Ep 142: Seth Godin on the Future of Work: The Importance of Being Persistent, Making Mistakes and Becoming a Perpetual Doer

Seth Godin is the author of 18 books that have been bestsellers around the world and have been translated into more than 35 languages. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything. You might be familiar with his books Linchpin, Tribes, The Dip and Purple Cow.

In addition to his writing and speaking, Seth founded both Yoyodyne and Squidoo. His blog (which you can find by typing "seth" into Google) is one of the most popular in the world.  His newest book, What To Do When It's Your Turn, is a bestseller.

Godin says that it is important to define work. People have been brainwashed to think that work is something where we need to ‘do what we are told’ – that it is all about compliance.

People that go out on their own – freelancers - fall into two camps. The first are those that are ‘workers without a boss’.  They do fine work when they have a client that acts like their boss and then they get freaked out when they can’t get another gig. This is because they are compliant and loathe taking a stand on something at the same time they are compliant.

The second group of freelancers are those that often fall into the trap of thinking they need to invent something original, be the first to do something. When in reality, no one asked them to do something original; instead they need to do something worthy, which creates value.

Often, people are hiding in their jobs –without realizing it. There is a cushion of comfort at their job. The company will take care of you if you become ill, there is a sales department that will sell for you and so on. However, this can keep employees from their end purpose, interacting with their customers and really understanding everything that goes on in the workplace.

How should we be preparing for the future of work?

1. Learn how to be generously persistent as you fail. Try something new, fail, get back up and try again. Once you’ve mastered that – start something else new, fail, try again …until you are comfortable of the concept of launching something new.
2. Work on understanding symbolic logic, how ideas work and the validity of an argument from a scientific point of view. This will enable you to be an informed consumer of information and form your own opinions - the opposite of dogma and compliance.

Godin’s advice for employees is: regardless of the past you ‘get the chance to do the future over again’.

His advice for manager is that a manager and a leader are different things. A manager gets you to do the same thing you did yesterday but faster and cheaper.

Leaders are people who take a team and figure out how to solve a problem even though they don’t know how to do it. If you are manager, figure out how to be a leader, if you are a leader figure out how to shine a light on problems.

Things you will learn:

• How to hire people that you really need
• Putting your ‘sucky’ job in perspective
• The reality of AI in the past, present and future
• What makes Godin successful at what he does and why he left full time work
• How to be a perpetual doer