Summary of Poke the Box-Seth Godin

Summary of Poke the Box-Seth Godin

There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth.

“Not going all the way, and not starting.”

~Siddhārtha Gautama~

Imagine that the world had no middlemen, no publishers, no bosses, no HR folks, no one telling you what you couldn’t do. If you lived in that world, what would you do? Whatever your answer is Seth Godin challenges you to go do exactly that. I must say that this book is really easy to understand and it speaks to you as an individual. In this book Seth Godin addresses the big problem we face in our world today. We lack that drive to start something. In the society we live in today it seems that everyone is taught how to follow a certain pattern of living, and if we stepped outside these boundaries we are seen as being the odd one out. But like one quote that states: “We were made to stand out not blend in.” This is a manifesto about starting.

 Starting a project, making a ruckus, and taking what feels like a risk. This is what this manifesto is all about. So many people are frozen in the face of uncertainty and paralyzed at the thought of shipping work that matters that one might think that the fear is hardwired into us. Well, it is. Scientists can identify precisely where your lizard brain lives. Your lizard brain is that part in you that always filled with fear and doubt, Steven Pressfield gives the voice of the lizard brain a name: he calls it the resistance. This is the part of you that urges you to not step out of line, not to be a troublemaker and to avoid rash moves. Initiative is a little like creativity in that both require curiosity. The difference is that the creative person is satisfied once he sees how it is done. The initiator won’t rest until he does it. The problem we have in our world is that people shy away from the challenge. They are filled with fear and hold back, they are completely satisfied to let someone else take the reins and be the leader. Initiative is scarce, hence valuable.

Excellence isn’t about working extra hard to do what you’re told. It’s about taking the initiative to do work you decide is worth doing. Seth urges you to stop waiting for a map to know what to do next. Be a go-getter and draw your own map. Only then will you reap the benefits. Poking doesn’t mean right. It means action. We tend to have a fear of failure. Who said failure is a bad thing? Instead we should be eager to fail so that we learn from our mistakes and do it better the next time around. Don’t sit around and wait to be told what to do, go do it.

Part of initiating is being willing to discover that what you end up with is different from what you set out to accomplish. How much time do we spend challenging kids to initiate? In school they are told to do this or do to that. Even the schools extracurricular activities are programmed. And when they do want to start something they get disciplined for trying to initiate something. How will our next world leaders be chosen if we teach all our youngsters to follow programmes? Our job isn’t to catch up to the status quo; the job is to invent the status quo.

The challenge it turns out isn’t in perfecting your ability to know when to start and when to stand by. The challenge is getting into the habit of starting. This book is challenges us to go and start something, not tomorrow, not next week but rather start now. Find that fear that is holding you back and get rid of it. It’s only stopping you from reaching your full potential in life. Hurry! We need you.