Linchpin - Seth Godin

This is the first book by Seth that I've read. Seth makes a very persuasive argument, solidly built up paragraph by paragraph, for the key ideas in his book, and then eases nicely into explaining what these ideas are. I find the ideas very pertinent for me, especially at this stage of my career and life. I believe that the fundamental issue that Seth is tackling is that many of us office workers are gradually working ourselves into redundancy by not progressing to the next level in the knowledge revolution. The gap is that we don't tap on our artistic instincts and produce value that cannot be easily replicated by others, or worse, a very smart computer.

These are the key ideas that I've picked up:

1. Many of us office workers perform our work like what he calls "bureaucrats, note-takers, literalists, manual readers, TGIF labourers and fearful employees". These reflect many of the working styles that I observe around me: people sticking to rules and not exercising judgement, people living Mon to Thur waiting for Fri to come and living in dread in the meantime. This perspective towards our jobs leave us vulnerable to becoming redundant and dispensable.
   
2. The working class, which had so far been indoctrinated by the industrial revolution to follow instructions to the T and limit their creativity, needs to unlearn some of these practices and progress to the creative level to remain relevant. Otherwise, their salaries will constantly be chipped away by lower-wage workers as the world.
   
3. The key to becoming indispensable is to add value through creative innovation - not just incremental ones. My own interpretation is that incremental innovation would be, in the policy-making context, reacting and changing the rules in a narrow fashion to meet today's needs. Creative innovation requires the ability to see the future that does not exist yet, deep expertise, sound judgement and an innovative mind to create a fundamental change in policy.
4. Seth feels that schools should just teach two things, if nothing else: how to solve interesting problems + lead. I think I'm still struggling to learn these two things even after being 6 yrs out of school!
   
5. Creative innovation comes in short bursts, but are worth disproportionately more in value. For example, he quotes the example of Richard Branson - much of what he does everyday can conceivably be done by many other brilliant or good people. However, some of the "magic" that he does, particularly in seeing opportunities and capitalising on them, is what makes him a billionaire.
6. These magic moments require deep knowledge and sound judgement, which is a rare quality. But it sounds like it can be developed, based on Seth's book.
   
7. Emotional labour is another key ingredient - putting one's full emotional commitment and inspiration into one's work can add that additional edge.
8. I think 5,6 and 7 translates into moments of intense thought and meditation that one needs to cultivate and block into one's day. This is something that I've been thinking about for some time but haven't been able to do so diligently enough. This is time where a knowledge worker exercises his most significant leverage - to come up with creative solutions. Seth calls it "letting the silence into your life".
9. He contrasts this silence to the "busy-ness" that we try to immerse ourselves in non-stop everyday, which makes us feel gainfully occupied and less anxious (about the "absurd"? this might be the subject of another book review :p) but is of minimal value, because they can be done by many others. This includes checking email constantly, chasing every single details, etc. He says that there's a Tibetan name for it - shenpa - an itch that feels good when scratched but serves no other purpose.

So the question after all this is really: what do I need to do to become a linchpin? Am I gaining the necessary depth of knowledge, experience to build my judgement and also setting aside enough time to exercise my creative and innovative engines? I think one new thing I'll do is to being ten-minute "thinking blocks" where I focus on solving a particular task innovatively (rather than incrementally). This could be increased in the future, both in length and frequency.