On April 1, Seth Godin wrote a blog post about not writing a blog post.
Annually, Seth drums up a well-crafted April Fool’s day post, and then pats himself on the back for being clever. However this year, he was even more clever — he didn’t write one at all. Instead, he exclaimed how brave he was being for not writing something only good, and not exceptional. His argument is that if you are not going to produce something exceptional, don’t produce at all.
This is written like a man whom marvels at the yellow of his own pee.
Seth, you are a fantastic writer. But, clamping up the perfectionist learners following you is ignoring the fantastic joys and evolutions of ideas themselves.
Sure, an idea that isn’t exceptional is probably not worth the dirt on your $5,000 shoes. However, taking a nugget of an idea and sharing it with others allows for the growth of newer and more evolved ideas.
How would Flickr ever have come into being, had it not been for first showing a non-exceptional idea?
I can agree that telling a non-exceptional joke may be lame. But applying your no-exceptions rule to ideas and aiming to spread the rule across evolving platforms is silly.