Suzanne Pinckney's List: Playful Bravery

• So this is what I'm telling you: There is no should. There is no living up to your potential. There is just doing your life. You can't do someone else's life.
• If we know our goal, and we know our life, and we are working toward it, then we never talk about our shoulds.

• It turns out that just about everything we do involves cleaning the bathrooms. Creating an environment where care and trust are expressed. If you take a lot of time to ask, "how will this pay off," you're probably asking the wrong question. When you are trusted because you care, it's quite likely the revenue will take care of itself.
• Plenty of people would happily pay extra for what you do... if they only believed that in fact it would turn out to be a bargain, worth more than it costs. One reason we price shop is that we don't trust that anything that costs more than the cheapest is worth what it costs.
• And in the race to charge more, we forget what it is that people want. They want more. And better.
• Play back what you hear but in your own words, using your own situation. Don't ask questions as much as make statements, building on what you just heard but making it your own. Take what you heard and make it the foundation for what you are trying on as your next idea.
• we have mass, but we've lost resiliency.
• The best way to honor someone who has said something smart and useful is to say something back that is smart and useful. The other way to honor them is to go do something with what you learned.

• Good listeners get what they deserve--better speakers.

   

  <!-- .entry-body -->       

  <!-- .entry-content -->   

   

• Who goes first? 

  <!-- .entry-header -->   

     

   

  Initiating a project, a blog, a wikipedia article, a family journey--these are things that don't come naturally to many people. The challenge is in initiating something even when you're not putatively in charge. Not enough people believe they are capable of productive initiative.

   

  At the same time, almost all people believe they are capable of editing, giving feedback or merely criticizing. 

   

  So finding people to fix your typos is easy.

   

  I don't think the shortage of artists has much to do with the innate ability to create or initiate. I think it has to do with believing that it's possible and acceptable for you to do it. We've only had these particular doors open wide for a decade or so, and most people have been brainwashed into believing that their job is to copyedit the world, not to design it.

   

  That used to be your job. It's not, not anymore. You go first.
• But what if instead of a funnel, we imagine a two-part market? One part is actively participating, supporting and partaking, all because the second part is busy free riding.
• You can’t simultaneously have a wide, open system for communication and also have tight connections and resilience.
• On the other hand, once you can get your head (and your heart) around the idea that ideas that spread, win, there are significant opportunities in a digital world where it's easier than ever to help people go for a free ride.
• hat might include something as simple as affirmative checkins, or more technical solutions to be sure everyone is in sync and also being heard.
• Yes, we've heard it said that it's the important, not the urgent, that deserves attention. But it understates just how much
• we've been manipulated by those that would make their important into our urgent.

• My take is that the benefit for winner-take-most markets is that anything you can do that realistically increases your chances of being the winner is a smart move--unless (double emphasis intended) the cost decreases your opportunity to do it again soon, or the compromises you're required to make undermine the very excitement you're trying to create.

   

  No obvious answer, no map. Asking the question is the essential first step in finding a path.
• It's easier to walk on by, to compartmentalize and to isolate ourselves. Easier, but not worth it.
• Try to discern the actually useful good advice, so you don't insulate yourself in the bubble of the self-deluded. In general, this good advice pushes you to go faster, or to do things that make you uncomfortable.
• Crisco, Tide, Pringles, Bounty, Duracell--these are fanciful names that turn the generic product (and the story we believe about it) into something distinct.

16 more annotations...