Your Work Is Not For Everybody [Book Review]

The Practice by Seth Godin

When we try to please everybody, we end up pleasing nobody. Your work is for somebody but it's not for everybody. Are you ok with it? This pretty much sums it up for The Practice. 219 short notes on shipping creative work out to the world. For somebody. 

I don't fully comprehend everything but I appreciate some of his perspectives and I am sure he is ok with it. It is a book that you have to read and re-read again to understand what he is writing. It is not a straightforward read-and-get-done kind of book. It makes you pause and think. It makes you question.

The book asks you to create first. It is selfish if you don't. You have to share and not everybody will get your work but you do it anyway. You keep creating. You focus on the process not the outcome. Every single day. 

I appreciate his approach to creative work because it is just like the (yoga) practice. There is no magic. There is no shortcut. You don't wait for a creative moment. What you feel don't matter. You commit and you show up. You simply put in the work, everyday. The practice is the work.

Here's an interview article with Seth Godin on his perspective on the book.