Poke the box
"A one-two punch! half kick in the ass, half cheerleading encouragement."--Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art. "If you are happy being just a dreamer, perhaps you don't need this book. If you're enjoying the status quo, don't even consider reading this book. If you are content waiting for success to find you, please put this book down and go find something else to read. Why has Poke the Box become a cult classic? Because it's a book that dares readers to do something they're afraid of. It could be what you need, too. Is Seth Godin the Pied Piper for however many of us have been afraid to fail? Will I answer his call? Will you? --Peter Shermeta, reviewing the original edition of Poke the Box"--Jacket-sleeve.
Stats for nerds
3recommend
5mentions
5people
2011–2017years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- • The Prize
• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
• The Lean Startup
• Poke the Box
• The Elements of Computing Systems
• The Death of Common Sense
• Up the Organization
• The Personal MBA
• The Wisdom of No-Escape
• The Adapted Mind
• Brain Rules
• Getting Things Done
• On Writing
• Steal Like An Artist
• George Orwell: A Collection of Essays
And these are technically not books, but Glenn Greenwald's "Speech to the Massachusetts ACLU" and the Christopher Hitchens speech criticizing the proposed Canadian hate speech law.
- I'd add Poke the Box by Seth Godin.
- Self-help books are (very) often crap. But when they're good they really push your motivation. So you don't learn a lot because learning requires always doing and failing BUT usually you get some motivation and energy to try it again, start something over--better books know how to brain wash and reframe your mind for a few days. You get a very positive mindset and that's what you need to get out of your daily routine which wears you out. Some examples which gave me this motivation push: Poke the Box from Seth Godin, Millionaire's Upgrade, Ellen Cars Stop-smoking book and some more (the ratio of good to bad books ist as the OP said: 10 to 90 to even 5 to 95. And as I wrote the motivational push keeps usually a few days only but hey, that's often enough to start something new and get traction.
But somehow I am not sure if the post is a clever way to sell the promoted book ...
- Not judging others for the mistakes they did speaks volumes about how we approach mistakes ourselves. Seth Godin's 'Poke the Box' goes over how sometimes it is way better to ship more content, product and whatnot, just in order to avoid this viscous cycle of fear from public exposure in case things go south.
Tilting towards building personal brands is so true, and I can totally relate. Even among friends, within social networks... We are carefully building this image emporium around our story, that it is almost surreal. Ego is a powerful thing, I guess.
- I've noticed many HN readers mentioning books of all sorts of varieties.
I'm a member of the Domino Project Street Team. Seth Godin along with Amazon is trying to disrupt the publication and book distribution process in a big way.
One of the things we're experimenting with now is how to build a list and market to folks in a meaningful way. To get people interested in the project and spreading ideas, Seth is offering to lower the price of his first book, "Poke the Box." For every 5,000 people that sign up for the mailing list, he'll drop the price of the Kindle copy by 1.00. Right now the price is 7.99. He'll go all the way to .99. The Kindle version can be read on nearly any device / computer, but if you want a hardcopy, the book is still at a reasonable 9.99.
Just for clarification--I'm not here to sell books. I'm here to spread ideas and come up with ways to get better books in our hands faster and cheaper. If you have no desire to read Seth's book, but want to help us validate (or invalidate) ideas on how to better reach people to keep book prices down, please let us know.
This is but one experiment. We've got other ideas and eventually other books will be published through the Domino Project. Please comment in here and ask about the project or contact me, my info is in my profile.
You can subscribe to the newsletter at http://bit.ly/h3C0vv .
More info on the Domino Project at http://thedominoproject.com
