This Might Not Work! Start anyway. Poke the Box.

Building on the ideas he first presented in Linchpin, Seth Godin is back encouraging us to start things—start a project, make a ruckus, take what feels like a risk. Poke the Box is about seeing what happens.

“The box,” writes Godin, “might be a computer or it might be a market or it might be a customer or it might be your boss. It’s a puzzle, one that can be solved in only one way—by poking. When you do this, what happens? When you do that, what happens? The box reveals itself through your poking.”

Godin says the opportunity is in creating unique learning experiences that are worth sharing. He advises that we start and keep staring until the project is finished. Failure is a part of starting anything worthwhile. “If you can’t fail, it doesn’t count.”

Here are a few more bits of Godin wisdom:

Look for the fear. That’s almost always the source of your doubt.

Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.

Sooner or later, many idealists transform themselves into disheartened realists who mistakenly believe that giving up is the same thing as being realistic.

Poking doesn’t mean right. It means action. Once we learn how to take initiative we see opportunities all around us.

Godin notes, “I’ve had a lot of practice in poking the box, figuring out which ideas resonate, and then shipping them. The more you do it, the more it gets done and the less crazy you feel.” He also cautions, “Poke. But be smart about it.” Poke the Box is an effective and convincing book, but more importantly, if applied, is transformational.

As you might expect from Godin, Poke the Box: The Workbook is available as a free download on the Domino Project web site.

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