Just Discovered

    I'm a voracious reader. Every time I walk in the library here (usually a couple of times a week) I check the new section and as often as not I take something. Today I picked up Linchpin by Seth Godin. I have read about a third of it and so far he is bang on with all kinds of great insight. The book jacket mentions that he is one of the 25 most read bloggers on the internet which led me to his blog. As I cruise through it here are a few of the things I liked:


-A link to an article about an unusual cafe in Japan from PSFK.com. Here it is:


Cabel Saasser brings word of a mysterious cafe that he recently experienced in Kashiwa in Japan. Located inside the Urban Design Center Kashiwa-no-ha, the Ogori cafe looks innocuous enough, but holds a surprise in store for its patrons. In a nutshell, you get what the person before you ordered, and the next person gets what you ordered. Thus, if you’re in on the game, you can choose to be either a generous benefactor, and treat those that come after you – or try your luck at being cheap. Either way, it’s an interesting experiment that explores surprise, kindness and encourages interactions.
Cabel describes a scene from the cafe:

As I sat down to enjoy my surprise Appletizer, loving this insane idea and wondering what would happen if you tried it in America, a Japanese woman approached the cafe. Since she could actually speak Japanese, she could read the large sign at the front and, fortunately or unfortunately, got advanced warning of what she was in for. Before making a final decision on what to order, she quietly snuck up to me to try to ask me what I had ordered, knowing that it would be her unwavering refreshment destiny. The staff put a quick stop to her trickery, and I didn’t answer.
Of course, regardless of what she ordered, she got the orange juice I ordered a few minutes earlier. But here’s one of the moments that make this experiment cool: she actually chose orange juice, just like I did. So she got what she wanted. Ogori cafe synchronicity!
Before we left, there was one last thing hat had to be done.
Mike went up to the cafe, slapped down a couple thousand yen (~$25), and ordered a little bit of everything: some ice cream, some snacks, some candy, some drinks, a Japanese horn-of-mysterious-plenty intentionally set up as a shocking surprise for the next lucky customer. (After his order, Mike received single iced coffee.)
As we walked away from the cafe, with just the right amount of delay, we heard an extremely excited “arigato goazimasu!! thank you so much!!” yelled in our direction, from an ecstatic mom and her equally excited young son. They truly appreciated the surprise.
It was so worth it.

-A pretend exchange between husband and wife after the husband comes home from work that I am going to print and put on my computer at work:
Wife: "Honey, how was your day?"
Husband: "Oh, I was busy, incredibly busy."
Wife: "I get that you were busy. But did you do anything important?"


-A cool post that doesn't only apply at work and really hits home because it's a key focus point of mine recently:


 The victim

Does your job happen to you?
If you're a willing cog in the vast machinery of work, it's entirely possible that the things that occur all day feel like they're being done to you.
The alternative is to create a job where you create forward motion, where you do things to the job, not the other way around.
Take a look at the language you use to describe what happened at work yesterday, that's your first clue. If you're not the one creating the change, perhaps it's time to start.