Linchpin notes, Part IV

by Seth Godin.

• We have everything we need, so we're not buying commodities. We're buying relationships and stories and magic. 
• Corporations tried to depersonalize all of those so they could lie to us, so they could package commodities, so they could scale without involving humans. 
• Only path available to you is to change me, connect with me, or make a difference in my life. 
• Wal-Mart wins because it's cheap and close. Everyone else who wins must do it by being generous. 
• Linchpins do two things for organizations: they exert emotional labor and they make a map.
• Creativity is personal, original, unexpected, and useful. Unique creativity requires domain knowledge, a position of trust, and the generosity to actually contribute.
• Delivering Unique Creativity -- hardest of all, because not only do you have to have insight, but you also need to be passionate enough to risk the rejection that delivering a solution can bring. You must ship.
• Understanding that your job is to make something happen changes what you do all day.
• Become a mapmaker.
• When you meet someone, you need to have a superpower. If you don't, you're just another handshake. Make the introduction meaningful.
• If you want to be a linchpin, the power you bring to the table has to be very difficult to replace. 
• Humility is our antidote to what's inevitably not going to go according to plan. Humility permits us to approach a problem  with kindness and not arrogance. Be a generous artist. 
• What do you do when you art doesn't work? Make more art. Give more gifts. Learn from what you did and then do more. 
• Live life without regret. 
• All these interactions are art. It's anything that changes someone for the better, any nonanonymous interaction that leads to a human (not simply a commercial) conclusion. 
• Art can't be bought or sold. It must contain an element that's a gift, something that brings the artist closer to the viewer, not something that insulates one from the other.
• You can't fake it, though, because humans are too talented at sensing when a gift is not a gift, when we're being played or manipulated. And sometimes our art isn't enough. It's not enough to get the sale or even a living. But we persist because making art is what we do.