“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 Seth’s books 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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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.

SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE

Website | Seth’s Blog | Instagram | Facebook

• The Song of Significance: A New Manifesto for Teams by Seth Godin | Amazon
• Other Books by Seth Godin | Amazon
• Seth’s previous appearances on the podcast: 672, 476, 402, 343, 177, 138
• The (Urban) Legend of Ernest Hemingway’s Six-Word Story | Open Culture
• Steven Pressfield on Writing Exercises, Muses, Lucky Charms, and Beating The Resistance | Writing Routines
• The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield | Amazon
• No Biological Free Lunches | Tim Ferriss
• Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud | Amazon
• A Webcomic of Romance, Sarcasm, Math, and Language | xkcd
• Top Ten Stupid Pet Tricks | Letterman
• Dune | Prime Video
• The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro | Amazon
• The Practice: Shipping Creative Work by Seth Godin | Amazon
• The Real “Rules” of Haiku | The Poetry Place
• Long Form AI | Seth’s Blog
• Claude AI | Anthropic
• ChatGPT | OpenAI
• Conan O’Brien Says Larry David Is “Exactly Like He Is on ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’” | Exclaim!
• Peanuts by Charles Schulz
• You Don’t Need More Time | Seth’s Blog
• Isaac Asimov: Centenary of the Great Explainer | Nature
• Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics” | Auburn University
• Clue VCR Mystery Game by Parker Brothers | Amazon
• When Siskel and Ebert Were the Names Above the Title | The New York Times
• The Wizard of Oz (1985) | MobyGames
• This is Akimbo (A Podcast from Seth Godin)
• The Rise and Fall of Squidoo | Wizzley
• Tango World Record: Tim Ferriss and Alicia Monti | Live with Regis and Kelly
• Sinecure Definition & Meaning | Merriam-Webster
• Chilean Sea Bass: How Patagonian Toothfish Was Saved | MSC
• The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln | Abraham Lincoln Online
• “Advice for Authors” Search Results | Seth’s Blog

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

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