Seth Godin

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  Claude

  Uses AI every day for more than an hour, and says Claude is the one he actually talks to, partly because it warns him when it might be making something up. The method he describes is narrow: hand it three bullet points, ask for four more, then rewrite them himself.

  Source: The Tim Ferriss Show #792 transcript
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  Linchpin

  Names it as his most important book. The question it puts to a reader is whether they will be more than a cog: someone whose absence would be noticed, doing work that counts.

  Source: seths.blog: Books
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  Permission Marketing

  Wrote it when email marketing was not yet an industry at all, as he tells it. He still stands behind the core of the argument: connection is the building block of the internet, and messaging works when it is anticipated, personal and relevant.

  Source: seths.blog: Books
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  Perplexity

  Searches with Perplexity almost exclusively, and says he has nearly stopped using a conventional search engine. The writing stays his own, he is firm about that, whatever he uses to think alongside.

  Source: The Tim Ferriss Show #792 transcript
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  Purple Cow

  By his own account the bestselling marketing book of its decade, built on one method: spread an idea by making the thing itself remarkable.

  Source: seths.blog: Books
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  The Art of Possibility

  Sits on the same short list, next to Dan Pink and Tom Peters. He calls those authors classics in the field and says his own life is better for knowing them, so he is recommending friends as well as books.

  Source: seths.blog: Books for the journey
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  The Dip

  Sums it up himself as a book about the real upsides of quitting, and about what it is worth to be seen as the best in the world at something.

  Source: seths.blog: Books
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  The Practice

  An instant bestseller in 2020, by his description, and his book about shipping creative work. The question he attaches to it is whether that is the work you want to be doing.

  Source: seths.blog: Books
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  The War of Art

  One of the handful of books he says he goes back to again and again rather than reading once, and hands out to colleagues expecting them to pass it on. Pressfield is a friend as well as an author on that list, which he states plainly when he shares it.

  Source: seths.blog: Books for the journey
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  This Is Marketing

  Calls it the bestselling marketing book since Purple Cow, and pitches it at strategy rather than tactics, for readers trying to work out how a culture picks up an idea.

  Source: seths.blog: Books
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  This Is Strategy

  Defines strategy as a philosophy of becoming rather than a set of tactics, and not as winning in the short run. What it takes, he says, is clarity about the change you want to make and who you want to change, then a long commitment to the process while the tactics keep moving.

  Source: The Tim Ferriss Show #792 transcript
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  Tribes

  Puts the tools of leadership in everyone's hands, on his own summary, leaving only the question of whether a person will choose to use them. He also credits it with describing fractures in the culture years before they were obvious.

  Source: seths.blog: Books
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Repeatable, mostly free routines with a defined trigger and dose.

• Budget and deadline disciplineDoes itFREE, no cost

  Never goes over budget and never misses a deadline. He frames it as choosing to be a professional rather than as a knack. Run out of money or time and the project ends there. By his account the code cuts out the pleading and the borrowing from one line to pay another, and taking a job on with it in place leaves you far more focused.

  Source: The Tim Ferriss Show #837 transcript

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• Shipping creative workRecommendsFREE, no cost

  Separates being creative from shipping the result, calling them different skills with different fears attached. Anonymous work feels easy because nobody can react to it; the risk turns up the moment someone might. Working out which of the two is holding you back is the step he suggests first.

  Source: seths.blog: Shipping creative work

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• Strategic quittingRecommendsFREE, no cost

  Argues for deciding when you will quit before the market decides for you. Walking away early to pick your next move beats losing slowly in a dip he reads as unsurvivable. He grants that it feels unnatural, which is exactly why he wants the call made in advance.

  Source: seths.blog: The joy of quitting

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• The smallest viable audienceRecommendsFREE, no cost

  A stepping stone rather than a compromise, in his framing. Pick the specific people the work is for, make something they would miss if it vanished, and let them carry it to peers like themselves. He is blunt that this puts you on the hook more, not less, since a small audience notices when you coast.

  Source: seths.blog: The smallest viable audience

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Daily practices held long enough to become default behavior.

• Daily writingDoes itFREE, no cost

  Has written every word of the blog himself, and says he does not understand outsourcing something that personal. By his own count in late 2017 the total sat past 7,000 posts and 2.7 million words, with no day missed in many years. The secret he gives for a daily blog is to write every day, queue it up and publish.

  Source: seths.blog: This is post 7,000

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• Quitting social mediaDoes itFREE, no cost

  Says he does not look at Facebook or Twitter, and his own rule is no social media unless a project needs it. Tim Ferriss asked which decisions would simplify a life; he named this alongside two other subtractions, then asked listeners how many hours a day dropping them would free up.

  Source: The Tim Ferriss Show #837 transcript

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• Keeping a streakDoes itFREE, no cost

  Eleven straight years of daily posts as of August 2019, and by his own reckoning no day missed since 2008. He describes the run as self-reinforcing: commitment hardens into a practice, the practice into a habit, and the daily question shifts from whether to post to what the post will say.

  Source: seths.blog: Streaks

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• No meetingsDoes itFREE, no cost

  Goes to no meetings, and the rule he offers everyone else is to skip one whenever a memo would do. In a big organization he reckons that alone saves thirty hours a week. Even a freelancer, he says, gets clearer by writing the thing down. Conversations he is in favor of.

  Source: The Tim Ferriss Show #837 transcript

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• No televisionDoes itFREE, no cost

  Watches no television on his own, one of four things he named as keeping his working life simple. He is careful about the trade in the same breath: give those hours up and the stakes rise, because you are then on the hook for something specific instead.

  Source: The Tim Ferriss Show #837 transcript

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• Daily walkingRecommendsFREE, no cost

  His advice is to go exactly when you least want to, because that is the walk that shifts your mood and gets you upright and moving. He adds a second use beyond the exercise: if there is a conversation you keep putting off, take that person along.

  Source: seths.blog: Go for a walk

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• Margin notesRecommendsFREE, no cost

  Tells readers to pick three things they will change at work before opening a business book, then read hunting for those three. Sticky notes, index cards or a highlighter are there to turn the reading into something to act on rather than a record to file, and he sets a three-week test: nothing done by then and the time was wasted.

  Source: seths.blog: How to read a business book

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• “Writer’s block isn’t hard to cure. Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can write better. I believe that everyone should write in public.”

  On Daily writing

• “Streaks are their own reward. Streaks create internal pressure that keeps streaks going. Streaks require commitment at first, but then the commitment turns into a practice, and the practice into a habit. Habits are much easier to maintain than commitments.”

  On Keeping a streak

• “For example, I don’t go to meetings. I don’t watch television on my own. I don’t look at Facebook or Twitter.”

  On Quitting social media

• “And I use Perplexity exclusively. I almost never do a search with a search engine. Every word I publish, I wrote.”

  On Perplexity

• “It’s not about getting found by everyone. A focus on experience creates something that (some) people want to look for.”

  On The smallest viable audience