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The Practice by Seth Godin: Thoughts and Ideas

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

True to form, I’ve spent hours thinking about the template I want to use for posts about books here on the Aspiring Academic in 2021. On the surface, this makes some sense: I have a very aggressive reading goal this year, so if I can create a standard format for my posts about books, that will save some time. As logical as that rationale may sound, it’s missing one tiny (but important) detail that Seth Godin would be the first to point out:

I haven’t written enough posts about books to create a template for my posts about books.

At this point, I don’t know what I would want to include in or omit from a book review post. In fact, the only thing I do know is that I don’t enjoy writing (or reading) standard book reviews. In the limited number of posts I have written about books, podcasts, lectures, or other content I’m learning from, I don’t do much summarizing. Generally, I just write my thoughts about the content: other content it connects to or reminds me of, questions it raises, and ideas it inspires. For lack of a better term, we’ll call it a book response.

This may not be a standard book response template, but at this point I’m going to take Seth’s advice.

And just start practicing.

The First Seth Godin Book I’ve Read

(and I Already Need to Reread It)

I’ve been blogging for awhile, so I’ve been a long-time fan and reader of Seth Godin’s blog. This will come as a shock to no one, but I like to goof off in my posts a bit here and there. Seth Godin does not goof off.

Seth Godin writes concise, objective, creative insight. Nothing more, nothing less. Reading just one tiny Seth Godin blog post can spark multiple ideas for things I want to write, research, try, do differently, or read more about. I bought The Practice after hearing Seth Godin talk about the book on Paula Pant’s podcast. I had to listen to that episode twice, and ultimately started 3 separate draft blog posts based on that discussion.

Looking back now, I probably should have known Seth Godin’s books would be like his blog… but this was the first Seth Godin book I’ve read, and I was not prepared. I listened to the Audible version, which exacerbated the problem (if we can call it a problem). Imagine 200+ Seth Godin blog posts — no intros, no fluff, no goofing off — being read to you one after the other. Even if I was sitting down with a pen and notebook the entire time I listened to the book, and pausing it after every single “post” (chapter?), I probably would have missed great insights.

To be clear, I would never fault a book for offering too much value. I simply need to reread this book (probably several times, and probably in print), because I don’t want to miss any of Seth’s insights or the potential ideas they could spark.

Despite not being a huge fan of the Audible format for this particular book, I did pick up a few nuggets of wisdom on this first read.

Writers Write

The Practice is about doing your creative work. The work that you want to be doing, and feel on some level like you should be doing (because when you aren’t doing it, something is missing). For me, that work has always been writing.

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, but I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve historically been what Seth Godin would refer to as an “amateur” writer. As Seth explains in this book, the difference between an amateur and a professional is that a professional shows up even when they don’t feel like it. For the professional writer, writing is a practice, not a hobby.

Establishing a consistent writing practice is one of my primary goals for 2021. In fact, one of my resolutions is to write every day this year. Thankfully, Seth addresses another question I’ve historically run into when attempting to build a consistent writing practice:

What is the point?

The most important insight in this book for me personally is the assertion that publishing creative work is generous. Often, I think we believe the opposite: that creative work is just for us. That it is a creative outlet, a hobby, a pastime, and therefore inherently selfish. This mentality makes it easy to excuse ourselves for not doing our creative work, and for not sharing it. After all, aren’t we the only ones that are hurt by not sharing our creative work?

In the Practice, Seth Godin strongly disagrees with that idea. He argues that the world needs our creative work, so sharing our work is generous. Not sharing our work is selfish.

While I think it will take some time to get on board with this mindset, I like the idea… and it tracks with my own experience writing online for the past 5 years. My writing doesn’t have anything like Seth Godin’s level of traffic (and it probably never will), but I do occasionally hear from readers that have benefited from something I wrote. Everyone in the world will never benefit from the work of one individual creative, since people are looking for different things. But if there is at least one person in the world that could benefit from what I write, that seems like enough of a reason for me to keep writing.

Generously.

A Few Additional Thoughts and Ideas

In the spirit of generosity, here are a few additional thoughts and ideas from my first read of The Practice (in a Seth Godin-inspired, no-fluff bullet format):

Doing your creative work consistently is only half the battle. You also have to ship the work (or, if you are a writer, publish the work). Publishing the work is the only way to obtain any data: to learn what is working for your audience and what is not, to establish your format, to find your voice, to learn what you actually want to write about (and what you do not). To learn anything useful about the work, you have to do the work and share the work, not theorize about it. Sharing the work is what makes the practice generous.
There is a lot of failure involved with actually doing things in practice, not in theory. There will be a lot of bad ideas before there is a good one. Bad ideas are preferable to no ideas. You can learn from bad ideas. You can build better ones from the ashes. But you can’t build anything at all if you don’t do anything at all.
Skills and knowledge can be obtained, but you have to invest the time to gain them. Do the reading. You don’t have to agree with everyone in your field that is publishing work, but you need to know about it. Not so you can copy anyone’s work, so that you can avoid copying it. So that you can respond to it, build on it, learn from it, and ultimately create something new.