Seth Godin — Coaching Tim on Overcoming Resistance, Lessons from Isaac Asimov, Writing Secrets After 8,500+ Daily Blog Posts, The Dangers of Authenticity, Practices for Consistency, and Much More (#728)

Artist rendering of Seth Godin. — Illustration via 99designs

“I did five years of Akimbo. It was in the top one percent of all podcasts, and then I just stopped. And I stopped not because I didn’t love it — I did love it — I stopped because if I kept doing it, there’s something else I wouldn’t do instead. And creating a vacuum is required so that I will do the hard work of filling the vacuum. But if I just keep doing the thing, then there is no vacuum.”
— Seth Godin

Seth Godin is the author of 21 international bestsellers that have changed the way people think about work. His books have been translated into 38 languages and include Tribes, Purple Cow, Linchpin, The Dip, and This Is Marketing. Seth writes one of the most popular marketing blogs in the world, and two of his TED talks are among the most popular of all time. He is the founder of the altMBA; the social media pioneer Squidoo; and Yoyodyne, one of the first internet companies.

His new book is The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams.

Please enjoy!

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The transcript of this episode can be found here. Transcripts of all episodes can be found here.

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#728: Seth Godin — Coaching Tim on Overcoming Resistance, Lessons from Isaac Asimov, Writing Secrets After 8,500+ Daily Blog Posts, The Dangers of Authenticity, Practices for Consistency, and Much More

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What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.

Want to hear the last time Seth Godin was on the show? Have a listen to our conversation here, in which we discussed the changes of aging, getting over momentary lapses of optimism, finding significance and making a difference, ethically reclaiming meaning from work in the Quaker surveillance state, circumnavigating false proxies, employee retention, soliciting useful writing feedback, and much more.

#672: Seth Godin — The Pursuit of Meaning, The Life-Changing Power of Choosing Your Attitude, Overcoming Rejection, Life Lessons from Zig Ziglar, and Committing to Making Positive Change

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

Connect with Seth Godin:

Website | Seth’s Blog | Instagram | Facebook

SHOW NOTES

[06:14] Writing a provocation rather than a prescription.
[13:08] Divvying up concepts.
[16:25] Comprehension over complication.
[18:58] How Seth fulfills a blog post’s purpose.
[22:28] Claude AI vs. ChatGPT.
[23:41] How Seth Godin as a Service (SGaaS) maintains consistency.
[27:23] Simplification over exaggeration.
[31:56] Working with Isaac Asimov and getting a Clue.
[36:53] How Seth moves life’s story forward (even when he loves the current chapter).
[43:28] Why does Seth write?
[44:59] Is an ounce of prevention worth a pound of sinecure?
[45:15] Parting thoughts.

MORE SETH GODIN QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW

“If I can show up with something in your bones you know to be true or interesting or worth thinking about, but I can say it in a way that would benefit you if you could share it with your friends and colleagues, that’s a great blog post.”
— Seth Godin

“I can read a blog post I wrote 14 years ago, and I might not write the same one today, but it rhymes with the one I would write today because there is a voice that this character has that I’m very comfortable with.”
— Seth Godin

“I did the first thing that all writers do when I got ChatGPT, which is I asked it to write like me, and I was pleased to discover it was a parody of me. And being able to be parodied is a really good sign, and that’s what it is to have this voice is to say — I could exaggerate it in six different directions and people could tell I would be parodying it. But like the Peanuts comic strip, Charles Schulz did it every single day, and it’s very hard to tell which decade a Peanuts strip is from.”
— Seth Godin

“I try to reduce ideas to their essence without becoming hyperbolic because the voices of social media amped up the hyperbolic part. That’s not a simplification. That’s an exaggeration.”
— Seth Godin

“There’s an assertion at the beginning that creates a tension, and then a release of that tension that lands an idea.”
— Seth Godin

“I did five years of Akimbo. It was in the top one percent of all podcasts, and then I just stopped. And I stopped not because I didn’t love it — I did love it — I stopped because if I kept doing it, there’s something else I wouldn’t do instead. And creating a vacuum is required so that I will do the hard work of filling the vacuum. But if I just keep doing the thing, then there is no vacuum.”
— Seth Godin

“My whole point of view is that life is projects — it is not a job.”
— Seth Godin

“I am not a high performer. I am interesting.”
— Seth Godin

PEOPLE MENTIONED

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spatwa

1 year ago

This was a great episode. A part that stood for me was about creating vacuum. This got me thinking: for most people/employees job losses in the form of redundancies or termination of employment is now a common reality. For people who are NOT 1) working on minimum wage or 2) are billionaires, how should they optimize the forced vacuum, specially when there is question of self-worth by the constant rejection or ghosting from the places that they apply, along with the financial pressures or just the uneasiness of not generating an income.
The common adage is to plan for such hiatuses but the reality is that most people are unable to do so. Either there is no time, resources or no motivation or all of these factors.
It would be great if you could pose this question to a future guest or if you could blog your thoughts about it.