Book Review: Poke the Box by Seth Godin
Meta
- Who should read this book? Someone wanting a quick kick in the pants, and a bit of motivation to get up and take action.
- Time to Read: I read “Poke the Box” in about two 30 minute sittings. The prose is light, and it read fairly quickly.
- Pages & Highlights: 95 pages, and I highlighted 21 passages.
- Structure: A mix of stories, observations, and exhortations, all loosely organized in paragraphs.
- Thesis: Become known as someone who starts things.
“Poke the Box” was a quick read, and I felt like it was worth all of the $1.99 sale price that I paid. (Note: I did get the book on a discounted Kindle Daily Deal. Sign-up for Kindle Daily Deals here.)
To illustrate the point of the book, I’ll pull out three quotes that really splashed water over my head.
Top Three Quotations
1.) “When was the last time you did something for the first time?“
– Seth Godin, loc 15
The whole point of Seth’s encouragement in this book is: “Be the person who starts things!”
To be the one KNOWN for starting things.
This quote gripped me because it goes beyond simply taking initiative. I have a number of goals and ways that I’m trying to develop personally, and it immediately struck me the impact it would have on my development and creativity if I made a goal to do something for the First Time each week.
2.) “Twice as much polishing isn’t twice as good.“
– Seth Godin, loc 373
Both in my educational training and my work experience I felt that I thrived when I had the opportunity to continually polish my work.
This statement slapped me because I now realize that I hid behind continuing to revise my work, rather than submitting it and moving on. I kept polishing my work because of anxiety about not being good enough, not because it wasn’t a quality example of my work.
3.) “Please stop waiting for a map. We reward those who draw maps, not those who follow them.“
– Seth Godin, loc 426
There were a few times where Seth mentioned this analogy of mapmaking vs. map following. Towards the end of the book he brought it up again, and the “Please” grabbed me because it came across as a plea from Seth to stop living my life as a playing-it-safe, follower.
In between my two sittings to read this, I listened to a podcast that talked about vision, strategy, and goal setting. Thinking about vision and goal setting, alongside the idea of map making, lead me to think:
1.) Vision is like a beautiful painting of a landscape.
2.) Strategy is the detail of the roads on the painting.
3.) Goals are the cities along those roads.
Overall, I enjoyed the ~ 1hr 15 min it took me to read “Poke the Box“.
The Challenge
“What new thing am I going to do next week?”
Example
- Taking a class at the gym
- Assuming a new responsibility at work
- Cooking a full meal for your family
What are you going to do for the first time this week?
-SRS
Disclaimer:
The Amazon links used in this post are affiliate links. That means if you click through the Amazon links and buy the book, it does NOT cost you anything extra but Amazon does send me a tiny % as a thank you.
If you found this helpful, and do decide to get the book, please purchase it through one of the links here.
Thanks ^_^
Samuel Seibert 
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