10 points on being remarkable, by Seth Godin.

1. Understand the urgency of the situation. Half-measures simply won’t do. The only way to grow is to abandon your strategy of doing what you did yesterday, but better. Commit.

7. If it’s in a manual, if it’s the accepted wisdom, if you can find it in a Dummies book, then guess what? It’s boring, not remarkable. Part of what it takes to do something remarkable is to do something first and best. Roger Bannister was remarkable. The next guy, the guy who broke Bannister’s record wasn’t. He was just faster … but it doesn’t matter.

I’ve been thinking about remarkable a lot lately (it was a mantra of the year) and just how important it is to life - individual careers, product development, love, … anything and everything.

And, in a world of abundance the importance of being remarkable only increases.

Here’s another point that I’ve been chewing on in relation to all of this: a quest to please everyone is filled with negative compromise. Be polarizing and enjoy the benefit of those who will drink the Koolaid.


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Seth Godin on Being Remarkable (or, Koolaid, Compromise, and the Art of Polarization)

Welcome to the conversation.

Hi, I'm Fraser and this is my personal site where I write about the things I'm interested in: start-up strategy, the web, music, and life.

My days are spent commercializing emerging technologies. Currently I'm helping to deliver the promise of semantic web to the consumer market at AdaptiveBlue. Previously I was at Trivaris, a Canadian seed stage investment firm.

I am a co-founder of Innovation Night, a community driven event supporting entrepreneurship in Canadian and US cities.

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