Don’t Skip that Page

Excellent thoughts today from Seth Godin. In an era where all the highlights from everything are so easily available, it can be very, very easy to forget this:

The top of a mountain is rarely the best part.

You can watch “the good parts” of a baseball game in about six minutes. The web has become a giant highlights reel… the best parts of SNL, the best parts of a speech, the best parts of a book.

We can skim really fast now. This is a problem for marketers, because it means that if they don’t make the good parts easily findable and accessible (and bold and loud and memorable) then the whole product becomes invisible.

As consumers of information, though, I wonder if the best parts are really the best parts. Yes, you can read a summary of a book instead of a book, or watch the trailer instead of the movie, or read the executive summary of the consultant’s report instead of the whole thing… but the parts you miss are there for a reason.

Real change is rarely caused by the good parts. Real change and impact and joy come from the foundation and the transitions and the little messages that sneak in when you least expect them. The highlights of the baseball game are highlights largely because the rest of the game got you ready for them.

Don’t skip that page, it’s there for a reason.

One more thought: In his management book First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, Marcus Buckingham talks about how there are several stages to building an excellent work environment. Here’s what’s interesting: you can’t just skip to the final stage. If you do, you will fail. The stages leading up to that are the necessary preparation.

Mountain climbers know this well. As Buckingham states: “To reach the summit you have to pay your dues — if you just helicopter to camp 3 and rise to the summit, experienced guides know you will never make it. Mountain sickness will sap your energy and slow your progress to a crawl.”

The same is true with information and most things in life: If all we ever seek out and engage with are the highlights, the end result is going to be mountain sickness.

February 10, 2009 | Filed Under Managing Yourself | 4 Comments

Comments

4 Responses to “Don’t Skip that Page”

Watch out for what you skim over : Pat Hastings on February 10th, 2009 7:11 pm

[...] (HT: What’s Best Next) [...]
Matt Blick on February 15th, 2009 12:21 pm

A good point, but I can also see the truth in piper’s statement “books don’t change people, paragraphs do. Sometimes even sentences.” I’ve certainly seen this in my own life – page one of ‘Let the Nations be Glad’ for one. Or (as a musician) single songs rather than whole albums…

What’s your take on this?
Matt on February 16th, 2009 10:52 am

Matt: I agree very much with you and Piper that, often, “books don’t change people, paragraphs do.”

My main thinking here, though, is that those paragraphs (and sentences) won’t do that if we only ever seek the highlights.

In other words, the ability of paragraphs and sentences to change depends, in part, upon us not being exclusively about “finding the highlights.”

It’s not that the first page of Let the Nations be Glad, for example, wouldn’t be life-changing if that was the only page you ever read in the book. But, if _all_ someone did was read a few pages from a lot of books, and a few things from a lot of websites, and so forth, then I think each of those things would have less impact because they would be experienced only ever from a mindset of “only show me the best, and let’s move on” rather than a mindset of pondering and reflection. I do think we need to do a lot of skimming of the highlights in books and online. That simply should not become our singular mode of operation.

Piper has said something else that captures what I’m getting at: “Raking is easy, but all you get is leaves. Digging is hard, but you might find diamonds.” (From Future Grace.)
Matt Blick on February 16th, 2009 12:52 pm

Good point. I see the distinction. And of course you trumped me by quoting Piper back to me. Touche!

(And you’ve got me reading GTD!)