Poke the box
- Mar 18, 2018
- 4 min read
How I came across this book: I was looking for a book to jolt me to action mode
Favorite Line from the book:
The cost of being wrong is less than the cost of doing nothing.
Excellence isn’t about working extra hard to do what you’re told. It’s about taking the
initiative to do work you decide is worth doing.
The person who fails the most usually wins.
I read this book at a good juncture of my book challenge. Just when I had the marathon fatigue in my eleventh week, this book has shaken me back to full potential. Poke the box is about getting over our fears about initiating a project as that is the most difficult part. Seth Godin discusses examples and various scenarios where people have many ideas, but it does not go anywhere because they were too afraid to start.
For any project to be work there are seven essential imperatives as per the author – awareness, education, connection, consistency, asset, production, and start SHIPPING. The last imperative is the most important because it takes guts and passion to ship or to initiate and start selling your ideas. Most people are just too afraid to start because they feel the resistance from their reptilian brain. People wait for someone to give them a map to guide them because they are too afraid to get lost. Companies which are comfortable with their status-quo are scared of any major changes as it may lead to a failure. In the long term, their status-quo leads to failure. Successful people or enterprise embrace failure because that is what helps them to learn and ultimately grow. Society accepts mediocrity as long as it is not broken. To change mediocre needs initiative. The box needs to be poked. The cost of not doing anything is much higher but we resist change because our lizard brain exaggerates the cost of being wrong. Seth Godin explains that it is extremely important to ‘keep at it’ to finish the goal. Every new step should be considered an initiator step. After some time, idealist gives up and turn into realist. They confuse giving up with being a realistic. Poking does not always lead to success but poking is required to have either success or failure. SOCIETY DOES NOT LIKE PEOPLE WHO DO NOT FIT OR FALL IN THE NORAML CURVE, and people who are afraid to be mocked by the society never end up poking. Their Newtonian ideas and Freudian theories die with them as they were too afraid to poke. Once we get used to the idea of failure then we can move on and start succeeding. The book ends on an inspirational note – be an optimistic experimenter like the cover picture, do not be afraid to take risks, and aim for forward motion as that will lead to success.
There is a saying in surgery, ‘big surgery big complication, small surgery small complication, no surgery no complication.’ If a surgeon does not want to have complications in his career, then he should stop operating. Every surgeon is bound to get complications. It is how a surgeon handles the complication that matters. We are all bound to get failures in our lives, but it is how we handle failure that matters. In December, I had this brilliant idea of reading books and connecting it to a charity. Everyone is a winner – I am learning, my blog readers are getting entertained, and children around the world are being helped. But, I had a lot of fear before starting this fundraiser for children. Fear of maintaining discipline and finishing my blogs on time, fear of not being able to read fast enough, and most importantly, fear of being ridiculed by my friends and family for my grammar in my blogs. I had to overcome a huge amount of resistance from my reptilian brain because my idea was far too important for me not to try. I may fail or I may succeed! It does not matter, but what matters is I picked up my pen, and started writing.
The book mentioned about ‘TED talks.’ What will you talk about if you are asked to give a TED talk? You should be prepared even if you won’t be asked. I will probably end up talking about my fundraiser, or something else may come up in the future, but the important thing is you should be ready if the phone rings tomorrow. 1st January sounds sexy to start a new resolution because everyone is doing it, and SOCIETY LOVES PEOPLE WHO FALL IN THE NORMAL CURVE. I started it on 1st January because I had the idea in December and it took me one month to develop my website, select books, talk to the charity, and form a solid plan. However, you do not have to wait for the new year. Do not wait for someone else to hand you the map. If you have an idea then poke the box NOW!
Comments