運動的小眼睛貓頭鷹

Our series continues with my book Tribes. It's nice that we're featuring it on Labor Day, a holiday in the US that celebrates some of the most impactful tribal behavior in recent history.

It's easy to gloss over the key points of the book, because for some, it's frightening to realize that each of us has the ability to find and lead like-minded people to make real and powerful change that matters. Lead, not manage. Like-minded, as opposed to converting those who have no connection to us, to each other or to our goals.

As we shift from an economy dominated by mass marketing of the mass produced, this ability to lead is fundamentally transformative.

The selfish nature of the industrialist (hey, I made this, how do I get people to buy it?) hasn't gone away. Whether it's a small coaching service, a non-profit, a local window cleaning business or a big company, the most misguided assertion is, "I have a tribe, how do I make it bigger?" In fact, you might very well have customers, but it's unlikely you have a tribe, not if you haven't intentionally worked to engage at this level.

One way to invent a new category is to delete the must have features that others insist a product or feature or design has to have in order to be worth something.

Another way is to build in features that others say can't possibly appeal to more than just a few.

Our series continues with a question about one of my shortest books, a manifesto about starting (and art): Poke the Box.

Ben Nesvig asks, "I find myself getting uninterested/unmotivated on projects that I start. The emotion of deciding to start has faded and the results are slow to keep me motivated.  Is this the resistance/lizard brain that is keeping me from pushing forward? Or is this a signal that I am not passionate about what I am doing and I should look somewhere else for what I am truly passionate about because there I will find endless motivation?"

Variations of this question, some more honest and self-aware than others, come up more than just about anything else. Now that the world has handed us a microphone, a media platform and a productive way to create a ruckus, why do we hesitate? And why does it get more difficult as we get closer to the reality of shipping the work out the door?

The question is as important as the answer. Starting is fun, of course, because it's fresh, it might work, it breaks the rhythm, it is filled with possibility. The starting overcomes what Steve Pressfield calls the Resistance, the heckler, the lizard brain, the primeval desire to hide and find safety. Neophilia and our desire for shiny objects is enough to at least temporarily get us going. Alas, there's another word for this desire to start but not finish: daydreaming.