Free ebook - What Matters Now

Seth Godin coordinated an awesome project - compiling one-page thoughts/messages of 70 top authors, bloggers and thinkers etc (see below), into a pdf ebook titled ‘What Matters Now’ with the theme ‘Big Thoughts, Small Actions’. Thanks AidaNasreen for the heads up.

Download the ebook here!

Below are two samples of the content, to give you a flavour.

In the meantime, Selamat Menyambut Awal Muharram 1431, and while I’m at it, Happy New Year 2010 too! :)

Strengths by Marti Barletta

Forget about working on your weaknesses —> Focus on supporting your strengths. I worked on my weaknesses for 40 years to little avail. Still “needs improvement,” as they say. Why? Easy. We hate doing things we’re not good at, so we avoid them. No practice makes perfect hard to attain.

But my strengths – ah, I love my strengths. I’ll work on them till the purple cows come home. When we love what we do, we do more and more, and pretty soon we’re pretty good at it.
The beautiful thing about being on a team is that, believe it or not, lots of people love doing the things you hate. And hate doing the things you love. So quit diligently developing your weaknesses. Instead, partner with someone very UNlike you, share the work and share the wealth and everyone’s happy.

Relatedly, women are rather UNlike men and often approach problems and opportunities with a different outlook. Yet books and coaches often encourage us to adopt male strengths and, lacking understanding, to relinquish our own. The irony is, studies show that more women in leadership translates unequivocally into better business results.

Wouldn’t it make more sense for both men and women to appreciate each other’s strengths so we all work on what comes naturally?


Gumption by J.C. Hutchins

Most of us settle in, and settle for what we have. Rather than pursue, we accept. Our lives become unwitting celebrations of passivity: we undervalue our work and perceive ourselves as wage slaves (and so we phone it in at the day gig), we consume compulsively (but not create), we pine for better lives (but live vicariously through our televisions).

These corners we paint ourselves into, it’s no way to live.
There’s no adventure here, no passion, no hunger for change. Remember that relentless optimism you once had? The goals you wished to achieve, before settling in?
They’re still there. You need a nudge to find them; a little gumption.

You can start that business. You can lose that weight.
You can quit smoking, and learn to garden, and write that book, and be a better parent, and be all the things you want to be ... the thing this world needs you to be. It requires courage and faith, both of which you can muster. It requires effort — but this effortless life isn’t as satisfying as it seems, is it?

Declare war on passivity. Hush the inner voice that insists you’re over the hill, past your prime, unworthy of attaining those dreams. Disbelief is now the enemy, as is the notion of settling. Get hungry — hyena hungry. Get fired up. Find your backbone, and your wings.

Flap ‘em. It’s the only way you’ll be able to fly.