Poke the Box

Product Description We send our kids to school and obsess about their test scores, their behavior, and their ability to fit in. We post a help wanted ad and look for experience, famous colleges, and a history of avoiding failure. We invest in companies based on how they did last quarter, not on what they’re going to do tomorrow. So why are we surprised when it all falls apart? Our economy is not static, but we act as if it is. Your position in the world is defined by what you instigate, how you provoke, and what you learn from the events you cause. In a world filled with change, that’s what matters—your ability to create and learn from change. Poke the Box is a manifesto about producing something that’s scarce, and thus valuable. It demands that you stop waiting for a road map and start drawing one instead. You know how to do this, you’ve done it before, but along the way, someone talked you out of it. We need your insight and your dreams and your contributions. Hurry. Amazon.com Review Book Description: If you're stuck at the starting line, you don't need more time or permission. You don’t need to wait for a boss’s okay or to be told to push the button; you just need to poke. Poke the Box is a manifesto by bestselling author Seth Godin that just might make you uncomfortable. It’s a call to action about the initiative you’re taking-– in your job or in your life. Godin knows that one of our scarcest resources is the spark of initiative in most organizations (and most careers)-– the person with the guts to say, “I want to start stuff.” Poke the Box just may be the kick in the pants you need to shake up your life. Love the ideas in Poke the Box? Check out our for other format options, such as a 5-pack or 52-pack carton of books to share or the limited deluxe edition, which includes the book with a letterpress jacket, a specially designed signature plate signed by Seth Godin, and a letterpress poster. Be sure to also visit for the latest news and special offers. Daniel H. Pink Reviews Poke the Box is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Drive and A Whole New Mind, which together have been translated into 31 languages. Read his guest review of 's Poke the Box: Let me begin with a professional and personal disclosure: If Seth Godin weren’t a friend of mine, I would probably hate his guts. He makes those of us in the word-slinging, meme-spreading trade look like a bunch of ne’er-do-well slackers. He is so preposterously creative and so endlessly productive--a new blog post every day, a new book every year, dozens of efforts to raise money for charity, Squidoo, the Domino Project, and more--that I once suspected "Seth Godin" was really a cover name for an army of elves toiling in a work camp near the Hudson River. But after reading this remarkable book, I’ve discovered Seth’s secret: He’s willing to poke the box. To start. To initiate. To begin. That’s all. Indeed, the message of this book is so profoundly simple and so simply profound, I can encapsulate it in a single word. Go. Don’t cogitate. Don’t ruminate. Don’t plan on getting started or wait for permission to begin. Go. Of course, that’s a little scary. Starting is a risk. Things might not work out. You could flop. But one theme of this book--and it’s a theme that you should write on a rock, imprint on your brain, and inject into your bloodstream--is that we ought to be much more concerned about mediocrity than failure. "If you can’t fail," Seth writes, "it doesn’t count." Like the man who produced it, Poke the Box is inspired and inspiring. I’ll place it on my shelf alongside two other extraordinary books: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. If you enjoyed those two, you’ll love this one. It will simultaneously stir your heart and kick your butt. Which brings us to a final question: When should you get started on that project, that business, that work of art only you can deliver to the world? Seth has the answer to that, too: "Soon is no