Linchpin
by Seth Godin
I like pretty much everything Godin. When I sat down to write this, I wasn't sure I could be fair. So I won't be. Linchpin is awesome. You should buy two copies, right now.
OK, got that out of the way. The rest of this isn't really a review then, but more of a reaction.
Linchpin addresses a key aspect of designing your own life: the importance of being indispensable. Are you a cog in some corporate machine or do you hold that machine together? Do people depend on you as opposed to the headcount you fill? Are you a linchpin? Seth focuses mostly on organizations instead of entrepreneurs and other solo acts, but his message applies across the board. Corporations need this wake up call because they've been trying to hire cheap, replaceable labor for the last couple of centuries and it's worked well for them. However, that particular race to the bottom has run its course. If it's replaceable, it's outsourceable and it's copyable. That makes it harder and harder to be profitable. Instead of looking for nothing but more efficient cookie cutter systems, organizations will need to embrace the unique value individuals can create by transcending those systems.
People outside the corporate world understand the importance of being important. Often times, they are the whole show. For someone like me, still laboring away at a "real" job, this mindset can be difficult to grasp. Most of the culture I grew up in raised me to fit in, to follow instructions, and to get my work done. I never really was good at most of that, but my decent ability to bullshit helped fake it. More than anything else, Linchpin attacked my mindset. It dealt a dangerous blow to my complacency, my inertia, and my fears around changing my answer to the ubiquitous "So, what do you do?". It gave me a reality check.
If your job is something you hate, you can always use it as a justification. You really wanted to start building that website tonight, but your job drained the life out of you and you needed to veg. You wanted to spend time with friends or family, but you just had to do that stupid shit before Monday. It's easy to hate your job. It's easy to grumble and complain and make excuses. It's hard to admit that you could excel at the day-to-day and that you'd probably be happier and better off for it. It's hard, but it's true.
When you embrace what you do in daily life, then you have no excuses to make when you want a change. When someone excellent quits a job, nobody thinks that they just couldn't hack it. By giving legitimate, unique value every day it becomes a habit. Becoming indispensable, you gain the power to choose. If you don't actually do anything useful, it's hard to believe that anyone will have a use for you. You start to believe the lie that the value you create comes from the system you work in, when the truth is quite the opposite. The system you work in captures some of the value you're capable of creating and most of what it captures goes to benefit those higher up on the food chain.
Become the hunter. Break out of the system. Embrace your potential. Become a linchpin. As Seth would say, we need you to.
, Tim Ferris coined the term lifestyle design to describe the techniques associated with this kind of radical change. Apart from other seminal works on the topic like 
and 
, there's a veritable torrent of inspirational and practical material on the topic published online every day. From struggling bloggers dropping nuggets of wisdom, to high priced ebooks and courses on starting your own automated business, it's hard to find the truly useful bits hidden in the noise.
