Seth Godin on Blogging and Creative Resistance

Tim Ferriss

About genre.

Seth Godin

So my blog is a long running series. It has been a series of 8,500 daily posts. So if I was starting today, I have to figure out what is the genre of my work. If you think about David Letterman's TV show, he needed to have a series called Stupid Pet Tricks because the show wasn't Stupid Pet Tricks, but there was a regular recurring Stupid Pet Trick. The show was a series of David Letterman shows. So if your genre, as you re-enter blogging, is there is a post from Tim on a regular basis, and all of them are about the things we put into our body and performance, then you're fine. If that's not the case, then the question is, when the reader shows up, do you need to do a lot of throat clearing to get them back on track for what you are writing about today? And so, since you're starting with largely a blank slate, I said, well, if the first seven of these are in this series, then you only have to clear your throat once on the eighth day and Say, okay, now we're talking about this. And you could do one of those or six of those or 12 of those. But people do better if they understand that they're going to see Dune not read The Power Broker. Those are different genres, and you need to give them a hint as to what they're going to get.

Tim Ferriss

I like the idea of recognizing that my tendency is to, how should I be generous with myself, be comprehensive. I was going to say overcomplicate,

Seth Godin

Right, well, I'll do the first part first because it's easier. You asked, how do you decide or know when a post is done? And I texted back, I don't. That's the point. And then I wrote, imagine how hard it would be to have a conversation or even a text thread if we had to think through whether our turn to talk was over before we stopped talking. Right? So my model, my ritual is I write blog posts in advance and then the night before I review them, I rewrite them, I delete them. So if I get the stomach flu, there's still going to be a blog post tomorrow. And when I rewrite a blog post, the rule is you get points if you make it shorter. You don't get points if you make it longer. And if I can't boil it down more than it already is, and it's not deliberately deceptive, it's done. Because the purpose is tell people something they already sort of know in a way that they would be grateful for the chance to forward to other people.

Tim Ferriss

Can you say that one more time, Seth? That seems important. If

Seth Godin

I would say two things. First, I think you're talking about consistency in terms of showing up at the ballpark every day. Cadence.

Tim Ferriss

Exactly. Yeah.

Seth Godin

So I'll do that one second. The first one, I have never met Larry David, but I'm guessing that there are some days that Larry David is actually a nice, thoughtful person. And there is a character named Larry David as well. So the person who writes my blog is a character named Seth Godin. And I am the only person who has ever written my blog. I'm the only person who ever will write my blog. But when I am doing it, I am playing the character named Seth Godin. So if it doesn't sound like me, if it's just me authentically being tired or annoyed, I don't publish those. Because that's not what my character would do. This is not me exposing some mystical, mythical Seth Godin to the world. It's me portraying the character Seth Godin, because it's a service. And then the second thing is, streaks are usually used against us by software. And if they make you feel bad, it's not a helpful thing. But I write blog posts every single day, whether I use them or not. And I learned that from Isaac Asimov when I worked with him all those years ago. If

Seth Godin

Know, I've not ever pushed myself to name them because seeing is forgetting the name of what one sees. But I guess I'd highlight a couple of things. The first one is I try to begin from a place of the benefit of the doubt of there probably aren't bad people. There's just situations that cause people to do things that are troubling, and a level of optimism to go with it. I try to reduce ideas to their essence without becoming hyperbolic, because the voices of social media amped up the hyperbolic part. That's not a simplification. That's an exaggeration.

Tim Ferriss

Right.

Seth Godin

I try to eliminate parentheticals unless I really have no choice. So I will avoid saying something like, all tall people are very brave, because ridiculous. But I will not write tall people are brave parentheses, except for this person, this person, this person, and this person, because now it's not worth reading, right? So there's an assertion at the beginning that creates a tension and then a release of that tension that lands an idea. So the shortest blog post I ever wrote, which I'm really proud of is first line is you don't need more time. So that's an assertion. It's controversial. People who feel overwhelmed want to challenge it. And then the delivery is you just need to decide. So that flips it upside down, takes the blame off

Seth Godin

An assertion at the beginning that creates a tension and then a release of that tension that lands an idea. So the shortest blog post I ever wrote, which I'm really proud of is first line is you don't need more time. So that's an assertion. It's controversial. People who feel overwhelmed want to challenge it. And then the delivery is you just need to decide. So that flips it upside down, takes the blame off the system and the people who are making you busy and puts it right back on you, giving you agency and authority and responsibility to Simply decide and then get back to what needs to get done. And so in just a few words, that's an example of a short Seth Godin blog post. And a longer one is one where I will try to teach somebody details about something they didn't know, but frame it in a way that they're comfortable with because that's how they might've Framed it as well.

Tim Ferriss

Let me ask a quick question and maybe that I've cut back on my caffeine too significantly, but you don't need more time. You just need to decide. What are people deciding?

Seth Godin

Well,

Seth Godin

Think it's very kind of you to say I'm very good at it. I don't think I'm good at it, but because I'm sort of in public and I do it in a certain way, it's noted. You know, I did five years of Akimbo. It was in the top 1% of all podcasts. And then I just stopped. And I stopped not because I didn't love it. I did love it. I stopped because if I kept doing it, there's something else I wouldn't do instead. And creating a vacuum is required so that I will do the hard work of filling the vacuum. But if I just keep doing the thing, then there is no vacuum. And sometimes the technology changes. That's why Spinnaker went away. That's why you couldn't keep making VCR games. It's why my headstart in the CD-ROM business was worthless because CD-ROMs went away. I liked in every time I did this being a pioneer in a new media space because that's, for me, the funnest spot. And then when the technology changes, I got to move on. But podcast technology is never going to change. I mean, you're noting there's a change in the production format, and that is a change. So in my case, what I'm trying to do is not maximize my income per hour spent, nor am I trying to maximize the size of my audience. What I'm trying to maximize is, are the people I'm serving glad that I did, that I showed up to solve an interesting problem? And