employee—I call her a linchpin—is a person who’s worth finding and keeping. (Location 171)

Thank You for Protecting Us from Our Fear

Like scared civilians eager to do whatever a despot tells them, we give up our freedoms and responsibilities in exchange for the certainty that comes from being told what to do. (Location 182)

People want to be told what to do because they are afraid (petrified) of figuring it out for themselves. So we take the deal. We agree to do a job in exchange for a set of instructions. And for the hundred years that it led to increasing standards of living, it seemed like a very good deal. (Location 184)

How Companies (Used to) Make Money

The difference between what an employee is paid and how much value she produces leads to profit. If the worker captures all the value in her salary, there’s no profit. As a result, capitalist profit-maximizing investors have long looked for a way to turn low-wage earners into high-value producers. Give someone who makes five dollars a day an efficient machine, a well-run assembly line, and a detailed manual, and you ought to be able to make five or twenty or a thousand times what you paid in labor. (Location 234)

The problem? Someone else is getting better than you at hiring cheap and competent workers. They can ship the work overseas, or buy more machines, or cut corners faster than you can. (Location 240)

The other problem? Consumers are not loyal to cheap commodities. They crave the unique, the remarkable, and the human. Sure, you can always succeed for a while with the cheapest, but you earn your place in the market with humanity and leadership. (Location 243)

Those are the only two choices. Win by being more ordinary, more standard, and cheaper. Or win by being faster, more remarkable, and more human. (Location 250)

A Century of Interchangeable, Disposable Labor

The system we grew up with is based on a simple formula: Do your job. Show up. Work hard. Listen to the boss. Stick it out. Be part of the system. You’ll be rewarded. That’s the scam. Strong words, but true. You’ve been scammed. You traded years of your life to be part of a giant con in which you are most definitely not the winner. If you’ve been playing that game, it’s no wonder you’re frustrated. That game is over. There are no longer any great jobs where someone else tells you precisely what to do. (Location 256)

(The Final Straw: The Law of the Mechanical Turk)

Here’s the law: Any project, if broken down into sufficiently small, predictable parts, can be accomplished for awfully close to free. (Location 262)

But by breaking the development of articles into millions of one-sentence or one-paragraph projects, Wikipedia took advantage of the law of the Mechanical Turk. Instead of relying on a handful of well-paid people calling themselves professionals, Wikipedia thrives by using the loosely coordinated work of millions of knowledgeable people, each happy to contribute a tiny slice of the whole. (Location 268)

The original Mechanical Turk was a chess-playing “computer” built in the same year that the Encyclopaedia Britannica was founded. Invented by Wolfgang von Kempelen, the Turk wasn’t actually a computer at all, but merely a box with a small person hidden inside. A person pretending to be a computer. (Location 272)

For example, John Jantsch took an interview he did with me (about forty minutes of audio) and posted it to a site that uses the Turk as its labor. For just a few dollars, the site took the recording, chopped it into tiny bits, and parceled it out to anonymous laborers who each transcribed their little section. Less than three hours later, it was sewn back together and the typed transcript was delivered to John. Instead of paying the industry rate of two dollars a minute (about eighty dollars), services like CastingWords do transcription for less than fifty cents a minute using the Turk. They pay their workers (all of whom speak English, know how to type, and have a computer with an Internet connection) about nineteen cents for each minute transcribed. (Location 278)

The Internet has turned white-collar work into something akin to building a pyramid in Egypt. No one could build the entire thing, but anyone can haul one brick into place. Here’s the scary part: some bosses want their employees (you?) to become the next Mechanical Turk. Is that your dream job? (Location 286)

(The Pursuit of Interchangeability)

The essence of mass production is that every part is interchangeable. Time, space, men, motion, money, and material—each was made more efficient because every piece was predictable and separate. Ford’s discipline was to avoid short-term gains in exchange for always seeking the interchangeable, always standardizing. (Location 303)

In other words, first you have interchangeable parts, then you have interchangeable workers. By 1925, the die was cast. The goal was to hire the lowest-skilled laborer possible, at the lowest possible wage. To do anything else was financial suicide. That’s the labor market we were trained for. (Location 307)

Was the System Always About Obedience?

Having a factory job is not a natural state. It wasn’t at the heart of being a human until recently. We’ve been culturally brainwashed to believe that accepting the hierarchy and lack of responsibility that come with a factory job is the one way, the only way, and the best way. (Location 317)

Art and Initiative and Who’s an Artist Now?

Now, success means being an artist. In fact, history is now being written by the artists while the factory workers struggle. (Location 330)

The Myth of the White-Collar Job

Average Is Over

Our world no longer fairly compensates people who are cogs in a giant machine. There’s stress because for many of us, that’s all we know. Schools and society have reinforced this approach for generations. (Location 349)

Leaders don’t get a map or a set of rules. Living life without a map requires a different attitude. It requires you to be a linchpin. (Location 353)

When the New System Replaces the Old

In our rush to build, profit, acquire, and otherwise leverage our efforts, we almost always pick the fast and cheap alternative, particularly if it’s as good as (or better than) what it replaced. (Location 374)

The End of ABC and the Search for the Difference Maker

Some jobs are likely to remain poorly paid, low in respect, and high in turnover. These are jobs where attendance (showing up) is all that really matters. Other jobs, the really good jobs, are going to be filled with indispensable people, people who make a difference by doing work that’s really hard to find from anyone else. (Location 421)

Owning the Means of Production

When labor is dependent on management for the factory and the machines and the systems they use to do their work, the relationship is fraught with issues over power and control. The factory needs labor, sure, but labor really needs the factory. It was always easier for management to replace labor than it was for labor to find a new factory. Today, the means of production = a laptop computer with Internet connectivity. Three thousand dollars buys a worker an entire factory. This change is a fundamental shift in power and control. When you can master the communication, conceptual, and connectivity elements of the new work, then you have more power than management does. And if management attracts, motivates, and retains great talent, then it has more leverage than the competition. (Location 425)

The Hierarchy of Value

There are always more people at the bottom of the stairs, doing hard work that’s easy to learn. As you travel up the hierarchy, the work gets easier, the pay gets better, and the number of people available to do the work gets smaller. Lots of people can lift. That’s not paying off anymore. A few people can sell. Almost no one puts in the work to create or invent. Up to you. (Location 448)

(How the Average Subsidize the Merely Mediocre—and the Above Average Get Screwed)

Exceptional performers are starting to realize that it doesn’t pay to do factory work at factory wages only to subsidize the boss. (Location 461)

Remarkable People

Now, the only way to grow is to stand out, to create something worth talking about, to treat people with respect and to have them spread the word. (Location 466)

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. (Location 474)

THINKING ABOUT YOUR CHOICE

Can You Become Indispensable?

In every case, the linchpins among us are not the ones born with a magical talent. No, they are people who have decided that a new kind of work is important, and trained themselves to do it. (Location 484)

Limited or Unlimited? (Location 512)

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You can see your marketplace as being limited, a zero-sum game, a place where in order for one person to win, another must lose. Or you can see it as unlimited. A place where talent creates growth and the market increases in size. (Location 513)

Note: Creator vs. Competitor

In a zero-sum game, the generous among us are fools, easily taken advantage of. On the other hand, if you believe that great talent leads to more innovation and more productivity, which then lead to more demand, generosity is the very best strategy. (Location 518)

The linchpin sees the world very differently. Exceptional insight, productivity, and generosity make markets bigger and more efficient. This situation leads to more opportunities and ultimately a payoff for everyone involved. The more you give, the more the market gives back. Abundance is possible, but only if we can imagine it and then embrace it. (Location 525)

The New American Dream (Location 554)

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Do you remember the old American Dream? It struck a chord with millions of people (in the United States and in the rest of the world, too). Here’s how it goes: Keep your head down Follow instructions Show up on time Work hard Suck it up . . . you will be rewarded. As we’ve seen, that dream is over. (Location 555)

The new American Dream, though, the one that markets around the world are embracing as fast as they can, is this: Be remarkable Be generous Create art Make judgment calls Connect people and ideas . . . and we have no choice but to reward you. (Location 560)

“Not My Job” (Location 571)

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In a factory, doing a job that’s not yours is dangerous. Now, if you’re a linchpin, doing a job that’s not getting done is essential. (Location 580)

More Obedience (Location 581)

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Would your organization be more successful if your employees were more obedient? Or, consider for a second: would you be more successful if your employees were more artistic, motivated, connected, aware, passionate, and genuine? You can’t have both, of course. (Location 582)

Secret Memo for Employees (Location 588)

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When you’re not a cog in a machine, an easily replaceable commodity, you’ll get paid what you’re worth. (Location 595)

Secret Memo for Employers (Location 597)

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When your organization becomes more human, more remarkable, faster on its feet, and more likely to connect directly with customers, it becomes indispensable. The very thing that made your employee a linchpin makes YOU a linchpin. (Location 609)

When people realize that they are not a cog in a machine, an easily replaceable commodity, they take the challenge and grow. They produce more than you pay them to, because you are paying them with something worth more than money. (Location 612)

In exchange, you’re giving them freedom, responsibility, and respect, which are priceless. (Location 615)

INDOCTRINATION: HOW WE GOT HERE (Location 648)

Mediocre Obedience (Location 649)

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We’ve been taught to be a replaceable cog in a giant machine. We’ve been taught to consume as a shortcut to happiness. We’ve been taught not to care about our job or our customers. And we’ve been taught to fit in. (Location 650)

We’ve bought into a model that taught us to embrace the system, to spend for pleasure, and to separate ourselves from our work. We’ve been taught that this approach works, but it doesn’t (not anymore). And this disconnect keeps us from succeeding, cripples the growth of our society, and makes us really stressed. (Location 653)

It seems “natural” to live the life so many of us live, but in fact, it’s quite recent and totally manmade. We exist in a corporate manufacturing mindset, one so complete that anyone off the grid seems like an oddity. (Location 656)

We’ve been trained to believe that mediocre obedience is a genetic fact for most of the population, but it’s interesting to note that this trait doesn’t show up until after a few years of schooling. (Location 664)

Description of the Factory (Location 666)

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I define a factory as an organization that has figured it out, a place where people go to do what they’re told and earn a paycheck. Factories have been the backbone of our economy for more than a century, and without them we wouldn’t have the prosperity we have today. That doesn’t mean you want to work in one. (Location 670)

You Get What You Focus On (Location 674)

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Today, our leaders worry about things like global warming, security, limited resources, and maintaining our infrastructure. (Location 674)

A hundred years ago, our leaders worried about two things that seem truly archaic to us now: How to find enough factory workers; and How to avoid overproduction. (Location 676)

FACTORY WORKERS (Location 678)

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If human beings are a natural resource for factories, then your goal as a factory owner is to get good ones, cheap. So captains of industry and government reorganized our society around this goal. (Location 681)

The launch of universal (public and free) education was a profound change in the way our society works, and it was a deliberate attempt to transform our culture. And it worked. We trained millions of factory workers. (Location 686)

AVOIDING OVERPRODUCTION (Location 688)

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Keeping up with the Joneses is not a genetic predisposition. It’s an invented need, and a recent one. (Location 696)

It’s almost impossible to imagine a school with a sign that said: “We teach people to take initiative and become remarkable artists, to question the status quo, and to interact with transparency. And our graduates understand that consumption is not the answer to social problems.” And yet that might be exactly what we need. (Location 701)

From Superhero to Mediocreman (and Back Again) (Location 705)

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If you’re insecure, the obvious response to my call to become a linchpin is, “I’m not good enough at anything to be indispensable.” The typical indoctrinated response is that great work and great art and remarkable output are the domain of someone else. You think that your job is to do the work that needs doing, anonymously. Of course, this isn’t true, but it’s what you’ve been taught to believe. (Location 710)

Fear at School (Location 729)

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Studies show us that things learned in frightening circumstances are sticky. We remember what we learn on the battlefield, or when we burn a finger on a hot tea kettle. We remember what we learn in situations where successful action avoids a threat. Schools have figured this out. They need shortcuts in order to successfully process millions of students a year, and they’ve discovered that fear is a great shortcut on the way to teaching compliance. Classrooms become fear-based, test-based battlefields, when they could so easily be organized to encourage the heretical thought we so badly need. (Location 730)

Does School Work? (Location 743)

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School does a great job of teaching students to do what we set out to teach them. It works. The problem is that what we’re teaching is the wrong stuff. (Location 744)

Here’s what we’re teaching kids to do (with various levels of success): Fit in Follow instructions Use #2 pencils Take good notes Show up every day Cram for tests and don’t miss deadlines Have good handwriting Punctuate Buy the things the other kids are buying Don’t ask questions Don’t challenge authority Do the minimum amount required so you’ll have time to work on another subject Get into college Have a good résumé Don’t fail Don’t say anything that might embarrass you Be passably good at sports, or perhaps extremely good at being a quarterback Participate in a large number of extracurricular activities Be a generalist Try not to have the other kids talk about you Once you learn a topic, move on (Location 746)

The problem doesn’t lie with the great teachers. Great teachers strive to create linchpins. The problem lies with the system that punishes artists and rewards bureaucrats instead. (Location 763)

Here’s what Woodrow Wilson said about public education: “We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” (Location 765)

The model is simple. Capitalists need compliant workers, workers who will be productive and willing to work for less than the value that their productivity creates. The gap between what they are paid and what the capitalist receives is profit. (Location 771)

“I Am Good at School” (Location 778)

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Being good at school is a fine skill if you intend to do school forever. For the rest of us, being good at school is a little like being good at Frisbee. It’s nice, but it’s not relevant unless your career involves homework assignments, looking through textbooks for answers that are already known to your supervisors, complying with instructions and then, in high-pressure settings, regurgitating those facts with limited processing on your part. (Location 781)

What They Should Teach in School (Location 788)

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Only two things: 1. Solve interesting problems 2. Lead (Location 789)

SOLVE INTERESTING PROBLEMS (Location 790)

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“Interesting” is the key word. Answering questions like “When was the War of 1812?” is a useless skill in an always-on Wikipedia world. It’s far more useful to be able to answer the kind of question for which using Google won’t help. Questions like, “What should I do next?” (Location 791)

LEAD (Location 798)

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Leading is a skill, not a gift. You’re not born with it, you learn how. And schools can teach leadership as easily as they figured out how to teach compliance. (Location 798)

While schools provide outlets for natural-born leaders, they don’t teach it. And leadership is now worth far more than compliance is. (Location 800)

BECOMING THE LINCHPIN (Location 807)

You Can’t Get Far Without One (Location 808)

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1. Your business needs more linchpins. It’s scary to rely on a particular employee, but in a postindustrial economy, you have no choice. 2. You are capable of becoming a linchpin. And if you do, you’ll discover that it’s worth the effort. (Location 816)

Linchpins and Leverage (Location 844)

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The law of linchpin leverage: The more value you create in your job, the fewer clock minutes of labor you actually spend creating that value. In other words, most of the time, you’re not being brilliant. Most of the time, you do stuff that ordinary people could do. (Location 850)

Our economy now rewards artists far more than any other economy in history ever has. (Location 869)

The Tedium, Pain, and Insecurity of Being Mediocre (Location 890)

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Finding security in mediocrity is an exhausting process. You can work only so many hours, fret only so much. Being a slightly better typist or a slightly faster coder is insufficient. You’re always looking over your shoulder, always trying to be a little less mediocre than the guy next to you. It wears you out. It’s impossible to do the work at the same time you’re in pain. The moment-to-moment insecurity of so many jobs robs you of the confidence you need to actually do great work. (Location 892)

Depth of Knowledge Alone Is Not Enough (Location 911)

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Depth of knowledge combined with good judgment is worth a lot. Depth of knowledge combined with diagnostic skills or nuanced insight is worth a lot, too. (Location 914)

Depth of knowledge combined with good judgment is worth a lot. Depth of knowledge combined with diagnostic skills or nuanced insight is worth a lot, too. Knowledge alone, though, I’d rather get faster and cheaper from an expert I find online. (Location 914)

The Best Reason to Be an Expert in Your Field

Expertise gives you enough insight to reinvent what everyone else assumes is the truth. (Location 936)

Emotional Labor and Making Maps

“Emotional labor” was a term first coined forty years ago by sociologist Arlie Hochschild in her book The Managed Heart. She described it as the “management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display.” In other words, it’s work you do with your feelings, not your body. Emotional labor is the hard work of making art, producing generosity, and exposing creativity. Working without a map involves both vision and the willingness to do something about what you see. Emotional labor is what you get paid to do, and one of the most difficult types of emotional labor is staring into the abyss of choice and picking a path. (Location 941)

Degrees of Freedom

One of the easy things about riding the train is that there aren’t many choices. The track goes where the track goes. Sure, sometimes there are junctions and various routes, but generally speaking, there are only two choices—go or don’t go. Driving is a little more complicated. In a car you can choose from literally millions of destinations. (Location 954)

In the face of an infinite sea of choices, it’s natural to put blinders on, to ask for a map, to beg for instructions, or failing that, to do exactly what you did last time, even if it didn’t work. Linchpins are able to embrace the lack of structure and find a new path, one that works. (Location 962)

Krulak’s Law: Linchpins Whether You Want Them or Not

Krulak’s law is simple: The closer you get to the front, the more power you have over the brand. (Location 1014)

Organizations that can bring humanity and flexibility to their interactions with other human beings will thrive. (Location 1018)

A League of Your Own

The challenge of becoming a linchpin solely based on your skill at plying a craft or doing a task or playing a sport is that the market can find other people with that skill with surprising ease. Plenty of people can play the flute as well as you can, clean a house as well as you can, program in Python as well as you can. If all you can do is the task and you’re not in a league of your own at doing the task, you’re not indispensable. (Location 1035)

Emotional labor is available to all of us, but is rarely exploited as a competitive advantage. (Location 1045)

Fearless, Reckless, and Feckless

Organizations seek out people who are fearless, but go out of their way to weed out the reckless. What’s the difference? (Location 1066)

Fearless doesn’t really mean “without fear.” What it means in practice is, “unafraid of things that one shouldn’t be afraid of.” ... It means being willing to take intellectual risks and to forge a new path. (Location 1068)

Reckless, on the other hand, means rushing into places that only a fool would go. (Location 1071)

Feckless? Feckless is the worst of all. Ineffective, indifferent, and lazy. (Location 1073)

Where Do You Put the Fear?

The linchpin feels the fear, acknowledges it, then proceeds. I can’t tell you how to do this; I think the answer is different for everyone. What I can tell you is that in today’s economy, doing it is a prerequisite for success. (Location 1081)

The Pursuit of Perfect

Art is never defect-free. Things that are remarkable never meet spec, because that would make them standardized, not worth talking about. (Location 1120)

Rough Edges and Perfect (Location 1121)

Avoiding the treadmill of defect-free is not easy to sell to someone who’s been trained in the perfection worldview since first grade (which is most of us). But artists embrace the mystery of our genius instead. They understand that there is no map, no step-by-step plan, and no way to avoid blame now and then. (Location 1134)

If it wasn’t a mystery, it would be easy. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be worth much. (Location 1137)

The Problem with Bowling

Bowling is an asymptotic sport. The best you can do is perfect: 300, that’s it. There’s a ceiling. (Location 1139)

The problem is that once you’re heading down this road, there’s no room left for amazing improvements and remarkable innovations. Either you rolled ten strikes or you didn’t. (Location 1141)

If you could figure out how to bowl 320, that would be amazing. Until that happens, pick a different sport if you want to be a linchpin. (Location 1143)

The Downside of Good

The problem with meeting expectations is that it’s not remarkable. It won’t change the recipient of your work, and it’s easy to emulate (which makes you easy to replace). As a result of the tsunami of pretty good (and the persistence of really lousy), the market for truly exceptional is better than ever. (Location 1153)

The solution lies in seeking out something that is neither good nor perfect. You want something remarkable, nonlinear, game changing, and artistic. (Location 1157)

If you can’t be remarkable, perhaps you should consider doing nothing until you can. (Location 1160)

The Work Whisperer

As our economy has matured and mechanized, seeking out and adhering to the norm has become unprofitable. It’s unprofitable to establish a career around the idea of doing what the manual says. So, consider this your whispered call to freedom. The world wants you (needs you) to bring your genius self to work. (Location 1183)

Do You Need a Résumé?

This is controversial, but here goes: if you’re remarkable, amazing, or just plain spectacular, you probably shouldn’t have a résumé at all. (Location 1187)

If you’ve got experience in doing the things that make you a linchpin, a résumé hides that fact. (Location 1188)

If you don’t have a résumé, what do you have? How about three extraordinary letters of recommendation from people the employer knows or respects? Or a sophisticated project an employer can see or touch? Or a reputation that precedes you? Or a blog that is so compelling and insightful that they have no choice but to follow up? Some say, “Well, that’s fine, but I don’t have those.” Yeah, that’s my point. If you don’t have these things, what leads you to believe that you are remarkable, amazing, or just plain spectacular? It sounds to me like if you don’t have more than a résumé, you’ve been brainwashed into compliance. (Location 1196)

Google You

The only way to prove (as opposed to assert) that you are an indispensable linchpin—someone worth recruiting, moving to the top of the pile, and hiring—is to show, not tell. Projects are the new résumés. (Location 1213)

If your Google search isn’t what you want (need) it to be, then change it. Change it through your actions and connections and generosity. Change it by so over-delivering that people post about you. Change it by creating a blog that is so insightful about your area of expertise that others refer to it. And change it by helping other people online. (Location 1215)

How to Get a Great Job

find a company that understands the value of the linchpin. Find a company that doesn’t use a computer to scan résumés, a company that hires people, not paper. (Location 1225)

You are not your résumé. You are your work. (Location 1235)

If the game is designed for you to lose, don’t play that game. Play a different one. (Location 1235)

It’s easy to find a way to spend your entire day doing busywork. Trivial work doesn’t require leaning. The challenge is to replace those tasks with rule-breaking activities instead. (Location 1262)

What’s in It for Me

Author Richard Florida polled twenty thousand creative professionals and gave them a choice of thirty-eight factors that motivated them to do their best at work. The top ten, ranked in order: 1. Challenge and responsibility 2. Flexibility 3. A stable work environment 4. Money 5. Professional development 6. Peer recognition 7. Stimulating colleagues and bosses 8. Exciting job content 9. Organizational culture 10. Location and community (Location 1301)

Only one of these is a clearly extrinsic motivator (#4, money). The rest are either things we do for ourselves or things that we value because of who we are. (Location 1309)

Remarkable People Deserve Remarkable Jobs

If you want a job where you are treated as indispensable, given massive amounts of responsibility and freedom, expected to expend emotional labor, and rewarded for being a human, not a cog in a machine, then please don’t work hard to fit into the square-peg job you found on Craigslist. (Location 1322)

IS IT POSSIBLE TO DO HARD WORK IN A CUBICLE?

Labor Means Difficult

Apparently, we don’t have a lot of trouble understanding that work might involve physical labor, heavy lifting, or long periods of fatigue. But, for some reason, we hesitate to invest a more important sort of labor into work that really matters. Emotional labor is the task of doing important work, even when it isn’t easy. (Location 1331)

Showing up unwilling to do emotional labor is a short-term strategy now, because over time, organizations won’t pay extra for someone who merely does the easy stuff. (Location 1334)

We’re not at all surprised when a craftsman sharpens his saw or an athlete trains hard. But when an information worker develops her skills at confronting fear (whether it’s in making connections, speaking, inventing, selling, or dealing with difficult situations) we roll our eyes. (Location 1336)

Tags: q

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It turns out that digging into the difficult work of emotional labor is exactly what we’re expected (and needed) to do. Work is nothing but a platform for art and the emotional labor that goes with it. (Location 1338)

Volunteering to Do Emotional Labor

Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn’t matter. The intent does. (Location 1396)

Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another. (Location 1398)

An artist is an individual who creates art. The more people you change, the more you change them, the more effective your art is. Art is not related to craft, except to the extent that the craft helps deliver the change. (Location 1409)

Gifts and Art and Emotional Labor

Art is unique, new, and challenging to the status quo. It’s not decoration, it’s something that causes change. (Location 1446)

Art cannot be merely commerce. It must also be a gift. The artist creates his idea knowing that it will spread freely, without recompense. Sure, the physical manifestation of the art might sell for a million dollars, but that painting or that song is also going to be enjoyed by someone who didn’t pay for it. (Location 1447)

Most of all, art involves labor. Not the labor of lifting a brush or typing a sentence, but the emotional labor of doing something difficult, taking a risk and extending yourself. It’s entirely possible that you’re an artist. Sometimes, though, caught up in the endless cycle of commerce, we forget about the gift nature of art, we fail to do the hard work of emotional labor, and we cease to be artists. (Location 1453)

Selling Yourself Short

The moment you are willing to sell your time for money is the moment you cease to be the artist you’re capable of being. (Location 1460)

As your work gets better and your art becomes more important, competition for your gifts will increase and you’ll discover that you can be choosier about whom you give them to. (Location 1467)

Passion

Passion is a desire, insistence, and willingness to give a gift. (Location 1471)

“Wait! Are You Saying That I Have to Stop Following Instructions and Start Being an Artist? Someone Who Dreams Up New Ideas and Makes Them Real? Someone Who Finds New Ways to Interact, New Pathways to Deliver Emotion, New Ways to Connect? Someone Who Acts Like a Human, Not a Cog? Me? ”   Yes. (Location 1495)

The Poverty Mentality

When you give something away, you benefit more than the recipient does. The act of being generous makes you rich beyond measure, and as the goods or services spread through the community, everyone benefits. (Location 1504)

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. (Location 1530)

The Myth of Project-Specific Passion

The combination of passion and art is what makes someone a linchpin. (Location 1560)

Understanding Gifts

In everything you do, it’s possible to be an artist, at least a little bit. Not on demand, not in the same way each time, and not for everyone. But if you’re willing to suspend your selfish impulses, you can give a gift to your customer or boss or coworker or a passerby. And the gift is as much for you as it is for the recipient. (Location 1581)

Who Is It For?

The process of making the art and the results produced are solely aimed at the creator. Whistling as you walk through the woods is a form of art, but you’re not doing it hoping a squirrel will applaud. (Location 1585)

An artist’s job is to change us. When you have a boss, your job is to please the boss, not to change her. It’s okay to have someone you work for, someone who watches over you, someone who pays you. But the moment you treat that person like a boss, like someone in charge of your movements and your output, you are a cog, not an artist. (Location 1607)

The easier it is to quantify, the less it’s worth. (Location 1630)

Tags: q

Note: .q

The Job Versus Your Art

The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed. Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can. The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it’s a job. Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people. (Location 1632)

Can Your Work Become Your Art?

The job is not your work; what you do with your heart and soul is the work. (Location 1643)

Artists Are Optimists

Optimism is the most important human trait, because it allows us to evolve our ideas, to improve our situation, and to hope for a better tomorrow. And all artists have this optimism, because artists can honestly say that they are working to make things better. (Location 1655)

Optimism is for artists, change agents, linchpins, and winners. Whining and fear, on the other hand, are largely self-fulfilling prophecies in organizations under stress. (Location 1660)

The Passion to Spread

One author I know is willing to watch his books sit unsold, because that’s a better outcome to him than changing the essence of what he’s written. He has passion for his craft, but no real passion for spreading his ideas. And if the ideas don’t spread, if no gift is received, then there is no art, only effort. When an artist stops work before his art is received, his work is unfulfilled. (Location 1669)

Fear of Art

Why didn’t you speak up at the meeting yesterday? When you had a chance to reach out and interact with a co-worker in a way that would have changed everything, what held you back? That proposal for a new project that’s been sitting on your hard drive for a year . (Location 1687)

I think it’s fear, and I think we’re even afraid to talk about this sort of fear. Fear of art. Of being laughed at. Of standing out and of standing for something. Now, though, the economy is forcing us to confront this fear. The economy is ruthlessly punishing the fearful, and increasing the benefits to the few who are brave enough to create art and generous enough to give it away. (Location 1690)

THE RESISTANCE

“Real Artists Ship”

Artists don’t think outside the box, because outside the box there’s a vacuum. Outside of the box there are no rules, there is no reality. You have nothing to interact with, nothing to work against. If you set out to do something way outside the box (designing a time machine, or using liquid nitrogen to freeze Niagara Falls), then you’ll never be able to do the real work of art. You can’t ship if you’re far outside the box. Artists think along the edges of the box, because that’s where things get done. That’s where the audience is, that’s where the means of production are available, and that’s where you can make an impact. (Location 1705)

the greatest shortage in our society is an instinct to produce. To create solutions and hustle them out the door. To touch the humanity inside and connect to the humans in the marketplace. (Location 1713)

The Contradiction Between Shipping and Changing the World

I think the discipline of shipping is essential in the long-term path to becoming indispensable. (Location 1718)

Not shipping on behalf of your goal of changing the world is often a symptom of the resistance. Call its bluff, ship always, and then change the world. (Location 1725)

What It Means to Ship

The only purpose of starting is to finish, and while the projects we do are never really finished, they must ship. (Location 1727)

The French refer to esprit d’escalier, the clever comeback that you think of a few minutes after the moment has passed. This is unshipped insight, and it doesn’t count for much. (Location 1730)

Shipping something out the door, doing it regularly, without hassle, emergency, or fear—this is a rare skill, something that makes you indispensable. (Location 1732)

Thrashing

Thrashing is the apparently productive brainstorming and tweaking we do for a project as it develops. Thrashing might mean changing the user interface or rewriting an introductory paragraph. Sometimes thrashing is merely a tweak; other times it involves major surgery. Thrashing is essential. The question is: when to thrash? (Location 1742)

Professional creators thrash early. The closer the project gets to completion, the fewer people see it and the fewer changes are permitted. Every software project that has missed its target date (every single one) is a victim of late thrashing. The creators didn’t have the discipline to force all the thrashing to the beginning. They fell victim to the resistance. (Location 1748)

Coordination

Coordinating teams of people becomes exponentially more difficult as the group gets larger. (Location 1755)

There are two solutions to the coordination problem, and both of them make people uncomfortable, because both challenge our resistance. 1. Relentlessly limit the number of people allowed to thrash. That means you need formal procedures for excluding people, even well-meaning people with authority. And you need secrecy. If you have a choice between being surprised (and watching a great project ship on time) or being involved (and participating in the late launch of a mediocre project), which do you want? You must pick one or the other. 2. Appoint one person (a linchpin) to run it. Not to co-run it or to lead a task force or to be on the committee. One person, a human being, runs it. Her name on it. Her decisions. (Location 1762)

Get scared early, not late. Be brave early, not late. Thrash now, not later. It’s too expensive to thrash later. (Location 1768)

The Resistance: Your Lizard Brain

The lizard brain is the reason you’re afraid, the reason you don’t do all the art you can, the reason you don’t ship when you can. The lizard brain is the source of the resistance. (Location 1780)

Your mind, the thing that drives you crazy and makes you special, has two distinct sections, the daemon and the resistance. The daemon is the source of great ideas, groundbreaking insights, generosity, love, connection, and kindness. The resistance spends all its time insulating the world from our daemon. The resistance lives inside the lizard brain. (Location 1783)

Daemon is a Greek term (the Romans called it a “genius”). The Greeks believed that the daemon was a separate being inside each of us. The genius living inside of us would struggle to express itself in art or writing or some other endeavor. When the genius felt like showing up, great stuff happened. If not, you were sort of out of luck. (Location 1788)

Artistry, it seems, always leads to anguish. This anguish is caused by the clash between the daemon and the resistance. Society pushes artists to be geniuses, as opposed to encouraging artists to allow the genius within to flourish. (Location 1793)

Every time you find yourself following the manual instead of writing the manual, you’re avoiding the anguish and giving in to the resistance. (Location 1797)

The daemon is the artist inside of you; your work is just to allow it to do its thing. (Location 1799)

In his classic book The War of Art, Steven Pressfield calls our inability to easily free the daemon “the resistance.” (Location 1801)

Pressfield says that the daemon’s enemy is the resistance. Your lizard brain, the part that the daemon has no control over, is working overtime to get you to shut up, sit down, and do your (day) job. It will invent stories, illnesses, emergencies, and distractions in order to keep the genius bottled up. (Location 1802)

The resistance is nefarious and clever. It creates diseases, procrastination, and most especially, rationalization. (Location 1807)

The resistance has been around for a million years and the lizard brain will not give up easily. While the neocortex (that’s where your daemon lives) is much newer from an evolutionary standpoint, it’s not stronger. Given the chance, the lizard brain will shut you down and the resistance will win. (Location 1809)

How the Resistance Evolved

There are several small parts of your brain near the end of your spinal cord responsible for survival and other wild-animal traits. The whole thing is called the basal ganglia, and there are two almond-shaped bits in everyone’s brain. Scientists call these the amygdala, and this mini-brain apparently takes over whenever you are angry, afraid, aroused, hungry, or in search of revenge. It’s only recently that our brains evolved to allow big thoughts, generosity, speech, consciousness, and yes, art. (Location 1825)

When you look at a picture of the brain, the new part is what you see: the neocortex. That’s the wrinkly gray part on the outside. It’s big, but it’s weak. In the face of screaming resistance from the amygdala, the rest of your brain is helpless. It freezes… (Location 1829)

The challenge, then, is to create an environment where the lizard snoozes. You can’t beat it, so you must seduce it. One part of your brain worries about survival and anger… (Location 1831)

when put on alert, the lizard brain wins, every time, unless you’ve established new habits and better… (Location 1835)

(Evolving a Brain That Could Create…

Quick oversimplified biology lesson: Here are four of the major… ... As you go down the list, each system becomes more civilized… ... Each day, she’d visit her doctor. He would shake her hand, reintroduce himself, and they would start over. One day, in a fairly unethical experiment, he put a thumbtack in his hand. When they shook hands, she was pinched. It hurt. He explained to her what he had done, and of course, an hour later she had forgotten all about it. The next day, though, when the doctor extended his hand, she flinched. ... This was her amygdala at work. It has its own memory, its own survival system in place. (Location 1838)

1. Brain Stem—breathing and other unconscious survival functions 2. Limbic System—the lizard brain. Anger and revenge and sex and fear. 3. Cerebellum—coordination and motor control 4. Cerebrum—the newest and most sophisticated part of our brain, and also the one that is always overruled by the other three parts. There are four lobes to the cerebrum, and their functions are the stuff to be proud of: Frontal Lobe: reasoning, planning, parts of speech, movement, problem solving Parietal Lobe: movement, orientation, recognition, perception of stimuli Occipital Lobe: eyesight (and the essential,… (Location 1840)

You can’t give a speech while drowning. You can’t fall in love while having a heart attack. You can’t write a sonnet at the same time you’re vomiting from being on a roller coaster. The metaphor goes like this: the older a brain system is on the evolutionary scale (and the closer to the brain stem), the more power it has to suspend the actions of the younger… (Location 1850)

More than fifty years ago, physician and neuroscientist Paul MacLean did research at Yale and at the National Institute of Mental Health. He laid out what he called triune theory, which led to the thinking behind the lizard brain. Combine this with Antonio Damasio’s work in understanding the role of the orbitofrontal cortex in integrating the lizard with the more rational parts of the… (Location 1855)

Neurologists studying brain disorders have discovered remarkable behaviors. In one case, a woman suffered from severe short-term memory loss. Anything more than five minutes old never happened. (Location 1865)

(Eye Contact and the Lizard Brain)

The Rotterdam Zoo now distributes special eyeglasses for visitors to the gorilla area. The glasses are sort of like the 3D glasses from the movies, except that they don’t change what you see. They change what the gorilla sees. They have a picture painted on them of your eyes looking to the side. This way, when you are near the gorillas, it doesn’t look like you’re making eye contact with them. Which is threatening. Which freaks the gorillas out and has led to attacks. (Location 1890)

Eye contact, all by itself, is enough to throw your lizard brain into a tizzy. Imagine how scary it must be to set out to do something that will get you noticed, or perhaps even criticized. There’s a reason that the number-one fear reported by most people is public speaking. Public speaking is one of the worst things the lizard brain can imagine. (Location 1895)

The Resistance at Work

You’ve presented your great idea, and people hate it. They ridicule you and threaten you and tell you to go away. Your subconscious speaks up. It says something like, “You should have listened to me. You really blew it.” ... The voice in your head has revealed the resistance. It is trying to teach the daemon a lesson, encouraging it to be more careful next time. The lizard hates your genius, and tries to stamp it out. When you hear this dialogue, don’t listen to it. Remember that it serves as proof of the resistance, and guard yourself even more diligently to ignore it. (Location 1910)

The Lizard Goes to School

It’s the lizard brain that tells you that you’re not qualified, that your degree isn’t advanced enough, that you didn’t go to a good enough school. It’s the lizard that tells you not to apply to a great school, because you don’t deserve to get in. And it’s the lizard that cares deeply about grades, and not a bit about art or leadership or connection. (Location 1921)

The Hard Part About Losing

The reason the resistance persists in slowing you down and prevents you from putting your heart and soul and art into your work is simple: you might fail. (Location 1932)

Successful people are successful for one simple reason: they think about failure differently. (Location 1941)

Successful people learn from failure, but the lesson they learn is a different one. They don’t learn that they shouldn’t have tried in the first place, and they don’t learn that they are always right and the world is wrong and they don’t learn that they are losers. They learn that the tactics they used didn’t work or that the person they used them on didn’t respond. (Location 1942)

You become a winner because you’re good at losing. The hard part about losing is that you might permit it to give strength to the resistance, that you might believe that you don’t deserve to win, that you might, in some dark corner of your soul, give up. Don’t. (Location 1945)

Seeking Out Discomfort

Going out of your way to find uncomfortable situations isn’t natural, but it’s essential. (Location 1948)

The road to comfort is crowded and it rarely gets you there. Ironically, it’s those who seek out discomfort that are able to make a difference and find their footing. (Location 1954)

Discomfort brings engagement and change. Discomfort means you’re doing something that others were unlikely to do, because they’re busy hiding out in the comfortable zone. (Location 1958)

Developing Plan B

Well-meaning friends and advisers never hesitate to reach out to artists. They suggest we have a backup plan, something to fall back on if the art thing doesn’t work out so well. You’ve probably guessed what happens when you have a great backup plan: You end up settling for the backup. As soon as you say, “I’ll try my best,” instead of “I will,” you’ve opened the door for the lizard. (Location 1961)

Note: 100% commitment

The resistance desperately seeks to sabotage your art. A well-defined backup plan is sabotage waiting to happen. Why push through the dip, why take the risk, why blow it all when there’s the comfortable alternative instead? The people who break through usually have nothing to lose, and they almost never have a backup plan. (Location 1965)

Where Are All the Good Ideas?

All the creativity books in the world aren’t going to help you if you’re unwilling to have lousy, lame, and even dangerously bad ideas. (Location 1971)

One way to become creative is to discipline yourself to generate bad ideas. The worse the better. Do it a lot and magically you’ll discover that some good ones slip through. (Location 1975)

You Don’t Need More Genius. You Need Less Resistance.

The resistance pushes relentlessly for you to fit in. (Location 1979)

In difficult economic times, the resistance explains that we’d better get a steady job, because the world is fraught with uncertainty and this is no time to do something crazy like starting a company. (Location 1980)

The resistance is so tenacious that it encourages you to speak up and drag down anyone around you with the temerity to dream. (Location 1985)

Uncomfortable with Permission

A lot of people are uncomfortable with that sort of permission, authority, or leverage. If you’re a genius, after all, then you need to deliver genius-quality results. (Location 1993)

You’ve almost certainly been brainwashed to believe that you aren’t a genius, that you’re working at the appropriate level, earning what you’re supposed to earn, and doing what you’re supposed to do. And some of that brainwashing has been consensual, because your resistance sort of likes low expectations. (Location 1995)

“This Might Work”

You’d think that the biggest self-doubt would be that something you’re working on might fail. And no doubt, many of us lie awake, filled with anxiety about big failures. Consider the argument that it’s just as likely you hold back out of fear that something might work. If it works, then you have to do it. Then you have to do it again. Then you have to top it. If it works, your world changes. There are new threats and new challenges and new risks. That’s world-class frightening. (Location 2048)

When Did the Resistance Take Over Your Life?

When you were a kid, beautiful art—questions, curiosity, and spontaneity—poured out of you. The resistance was only starting to figure out how to shout out the art coming from the rest of your brain. Then, thanks to disorganized hazing by friends, raised eyebrows from the family, and well-meaning, well-organized, but toxic rules at school, the resistance gained in strength. (Location 2063)

Our economy has reached a logical conclusion. The race to make average stuff for average people in huge quantities is almost over. We’re hitting an asymptote, a natural ceiling for how cheaply and how fast we can deliver uninspired work. (Location 2076)

So, what’s left is to make—to give—art. What’s left is the generosity and humanity worth paying for. What’s left is to take that resistance (the very same resistance we embraced and rewarded for decades) and destroy it. (Location 2083)

Proof of the Resistance

You call the resistance “ hard-hearted capitalist common sense.” Perhaps you call it “being realistic about the system we live in.” Better, I think, to call it stalling, a waste, and an insidious plot to keep you from doing your real work. Don’t let the lizard brain win. (Location 2089)

Fear of Public Speaking

It turns out that the three biological factors that drive job performance and innovation are social intelligence, fear response, and perception. Public speaking brings all three together. Speaking to a group requires social intelligence. We need to be able to make an emotional connection with people, talk about what they are interested in, and persuade them. That’s difficult, and we’re not wired for this as well as we are wired to, say, eat fried foods. (Location 2096)

Public speaking also triggers huge fear responses. We’re surrounded by strangers or people of power, all of whom might harm us. Attention is focused on us, and attention (according to our biology) equals danger. (Location 2099)

Last, and more subtly, speaking involves perception. It exposes how we see things, both the thing we are talking about and the response of the people in the room. Exposing that perception is frightening. (Location 2101)

In a contest between the rational desire to spread an idea by giving a speech and the biological phobia against it, biology has an unfair advantage. (Location 2103)

Where Is the Fear?

Fear dominates the other emotions, because without our ability to avoid death, the other ones don’t matter very much. (Location 2108)

Our sanitized, corporatized society hasn’t figured out how to get rid of the fear, so instead we channel it into bizarre corners of our life. We check Twitter because of our fear of being left out. We buy expensive handbags for the same reason. We take a mundane follow-the-manual job because of our fear of failing as a map maker, and we make bad financial decisions because of our fear of taking responsibility for our money. It turns out that we’re even afraid to talk about fear, as if that somehow makes it more real. (Location 2109)

Fear of living without a map is the main reason people are so insistent that we tell them what to do. (Location 2114)

Tags: q

Note: .q

The reasons are pretty obvious: If it’s someone else’s map, it’s not your fault if it doesn’t work out. (Location 2115)

The Paradox of the Safety Zone

The resistance would like you to curl up in a corner, avoid all threats, take no risks, and hide. It feels safe, after all. The paradox is that the more you hide, the riskier it is. The less commotion you cause, the more likely you are to fail, to be ignored, to expose yourself to failure. (Location 2130)

The Resistance Works to Destroy the Tools That Oppose It

When the resistance tells you not to listen to something, read something, or attend something, go. Do it. It’s not an accident that successful people read more books. (Location 2143)

The Cult of Done

Bre Pettis wrote this manifesto on his blog: 1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion. 2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done. 3. There is no editing stage. 4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it. 5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it. 6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done. 7. Once you’re done you can throw it away. 8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done. 9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right. 10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes. 11. Destruction is a variant of done. 12. If you have an idea and publish it on the Internet, that counts as a ghost of done. 13. Done is the engine of more. (Location 2197)

Steeper Near the Top

The closer you get to surfacing and then defeating the resistance, the harder it will fight you off. (Location 2246)

Why the Lizard Brain Wants You to Be Stuck

If it appears that you’re fighting the good fight, laboring on, doing what you trained to do, then, hey, you’re virtuous. (Location 2251)

The hard part is distinguishing between quitting because the resistance wants you to (bad idea) or because the resistance doesn’t want you to (great idea). The goal is to quit the tasks you’re doing because you’re hiding on behalf of the lizard brain and to push through the very tasks the lizard fears. (Location 2257)

Tick Tick Tick

A workaholic brings fear into the equation. She works all the time to be sure everything is all right, and she experiences resistance all the time. She satisfies the raging fear of her lizard brain by being at the job site all the time, just to be sure. (Location 2296)

Letting silence into your day gives the daemon a chance to be heard from. The resistance is unable to proclaim that it’s too busy tweeting, Facebooking, going to meetings, blogging, networking, paying bills, and traveling. No, actually, it’s not busy at all. We’re standing quietly, waiting to applaud our genius as he does his work. (Location 2313)

The difference between a successful artist and a failed one happens after the idea is hatched. The difference is the race to completion. Did you finish? (Location 2316)

Anxiety Is Practicing Failure in Advance

Anxiety is needless and imaginary. It’s fear about fear, fear that means nothing. (Location 2318)

The difference between fear and anxiety: Anxiety is diffuse and focuses on possibilities in an unknown future, not a real and present threat. The resistance is 100 percent about anxiety, because humans have developed other emotions and warnings to help us avoid actual threats. Anxiety, on the other hand, is an internal construct with no relation to the outside world. “Needless anxiety” is redundant, because anxiety is always needless. Anxiety doesn’t protect you from danger, but from doing great things. (Location 2319)

There’s not a lot of genuine fear here in our world, so when it appears, it’s worth noting. Anxiety, on the other hand, is dangerous paralysis. Anxiety is the exaggeration of the worst possible what-if, accompanied by self-talk that leads to the relentless minimization of the actual odds of success. (Location 2325)

It’s impossible to be a linchpin if you agree to feed your anxiety. (Location 2329)

Like most episodes of anxiety, there are two responses. (Location 2334)

The first approach is to seek reassurance. (Location 2336)

Reward the anxiety with reassurance and positive feedback. Of course, this just leads to more anxiety, because everyone likes reassurance and positive feedback. After you check the light, you might want to check the window locks and then recheck the light, just to be sure. (Location 2339)

The second approach is to sit with the anxiety, don’t run from it. Acknowledge it, explore it, befriend it. It’s there, you’re used to it, move on. (Location 2342)

The problem with reassurance is that it creates a cycle that never ends. Reassure me about one issue and you can bet I’ll find something else to worry about. Reassurance doesn’t address the issue of anxiety; in fact, it exacerbates it. (Location 2344)

The idea of sitting with your anxiety appears to be ludicrous, at least at first. To sit with something so uncomfortable isn’t natural. The more you sit, the worse it gets. (Location 2347)

Then, an interesting thing happens. It burns itself out. The anxiety can’t sustain itself forever, especially when morning comes and your house hasn’t been invaded, when the speech is over and you haven’t been laughed at, when the review is complete and you haven’t been fired. Reality is the best reassurance of all. (Location 2350)

Over time, the cycle is broken. The resistance knows that the anxiety trick doesn’t work anymore, especially if you’re friendly to the anxiety. Pretty quickly, the anxiety cycles start to diminish and eventually peter themselves out. (Location 2352)

Anxiety and Shenpa

Shenpa is a Tibetan word that roughly means “scratching the itch.” I think of it as a spiral of pain, something that is triggered by a small event and immediately takes you totally off the ranch. A small itch gets scratched, which makes it itch more, so you scratch more and more until you’re literally in pain. (Location 2357)

The best time to stop the spiral is the very first moment. Taking action at the start, calling it out, recognizing the cycle—this is your first and best chance. Embrace the itch from the start, but don’t scratch it. To do otherwise is to lose all perspective. (Location 2373)

Shenpa and Social Connection

The killer: our anxiety not only makes us miserable, but ruins the interaction. People smell it on you. They react to it. They’re less likely to hire you or buy from you or have fun at your party. The very thing you are afraid of occurs, precisely because you are afraid of it, which of course makes the shenpa cycle even worse. (Location 2387)

Shenpa is caused by a conflict between the lizard brain (which wants to strike out or to flee) and the rest of our brain, which desires achievement, connection, and grace. Oscillating between the two merely makes things worse. It seems that you have two choices for ending the cycle: you can flee or you can stay. (Location 2389)

Waiting isn’t easy, which is precisely why it is so effective when engaging with other people. The quiet strength it takes to withstand the urge to flee builds confidence in those around you. (Location 2397)

(Shenpa and Turbulence)

My friend Jon likes it when an airplane hits heavy turbulence. His insight is worth sharing. “The odds of a plane crashing from turbulence are essentially zero, so I sit and enjoy it. It’s like a ride at an amusement park.” I’m writing this as my plane hits heavy turbulence and it turns out that he’s right. The moment I stopped trying to will the plane to stay in the air and started enjoying the ride, it got a lot more fun, and it turns out that the pilot didn’t need my help in keeping the plane aloft. (Location 2418)

Shenpa and Income and Success

in a world where linchpins are valued and cogs are not, it seems as though unchecked anxiety is the single biggest barrier between you and your goals. Given the choice, people don’t hire or work with or trust or follow people who get stuck in a cycle of anxiety. (Location 2426)

Worse, if you live in a state of anxiety about tasks that are in demand (like art, brave action, and generosity), it’s going to change what you choose to do. You’ll avoid the very things that would make you indispensable. (Location 2428)

Suddenly, shenpa affects your pocketbook as much as your psyche. (Location 2431)

Watching the Watching

When I put myself on an Internet diet (only five checks a day, not fifty), my productivity tripled. Tripled. (Location 2449)

Downhill Versus Uphill

If there’s an infrastructure (like a publisher) in place to amplify your insights, that’s great. (Location 2479)

You need a platform that makes it easy to turn your insight into a movement. I’m trying to sell you on the idea of building a platform before you have your next idea, to view the platform building as a separate project from spreading your art. You can work on the platform every day, do it without facing the resistance. As the platform gets bigger and stronger, you get to launch each idea a little farther uphill. (Location 2481)

A valuable platform is an asset, one that isn’t handed to you. It takes preparation and effort to set the world up so that your ideas are more likely to ship. But that’s effort that the resistance won’t be so eager to sabotage. By separating the hard work of preparation from the scary work of insight, you can build an environment in which you’re more likely to ship. (Location 2485)

Rethinking Your Goals in Light of the Resistance

The resistance is happy to set up unachievable goals as a way of dissuading you from doing the work. After all, if it’s impossible to achieve something and it’s going to be painful to try, why bother? When we agree to define our success on others’ terms, especially other people who don’t particularly like us and aren’t inclined to root for us, we’re giving in to the resistance. (Location 2517)

When you haven’t set up a judge and jury for your work, you get to do art that doesn’t alert the resistance. And then you can leverage that art into the next thing. (Location 2528)

Amplifying Little Thoughts

Little thoughts are ephemeral. They come, and inevitably, they go. We don’t remember them an hour later, never mind a week or a month later. (Location 2533)

A decade ago, I came up with the idea for Permission Marketing. In the shower. I still remember the where and the when. It was one of those little ideas, something that could easily disappear. The resistance would be happy if all your little brainstorms disappeared, because then they wouldn’t represent a threat, would they? The challenge is in being alert enough to write them down, to prioritize them, to build them, and to ship them out the door. It’s a habit, it’s easy to learn, and it’s frightening. (Location 2534)

THE POWERFUL CULTURE OF GIFTS

Gifts?

There are three reasons why it’s now urgent to understand how gift culture works. First, the Internet (and digital goods) has lowered the marginal cost of generosity. Second, it’s impossible to be an artist without understanding the power that giving a gift creates. And third, the dynamic of gift giving can diminish the cries of the resistance and permit you to do your best work. (Location 2552)

Giving, Receiving, Giving

In the linchpin economy, the winners are once again the artists who give gifts. Giving a gift makes you indispensable. Inventing a gift, creating art—that is what the market seeks out, and the givers are the ones who earn our respect and attention. (Location 2566)

If I create an idea, the Internet makes it possible for that gift to spread everywhere, quite quickly, at no cost to me. Digital gifts, ideas that spread—these allow the artist to be far more generous than he could ever be in an analog world. (Location 2570)

We Can Never Repay Keller Williams

the new form of marketing is leadership, and leadership is about building and connecting tribes of like-minded people. (Location 2589)

Capitalism has taught us that every transaction has to be fair, an even trade for goods or services delivered. What Keller and other artists demonstrate is that linchpin thinking is about delivering gifts that can never be adequately paid for. (Location 2592)

There Are No Artists on the Assembly Line

As soon as it is part of a system, it’s not art. (Location 2595)

Consumers love artists. So do investors. That’s because art represents a chance to improve the status quo, not just make it cheaper. Art builds a community, and the community creates value for all. (Location 2598)

Selfish

Becoming a linchpin is not an act of selfishness. I see it as an act of generosity, because it gives you a platform for expending emotional labor and giving gifts. (Location 2607)

The Curse of Reciprocity

It’s human nature. If someone gives you a gift, you need to reciprocate. (Location 2614)

It’s reciprocity that turned the gift system into the gift economy. Suddenly, giving a gift becomes an obligation, one demanding payment, not a gift at all. (Location 2617)

This can cripple your art. You best give a gift without knowing or being concerned with whether it will be repaid. (Location 2619)

The magic of the gift system is that the gift is voluntary, not part of a contract. The gift binds the recipient to the giver, and both of them to the community. A contract isolates individuals, with money as the connector. The gift binds them instead. (Location 2622)

Gifts as a Signal of Surplus

It’s difficult to be generous when you’re hungry. Yet being generous keeps you from going hungry. Hence the conflict. (Location 2625)

Gifts not only satisfy our needs as artists, they also signal to the world that we have plenty more to share. This perspective is magnetic. The more you have in your cup, the more likely people are to want a drink. (Location 2628)

(Dunbar’s Number and the Small World)

British anthropologist Robin Dunbar theorized that a typical person can’t easily have more than 150 people in his tribe. After 150 friends and fellow citizens, we can’t keep track. It’s too complicated. (Location 2633)

When we meet a stranger, we do business. When we encounter a member of the tribe, we give gifts. (Location 2639)

A lot of the stress we feel in the modern world comes from this conflict between the small world in which we’re wired to exist and the large world we use to make a living. (Location 2643)

Gifts Make the Tribe

One reason that art has so much power is that it represents the most precious gift we can deliver. And delivering it to people we work with or connect with strengthens our bond with them. It strengthens the tribal connection. (Location 2658)

When you walk into your boss’s office and ask for advice, she doesn’t charge you an hourly fee, even if she’s a corporate coach or a psychoanalyst, even if you want help with a personal problem. The gift of her time and attention and insight is just that—a gift. As a result, the bond between you strengthens. (Location 2660)

(Martin Luther and the Beginning of the Money Culture)

For the last five hundred years, the best way to succeed has been to treat everyone as a stranger you could do business with. This is one reason that some multilevel marketers and insurance salesmen make people nervous. It seems to cross the tiny remaining gulf between business and the tribe. (Location 2683)

The Forgotten Act of the Gift

Real gifts don’t demand reciprocation (at least not direct reciprocation), and the best kinds of gifts are gifts of art. (Location 2709)

The Difference Between “If” and “And”

The power lies in the creation of abundance. A trade leaves things as they were, with no external surplus. A gift always creates a surplus as it spreads. (Location 2770)

Gifts of Art

As we’ve seen, if there is no gift, there is no art. When art is created solely to be sold, it’s only a commodity. (Location 2787)

The gift of art instantly creates a bond between the artist and the recipient. (Location 2800)

The benefit to the artist is the knowledge that you changed in some way, not that you will repay him. And so your only possible response is to make the tribe stronger. (Location 2801)

The Selfish By-product

Art is scarce; scarcity creates value. (Location 2813)

Organizations will always strive to replace replaceable elements with cheaper substitutes. But generous artists aren’t easily replaceable. (Location 2814)

Note: Automation

Some people think that you can’t be generous until after you become a success. They argue that they have to get theirs, and then they can go ahead and give back. The astonishing fact is that the most successful people in the world are those who don’t do it for the money. (Location 2818)

Old-school thinking is that you get paid first, you sign a contract, you protect and defend and profit. They say, “Pay me.” Artists say, “Here.” (Location 2822)

Three Ways People Think About Gifts (Location 2824)

1. Give me a gift! 2. Here’s a gift; now you owe me, big-time. 3. Here’s a gift, I love you. The first two are capitalist misunderstandings of what it means to give or receive a gift. The third is the only valid alternative on the list. (Location 2825)

Sunny Bates and Metcalfe’s Law

Bob Metcalfe invented the technology that allows computers to be wired up in a network. The Ethernet, as he called it, made him rich. He also coined Metcalfe’s law, which made him famous. (Location 2829)

Metcalfe’s law says that the value of a network increases with the square of the number of nodes on the network. In English? It says that the more people who have a fax machine, the more fax machines are worth (one person with a fax is useless). The more people who use the Internet, the better it works. The more friends I have who use Twitter, the more the tool is worth to me. Connections are valuable in and of themselves, because they lead to productivity, decreased communication costs, and yes, gifts. (Location 2831)

The Magic of Living Below Your Means

When you cut your expenses to the bone, you have a surplus. The surplus allows you to be generous, which mysteriously turns around and makes your surplus even bigger. (Location 2844)

Note: Abundance mindset

How to Receive a Gift

A gift well received can lead to more gifts. But artists don’t give gifts for money. They do it for respect and connection and to cause change. So the best recipients are the ones who can reciprocate in kind. With honest gratitude. With clear reports about change that was created. (Location 2863)

Sometimes, I Don’t Want Your Gift

this is the challenge of becoming the linchpin. Not only must you be an artist, must you be generous, and must you be able to see where you can help, but you must also be aware. Aware of where your skills are welcomed. (Location 2918)

Great work is not created for everyone. If it were, it would be average work. (Location 2923)

You Can Rip Off an Artist Only Once

the nature of a gift means that a quid pro quo doesn’t really work. “Do this and I’ll pay you” is a contract, not a way of creating art. (Location 2948)

If you are fortunate enough to find an artist, you should work hard to pay him as much as you can afford, because if you don’t, someone else will. (Location 2954)

THERE IS NO MAP

The Linchpin, the Artist, and the Map

You must become indispensable to thrive in the new economy. The best ways to do that are to be remarkable, insightful, an artist, someone bearing gifts. To lead. The worst way is to conform and become a cog in a giant system. (Location 2961)

What does it take to lead? The key distinction is the ability to forge your own path, to discover a route from one place to another that hasn’t been paved, measured, and quantified. (Location 2963)

Seeing, Discernment, and Prajna

You can’t make a map unless you can see the world as it is. You have to know where you are and know where you’re going before you can figure out how to go about getting there. (Location 2970)

Note: thinking Truth

None of us knows the absolute truth, of course, but the goal is to approach a situation with the least possible bias. So the manager and the investor seek out an employee with discernment, the ability to see things as they truly are. A Buddhist might call this prajna. A life without attachment and stress can give you the freedom to see things as they are and call them as you see them. (Location 2979)

Seeing Clearly Isn’t Easy

Seeing clearly means being able to do a job interview as though you weren’t the interviewer or the applicant, but someone watching dispassionately from a third chair. (Location 2989)

Abandoning your worldview in order to try on someone else’s is the first step in being able to see things as they are. (Location 2992)

Annoyed at Intent

Equanimity is easy when we’re dealing with a random event. Stuff happens. We don’t get angry at birds chirping or even a thunderstorm occurring during a play. But if a cell phone goes off, that’s an entirely different story. We need to sit and seethe, as if that seething is magically sending horrible vibes to the offender and he will never do it again. (Location 3004)

The linchpin understands that getting angry about the battery in the microphone isn’t going to make the battery come back to life. And teaching the stage-crew guy a lesson is senseless and not going to help much, either. So you deal with it. If you accept that human beings are difficult to change, and embrace (rather than curse) the uniqueness that everyone brings to the table, you’ll navigate the world with more bliss and effectiveness. And make better decisions, too. (Location 3007)

Teaching Fire a Lesson

Fire is hot. That’s what it does. If you get burned by fire, you can be annoyed at yourself, but being angry at the fire doesn’t do you much good. And trying to teach the fire a lesson so it won’t be hot next time is certainly not time well spent. Our inclination is to give fire a pass, because it’s not human. But human beings are similar, in that they’re not going to change any time soon either. (Location 3012)

The ability to see the world as it is begins with an understanding that perhaps it’s not your job to change what can’t be changed. Particularly if the act of working on that change harms you and your goals in the process. (Location 3020)

Elements of Attachment

When our responses turn into reactions and we set out to teach people a lesson, we lose. We lose because the act of teaching someone a lesson rarely succeeds at changing them, and always fails at making our day better, or our work more useful. (Location 3039)

The Two Reasons Seeing the Future Is So Difficult

Attachment to an outcome combined with the resistance and fear of change. That’s it. You have all the information that everyone else has. But if you are deliberately trying to create a future that feels safe, you will willfully ignore the future that is likely. (Location 3042)

Yelling at the Ref

If you’re able to look at what’s happening in your world and say, “There’s the pattern,” or “Wow, that’s interesting, I wonder why,” then you’re far more likely to respond productively than if your reaction is “How dare he!” (Location 3052)

Effort Can Change Things

There’s a difference between passively accepting every element of your environment (and thus missing opportunities to exploit) and being wise enough to leave the unchangeable alone, or at least work around it. (Location 3063)

Zen at the Airport

Forty years ago, Richard Branson, who ultimately founded Virgin Air, found himself in a similar situation in an airport in the Caribbean. They had just canceled his flight, the only flight that day. Instead of freaking out about how essential the flight was, how badly his day was ruined, how his entire career was now in jeopardy, the young Branson walked across the airport to the charter desk and inquired about the cost of chartering a flight out of Puerto Rico. Then he borrowed a portable blackboard and wrote, “Seats to Virgin Islands, $39.” He went back to his gate, sold enough seats to his fellow passengers to completely cover his costs, and made it home on time. Not to mention planting the seeds for the airline he’d start decades later. Sounds like the kind of person you’d like to hire. (Location 3075)

The Quadrants of Discernment

On one axis is passion. The other, attachment. Each corner represents a different kind of person and the way he responds to situations at work. (Location 3083)

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Note: .s Make illustration into infographic

The linchpin is enlightened enough to see the world as it is, to understand that this angry customer is not about me, that this change in government policy is not a personal attack, that this job is not guaranteed for life. At the same time, the linchpin brings passion to the job. She knows from experience that the right effort in the right place can change the outcome, and she reserves her effort for doing just that. (Location 3100)

Here’s another way to describe the two axes: One asks, Can you see it? The other wonders, Do you care? (Location 3105)

Self-defense

Just because you want something to be true doesn’t make it so. (Location 3127)

Scarcity creates value, and what’s scarce is a desire to accept what is and then work to change it for the better, not deny that it exists. (Location 3128)

The Artist and Prajna

Worldview and attachment always color perceptions. (Location 3131)

Artists can’t get attached to the object of their attention. The attachment to a worldview changes an artist’s relationship to what’s happening and prevents him from converting what he sees or interacts with into something that belongs to him, that he can work with and change. (Location 3134)

It’s very easy for us to become attached to our feelings and memories and expectations of the system we work in, the companies we invest in, the people we work with. That attachment, and our response to it, forces us to wish for a different outcome than we might honestly expect. (Location 3138)

Tell the Truth

First, of course, you have to be able to see the truth. This takes experience and expertise and, most of all, a willingness to look. (Location 3161)

The few who can see the truth and become aware of it often hesitate to speak up. You don’t want to upset the status quo. You fear the wrath of your peers when they hear you say that the emperor is actually naked. You hesitate because you’ve been taught that this is not the work of a team player; it’s the work of a rabble-rouser. (Location 3165)

It’s human nature to defend our worldview, to construct a narrative that protects us from uncomfortable confessions. (Location 3171)

Attachment to Things We Can’t Control

The linchpin has figured out that we get only a certain number of brain cycles to spend each day. Spending even one on a situation out of our control has a significant opportunity cost. (Location 3177)

The Guild of Frustrated Artists

Here’s the truth that you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can’t tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there’d be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map. (Location 3198)

The Endless Emergency of Fitting In

It’s never possible to fit all the way in. Never possible for everything to be all right. (Location 3202)

The problem with being outwardly focused is that we have no center, nothing to return to. The problem with outward focus is that there is no compass, no normal, no way to tell if we’re in balance. (Location 3205)

MAKING THE CHOICE

Impossible, Yes, So Let’s Get to Work

You don’t engage in breaking and entering, you don’t mount a major trespass, you don’t risk your life, you certainly don’t do it for no money, you don’t dedicate your life to accomplishing something manifestly stupid and simultaneously beautiful. Most of all, you don’t set out to do something impossible. Certainly not as a gift. Unless you do. And then you win. (Location 3220)

Who Sets Your Agenda?

The system wants you to fit in, but pleasing the system may not be your real work. (Location 3279)

If your agenda is set by someone else and it doesn’t lead you where you want to go, why is it your agenda? (Location 3285)

Looking for Something to React or Respond To

You don’t want to take initiative or responsibility, so you check your incoming mail, your Twitter stream, and your blog comments. Surely, there’s something to play off of, something to get angry about, some meeting to go to. I know someone who goes to forty conferences a year and never seems to actually produce anything. And you can repeat this process forever. Forever. It never ends. The alternative is to draw a map and lead. (Location 3302)

The Choice

You can either fit in or stand out. Not both. You are either defending the status quo or challenging it. (Location 3307)

Being slightly remarkable is a losing strategy. Blander than bland can work, and it has. Indispensable linchpin works and it is the future. But the in-between spaces are scary. (Location 3313)

Learning the Tools

I’m always amazed when I meet a writer who can’t use a computer, or a lawyer who’s uncomfortable with LexisNexis, or an executive who needs a corporate IT person to help him navigate an e-mail system. If you’re a marketer unable to leverage your skills by using online tools, you’re merely linked to the machines owned by the corporation. That’s power they don’t deserve. The world just gave you control over the means of production. Not to master them is a sin. (Location 3369)

Does Your Job Match Your Passion?

Conventional wisdom is that you should find a job that matches your passion. I think this is backwards. (Location 3417)

I’ve argued repeatedly that your product should match your marketing, not the other way around, and the same inversion is true here. Transferring your passion to your job is far easier than finding a job that happens to match your passion. (Location 3418)

How Does a Linchpin Work?

In a world with only a few indispensable people, the linchpin has two elegant choices: 1. Hire plenty of factory workers. Scale like crazy. Take advantage of the fact that most people want a map, most people are willing to work cheaply, most people want to be the factory. You win because you extract the value of their labor, the labor they’re surrendering too cheaply. 2. Find a boss who can’t live without a linchpin. Find a boss who adequately values your scarcity and your contribution, who will reward you with freedom and respect. Do the work. Make a difference. (Location 3429)

If Only . . .

“If only” is a great way to eliminate your excuse du jour. “If only” is an obligator, because once you get rid of that item, you’ve got no excuse left, only the obligation. I could see the situation more accurately if only . . . I could lead this tribe if only . . . I could find the bravery to do my art if only . . . (Location 3437)

Nostalgia for the Future

For many of us, the happiest future is one that’s precisely like the past, except a little better. (Location 3442)

The linchpin is able to invent a future, fall in love with it, live in it—and then abandon it on a moment’s notice. (Location 3467)

The Stressful Part Is the Hoping

Patients who were given colostomies (an operation in which a large portion of the colon is removed) were measured on their long-term happiness. The patients who were told that the situation was permanent, that they would need to live with a bag their entire lives, ended up being happier than those who were told that there was a chance they’d recover use of their colon. The stressful part is the hoping. Hoping against hope that your plane will arrive, that you won’t miss it, that your seat won’t be given away, that you won’t crash, that you’ll land close to on time. Hoping that the surgery will turn out okay. Hoping that your boss won’t yell at you. All of this is nerve-racking for many people. And the reason is your nostalgia for the future. You’ve fallen in love with a described outcome, and at every stage along the way, it appears that hope and will and effort on your part might be able to maintain the future quo. (Location 3469)

Note: Detachment from outcome

This Is What Hard Work Looks Like

Nothing about becoming indispensable is easy. If it’s easy, it’s already been done and it’s no longer valuable. (Location 3523)

What will make someone a linchpin is not a shortcut. It’s the understanding of which hard work is worth doing. The only thing that separates great artists from mediocre ones is their ability to push through the dip. Some people decide that their art is important enough that they ought to overcome the resistance they face in doing their work. Those people become linchpins. (Location 3524)

THE CULTURE OF CONNECTION

The Linchpin Can’t Succeed in Isolation

The Internet amplifies both of these traits. The new media rewards ideas that resonate. It helps them spread. If your work persuades, you prosper. And the new media punishes those who seek to mislead. We have ever more refined truth-telling cues, and if you don’t believe in what you’re doing, we’ll know, and you will fail. Honest signals are the only signals that travel. (Location 3559)

The Five Elements of Personality

Lexical analysis involves collating all the words a culture has to describe something and grouping them into fundamental pillars. In the case of personality, most psychologists agree that there are five traits that are essential in how people look at us: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extra-version, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability. (Location 3564)

If you hope to succeed because you are able to connect and work with other people, then that will require you to improve your personality in each of these five elements. (Location 3568)

It’s so easy to fall into the trap of focusing on using a spreadsheet or a time clock to measure your progress, but in fact, it’s the investment you make in your interactions that will pay off. (Location 3571)

The Problem with the Script

When your boss gives you a script to read, or when you crib something from a how-to book, it almost never works. That’s because you’re not telling the truth, you’re not being human, and you’re not being transparent. (Location 3621)

Virtually all of us make our living engaging directly with other people. When the interactions are genuine and transparent, they usually work. When they are artificial or manipulative, they fail. The linchpin is coming from a posture of generosity; she’s there to give a gift. If that’s your intent, the words almost don’t matter. What we’ll perceive are your wishes, not the script. (Location 3625)

Honest Signals in Everyday Life

When you are stressed out of your gourd, we can tell. When you’re lying, we can tell. When you are in pain, we can tell. The signals are honest because we’re not that good at lying. (Location 3652)

Genuine Gifts

The only successful way to live in a world of honest signals is to give the genuine gift. (Location 3655)

We have everything we need, so we’re not buying commodities. We’re not even buying products. We’re buying relationships and stories and magic. (Location 3660)

Wal-Mart wins because it’s cheap and close. Everyone else who wins must do it by being generous. And for that, you must be an artist and you need to mean it. (Location 3667)

The Placebo Effect

If the placebo effect is enough to cure cancer (and it can), then it can change your client’s mind and dramatically shift the way people perceive your organization. (Location 3675)

The people you work with won’t change if you don’t believe. The communication of enthusiasm and connection and leadership starts with the gift you give, not with the manipulation you attempt. (Location 3678)

THE SEVEN ABILITIES OF THE LINCHPIN

Is There a List?

Linchpins do two things for the organization. They exert emotional labor and they make a map. Those contributions take many forms. Here is one way to think about the list of what makes you indispensable: (Location 3688)

1. Providing a unique interface between members of the organization 2. Delivering unique creativity 3. Managing a situation or organization of great complexity 4. Leading customers 5. Inspiring staff 6. Providing deep domain knowledge 7. Possessing a unique talent (Location 3690)

Leading Customers

As markets fragment and audiences spread, consumers are seeking connection more than ever. In short, we’re looking for people to follow, and for others to join us as we do. (Location 3735)

There’s no script for leadership. There can’t be. (Location 3740)

Providing Deep Domain Knowledge

Mapmakers often have the confidence to draw maps because they understand their subject so deeply. (Location 3762)

Possessing a Unique Talent

When you meet someone, you need to have a superpower. If you don’t, you’re just another handshake. It’s not about touting yourself or coming on too strong. It’s about making the introduction meaningful. If I don’t know your superpower, then I don’t know how you can help me (or I can help you). (Location 3772)

If you want to be a linchpin, the power you bring to the table has to be very difficult to replace. Be bolder and think bigger. (Location 3777)

WHEN IT DOESN’T WORK

What Do You Do When Your Art Doesn’t Work?

Make more art. ... Give more gifts. Learn from what you did and then do more. (Location 3803)

Calling Ellsworth Kelly

Focus on making changes that work down, not up. Interacting with customers and employees is often easier than influencing bosses and investors. Over time, as you create an environment where your insight and generosity pay off, the people above you will notice, and you’ll get more freedom and authority. (Location 3877)

Don’t ask your boss to run interference, cover for you, or take the blame. Instead, create moments where your boss can happily take credit. Once that cycle begins, you can be sure it will continue. (Location 3879)

The Endless Giving Cycle of Art

When you talk to people who are committed to their art, what you’ll discover is this: they never stop giving. (Location 3882)

I am certain that if you give enough, to the right people in the right way, your gifts will be treasured and your journey will be rewarded. Even if that’s not why you’re doing it. (Location 3886)

SUMMARY