Seth Godin is on point (as always) with one of his most recent blog posts:
This is so true… it’s also tough to put into practice in a world obsessed with “best of” lists and rankings, and a culture obsessed with #winning.
It doesn’t have to be the “best ever”… it just has to be what it is. And we should be focused on the “be here now” of it all. Because the “here” and the “now” are all we’ve got. And that’s enough.
Did you know you can save the planet, and that it only takes a couple of minutes? OK, perhaps I’m exaggerating a bit, but if you switch your search engine to Ecosia, they’ll plant a tree for every 45 searches you do.
So your searches for the latest Kardashian news could actually be beneficial to society. (Reading up on the Kardashians will still rot your brain, but at least the planet will be healthier.)
Oh, and if you switch to Ecosia, you’ll be stickin’ it to The Man, too! The Man, in this case, is actually the 800-pound gorilla of Google. If you use Google for your search engine, they’re harvesting your data and using it to stick ads in your face… and making money off of it. By using a different search engine, you’re improving the overall health of the web.
The excerpt above is from Seth Godin’s blog post about switching to Ecosia. If you need more reasons, you’ll find them on the Ecosia blog.
I made the switch – it was super-easy, took less than 2 minutes, and I haven’t noticed any difference in the quality of my search results.
To be clear, there’s still money changing hands. But the money for search ads will go to Ecosia – a not-for-profit – instead of going into Google’s fat wallet. And Ecosia uses that income to plant trees. Also, Ecosia doesn’t sell your data to advertisers and doesn’t use third party trackers.
Here’s a great New York magazine interview with Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at NYU Stern School of Business… and the man who accurately predicted Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods and WeWork’s valuation bubble. It covers something that a lot of parents of college-age kids have been pondering during coronavirus lockdown: if my kid can’t be on campus, why am I paying the big bucks for School A vs. the much more economical School B?
There’s a recognition that education — the value, the price, the product — has fundamentally shifted. The value of education has been substantially degraded. There’s the education certification and then there’s the experience part of college. The experience part of it is down to zero, and the education part has been dramatically reduced. You get a degree that, over time, will be reduced in value as we realize it’s not the same to be a graduate of a liberal-arts college if you never went to campus. You can see already how students and their parents are responding.
It’s like, “Wait, my kid’s going to be home most of the year? Staring at a computer screen?” There’s this horrific awakening being delivered via Zoom of just how substandard and overpriced education is at every level.
excerpts from the article linked above.
Lots of interesting food for thought. Galloway predicts that the tech titans (Amazon, Apple, Google) will get into the higher ed game. Well worth a read.
And from the student side, Seth Godin has long advocated for changes in our factory model educational system. This coronavirus crisis also provides us with an opportunity to rethink… nay, reimagine, how schools are set up. His manifesto, Stop Stealing Dreams, is quite thought-provoking. You can download a PDF version here.
In the post-industrial model, though, the lectures are handled by best-in-class videos delivered online. Anything that can be digitized, will be digitized, and isolated on the long tail and delivered with focus. What’s needed from the teacher is no longer high-throughput lectures or test scoring or classroom management. No, what’s needed is individual craftsmanship, emotional labor, and the ability to motivate.
Seth Godin in Stop Stealing Dreams
The world has changed. Colleges, and all schools, need to change as well.
Seth Godin’s daily blog posts (you can sign up here) are pure magic. They never fail to provoke, challenge and/or inspire. Two recent ones really hit home for me. Here’s Seth’s post from January 25th:
We are more aware than ever before. More aware of victims of violence, or a natural disaster. More aware of insane wealth or grinding poverty. It gets beamed to us, regularly.
We’re even more often exposed to social hijinks, sports stars or business moguls.
We’re aware that people run a marathon, or fast for a week. That they start a business or meditate every day. They know how to code, or to take pictures.
But there’s a difference between hearing about it and experiencing it.
There’s no excuse for being uninformed. But when it matters, there’s also no good reason for being inexperienced.
There’s often a piece of glass between us and the world as it’s delivered to us. That glass magnifies awareness, but it doesn’t have the same impact as experience does. It can’t.
Our awareness has been stretched wider than ever in history, but often at the cost of taking away a lifetime of experiences.
So true! Let’s repeat that last sentence, shall we?
Our awareness has been stretched wider than ever in history, but often at the cost of taking away a lifetime of experiences.
And now for the Seth Godin double shot, a post from yesterday, Feb. 3rd:
And now, that’s always true.
Whatever you’re doing.
No matter who you’re with.
Something, somewhere, is more interesting than this.
And it’s in your pocket.
All the time. As long as the battery lasts.
There’s an alert, a status update, breaking news. There’s a vibration or a text, just waiting. Something. Right now.
Until infinity.
Unless we choose to redefine whatever we’re doing as the thing we’ve chosen to do, right here and right now.
Ignore the distractions and the coming attractions. Don’t take the clickbait. Focus on what YOU want to accomplish, not the dopamine hit that some AI algorithm is pushing.
Seth Godin just plain gets it. First of all, the dude writes a blog post every day. Yes, that’s right. Every. Single. Day. Neither rain, nor snow, nor authoring books nor hosting workshops nor speaking at conferences, will keep Mr. Godin from his appointed rounds — sharing pearls of wisdom with folks like you… and fanboys like me.
Here’s Seth’s post from earlier this week:
It’s my favorite holiday for a good reason: It doesn’t matter what country, what culture or what background you come from…
Gratitude works.
Gratitude scales.
Gratitude creates a positive cycle of more gratitude.
When in doubt, default to gratitude.
Brief and brilliant. Words to live by. Not just today. Every. Single. Day!
[I’m extremely grateful for Seth’s “write a blog post a day for a week” challenge a few years ago — it kickstarted my blogging habit. I’m also grateful for you — thanks for reading!]
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