Poking doesn’t mean right. It means action.

The more I read non-fiction books, the more I start to see how the ideas or learning from one book connects to another. In this short book the marketing guru Seth Godin encourages people to start something, to deliver a project, an idea, or just something new. The idea of poking the box is to use our curiosity to try new things (Brain Rule #12 – Exploration) and to deliver it to the public or market. Like Roosevelt said “be in the arena” (quoted in the Daring Greatly). The brain rule explains that human brains are wired to observe, hypothesise, experiment and conclude. This is exactly how babies learn – by experimenting with anything around them, observing the responses and making conclusions! Unfortunately a lot of us are then taught to comply with the status quo to avoid failing or embarrassing ourselves. Starting something new increases the chance of failure so as we grow older we stop exploring. However, failing is ok and it is part of the discovery, we have been taught the opposite which is why we fear starting new things as we associate starting with failing. The most important thing from trying and starting new things is the learning, both from the successes and the failures. If you look at successful people around the world, they do not get to where they are without failing along the way. For example, Steve Jobs was once kicked out from the company that he started, Apple, but did he give up then? No, instead he went off and created another company, Pixar. Imagine if he like a lot of people in the world gave up at that point, today we would not be enjoying the creative animation movies like Toy Story!

The opportunity lies in pursuing your curiosity instead. Curiosity is not allergic to failure.

At the start of the book, Seth raises this question:

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?

When I read this question I had an answer right away. I wanted to start this blog (yes I read this book before starting the blog). I knew it right there and then that I have to do it now not only because I enjoy reading but as my sister pointed out I used to enjoy writing when I was younger. So what stopped me from starting? The risk of failure! Every time I thought of starting a blog I was too scared. I did not like the idea of speaking up my opinion because of other people’s judgement. I was also worried with the possible time commitment for the blog and biggest of all, of failing – failing to attract readers (especially in a saturated market with so many blogs out there), failing to share my ideas clearly, failing to inspire others with my posts, etc. The list just kept going on. And all of these are excuses (and I knew it but I still let them became the road block at that time).So this book changed and inspired me. It gave me a huge motivation to just “ship” my blog. Just try it out and see how people react to it and I did! Am I succeeding or failing? I don’t know but I will continue to work on my blog and try different things to see what works and what does not. Most importantly I will learn different things through this side project.

Lastly like Seth has pointed out in his book, it is human nature to shy away from starting because of fear of failure, so

The challenge is getting into the habit of starting

Whether you are looking for a good book to read or additional inspiration to push you through the hump of starting an idea that you have, this book is worth reading!