Passionate Living

When we talk about success, we inevitably talk about personal development. And when we talk about personal development, inevitably we talk about business or marketing success [1]. When previously we talked about Six Pixels of Separation, this time we talk about another marketing thought leader worth following: Seth Godin.

Seth Godin is a highly prolific author who has published many books on marketing (and most of them best sellers too). Besides writing books, he also writes in his blog [2], that is subscribed to by tens of thousands of readers. Although he mainly talks about marketing terms, Seth’s primary topic is about how to spread your ideas in the post-digital world.

I haven’t read any of his priced books, but I have read several of his freely downloadable ones [3]. The style with which he writes, as one other blogger says it, is “short and succinct”. Seth doesn’t write long blog posts – not like some of my other favorite bloggers – but in the short sentences that he does, he hits the point home with thousands of his readers; this is how he spreads his ideas [4].

The books Seth has published include best hits such as The Purple Cow and All Marketers Are Liars. His latest release, just published last month, is titled Linchpin and has been bought, read, shared, and tweeted about intensively in the circle of thought readers that I follow – including musicians! There is a wealth of ideas to absorb in his books, or you could opt for the daily snackable content by subscribing to his blog [5].

Seth Godin’s main idea – or at least the one I can conclude from reading his blog – is what he calls resistance; or the lizard brain. The lizard brain is basically part of our ego whose job is to maintain the status quo. Therefore, it’s the part of our brain that creates the resistance when we strive for success.

The lizard brain is the part of the human psychology that inhibits our growth by drawing from survival instincts from back when humans still lived in wild environments. In the wild where lack of concentration could lead to physical or fatal injury, the purpose of the lizard brain is to teach us not to take foolish risks. We have survived partially because we listened to what our lizard brain said.

Unfortunately, we brought this thought process of living in the wild into living in modern society – where the rules of survival and prosperity are different. To succeed in the social environment, we need to take risks that may seem highly dangerous to the lizard brain. Our perception defeats the substance, and we retreat each time an opportunity presents itself.

In the social environment, the risk that is feared the most is failure. It’s an abstract risk, yet we fear it as if it was a physical one. We react violently towards the thought of failure, or the possibility of putting ourselves out on the line for everybody to see.

Seth’s idea is we need to defeat the impulses of the lizard brain. We need the intelligence to know the difference, which risks are physical and which ones only exist in our prejudices. When we can differentiate between the two, we are one step closer towards achieving our dreams.

Seth Godin: Quieting the Lizard Brain from 99% on Vimeo.

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[1] Book Review: Six Pixels of Separation, 2010
[2] Seth Godin’s blog
[3] Check his website for links to these free ebooks
[4] Therefore this isn’t exactly a book review, it’s more a blog review
[5] For why and how to subscribe, check How to Use RSS, 2009

*I should’ve wrote this at the end of last month, but I forgot. So here is the periodic book review of this month’s best-seller:

I don’t know about you, but I feel that in today’s world success is determined largely by your marketing skills. Based on personal development books I’ve read, it seems the techniques written in these books are to help you better sell and promote your products. Either that, or most you learn about growing as a person and achieving happiness is heavily correlated to your success in business and your marketing.

It’s a shame, but I think that’s what our world is currently focused on: success as measured by material wealth. Personal development books are actually business books, only in a watered down and motivational language (even the spiritual ones aim to help you be better at business). So it becomes inevitable that in order to learn about self development, we need to read a business book or two.

Enter Six Pixels of Separation, a best-selling book on digital marketing by Mitch Joel [1]. Mitch is a leading marketing blogger, and you can read the daily version of the book in his blog by the same name. Now you might think “Why buy the book, when I can get the ideas for free in the blog?”, and I’ve thought about this also but I’ve found out the advantage of reading the book: it gives you context for the ideas, not just a semi-random sequence of them.

New media

Mitch talks about the current trends in digital marketing. We’ve heard the term Web 2.0, social media, and other marketing jargons often said, but do we truly know what they mean, what they function, and how we can use these new gadgets to achieve our success (again, measured by material wealth)? The underlying premise in Six Pixels of Separation is that everybody is connected, now that we are active citizens of the online world; therefore we should use the channels to get and stay connected.

The idea that intrigues me the most from all the ideas in his book is about mobile content or marketing. As a musician, I can’t abandon the trends of how the market consumes content, mainly entertainment content. Mitch’s chapter about mobile marketing states that this is still nascent, still a very early stage, and there’s much room for progress and innovation to be made.

Interesting, because in Indonesia, mobile content is a big if not the biggest content business. For music, the sale and purchase of CD’s is not the bread and butter of musicians; instead it’s the sale and purchase of Ring Back Tones (or RBT’s) that are the main meat for musicians seeking a living through their music (and a highly regarded musician friend of mine says that the Indonesian market for RBT’s is the biggest in the world). So, the trend in mobile marketing and mobile content usage is very important for those who plan to make a living being a creative person (one who creates digitize-able content).

Not-so-new media

There are a few ideas that I challenge in the book. One is when Mitch says that things are changing faster than ever before (I’m sure he says this somewhere, but I’m not sure which page – but I remember thinking about it when I was reading it). Why do I challenge the idea? Because, as according to the one universe theory, I believe that the challenges we face are not more difficult or sophisticated or complex than what the communities and societies faced before us. Change has always happened, and it’s always happening fast; it’s always abrupt, yet always needed as part of the natural growth of society. Saying that we have it tougher than they did is an overestimation of our culture and an underestimation of previous cultures.

The market place has always been there since the dawn of man kind. Humans are not stupid, and if we say that the generation before us are stupid for, say, saying the earth is flat or not acknowledging the rights of women, then the generation after us will also say we’re stupid for, say, introducing global warming and the interest-based economy. Yet we think we are part of such a sophisticated people (more on this in next book’s review).

Six Pixels of Separation merely brings again a principle that has always been with us (and as according to the theory of reincarnation, every generation needs to be re-introduced to these same principles): success is helped by being an active member of the community. It is in the community we make a living, and since the community today is a vibrant online mash-up of various cultures and historical backgrounds, having an open mind, big heart, and great sense of humor to explore these waters is a huge huge must if we expect to survive and succeed. Six Pixels of Separation helps us to navigate through these relatively uncharted waters.

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*Today’s featured music: ethereal female vocals meets steel acoustic rock guitar meets drum and bass beats with a dash of goth: (via @dubber)

[1] Learn more about Mitch Joel and his business, blog, and book in the official SPOS site

email_subscribe by derrickkwa

One of the inspirations that lead me to write and publish my own blog is reading the blogs of other people, especially professionals in the industries I’m following. Mainly because of a series of suggestions by Andrew Dubber [1], I started to tap into the vast resources that is the internet. Since then, I’ve completely revolutionized the way I consume and manage information from the internet and it’s increased my learning efficiency multiple fold.

One of the life-hacks of using the internet is understanding how to use RSS; which stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication [2]. RSS technology allows us to be updated on the content of a website we’re interested in without having to constantly visit that website and check for updates manually. The new content gets delivered – much like mail – to our preferred internet address, which could be a browser application or an RSS reader.

Since becoming a major fan of RSS, I’ve been able to modify my own daily newspaper, so to speak. Unlike a conventional newspaper however, I have complete control over the content that appears in my news feed and I can fill it with whatever information I want virtually unlimited. I can’t measure it accurately, but I’m sure this adoption has saved me a considerable amount of time and has allowed me to stay in touch with my community in a very efficient and swift manner.

Choosing your address

To receive updates from a website or blog automatically delivered to you, first you need an RSS reader; or let’s call this your “address”. From my experience, there are two main choices that you can make your address: either by using a browser application, or by using an online RSS reader. Let’s talk about the advantages and disadvantages of both.

1. Browser Application

An example of a browser application that can receive RSS is the Brief Add-On [3] for Mozilla Firefox. This was the first choice I made and it’s extremely simple and clutter free, so you get a clean interface that let’s you browse through the feed with ease. It does have one downside to it though: since it’s a browser app, it can’t be synced online and therefore you can only access your feed subscriptions from your own browser on your desktop computer – this proves to be a disadvantage when you are mobile and don’t carry a mobile device of your own (in other words: you can’t read it on the road!)

2. Online Reader

I think there are much more choices for online RSS readers than there are for browser apps, and the top choice for this is Google Reader [4]. If you have a Google account, then you already have Google Reader and you only need start using it. The advantage of an online reader is that you can stay updated and access it from any computer that has internet access; but I do feel that the interface isn’t as clean as the Brief Add-On and doesn’t feel as intuitive.

The importance of self-education

Self-education is becoming more and more important since we left the industrial age and entered the information/knowledge worker age [5]. We are expected to do the same hard work, but we are given less help by the government and the public. Therefore, keeping education as a constant in our lives is an essential part of successful living.

I am an avid promoter on the power of RSS (thanks once again to Dubber!), and I believe that people who consume their information over the internet have a lot to gain from using this life-hack. To be a constant student, we always need to keep our minds open, and there’s no better way to do that than to explore the myriad of content available for free on the internet. Given, there is a lot of crap out there but there are also a lot of not-so-hidden gems; all you have to do is just go out and find them.

By using the power of RSS, I can stay updated to sites like Berklee Music Online where I can read free articles on music production or to IttyBiz where I can read about sex and Las Vegas small business marketing in a highly colored language. The possibilities are limited only by the amount of time that we have, and that’s the major complaint most RSS readers have: there’s not enough time to read them all!

Happy Power-Using!

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*Of course, you can get the articles on this blog delivered straight to you in the same fashion by subscribing to this RSS (or press the gorgeous red button to the left sidebar). Thanks!

[1] Andrew Dubber is an online music industry expert. He used to blog frequently, but he’s more active on Twitter now
[2] RSS on Wikipedia
[3] Brief Add-On for Mozilla Firefox
[4] Google Reader
[5] The term “knowledge worker age” is borrowed from Stephen Covey’s 8th Habit
[6] Photograph by derrickkwa. Because you get it wrapped and delivered