<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Hi Fellow Maintainers,</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">I'm not sure if many of you follow the blogging of Seth Godin. He is a marketing/internet kind of guy who writes about the new economy and how to get ahead in it. When I read his writings, I often think of what Kant had to say about Hume: "He awakened me from my dogmatic slumbers." I disagree with nearly everything Godin has to say, but I find it helpful to confront these ideas on a regular basis, and to grapple with exactly why it is that I find his suggestions so toxic. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">With that as preamble, below is his latest posting, where he encourages us to be disruptors, not maintainers. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">My response to this: </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Dear Seth, I got your blog post. It arrived in my inbox just like it does every day. How did it make it there? Via the work of maintainers. The folks who keep the operating system on your computer working. The folks at your ISP who keep the internet running. The folks running the servers where you store your blog posts.Ditto for the system you use to send out these email blasts. And of course the same is true as your thoughts made their way to me via my ISP and onto my phone. All of this incredible infrastructure only works because people show up day in and day out and keep it working. The folks doing this work probably aren't "dancing with infinity" on a daily basis, but I assure you that the binary you've set up between maintainers and disruptors is WAY more complicated than your post suggests. Check out <a href="http://themaintainers.org/" style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">http://themaintainers.org/</a> to learn more.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">Mike</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif"><br></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">---------- Forwarded message ---------<br>From: <strong class="gmail_sendername" dir="auto">Seth Godin</strong> <span dir="auto"><<a href="mailto:notify@sethgodin.com" target="_blank">notify@sethgodin.com</a>></span><br>Date: Sun, Nov 10, 2019 at 4:47 AM<br>Subject: Seth's Blog : Maintainers<br>To: roymichaeldonald <<a href="mailto:roymichaeldonald@gmail.com" target="_blank">roymichaeldonald@gmail.com</a>><br></div><br><br><u></u>
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<p></p><div style="display:none;font-size:1px;color:#333333;line-height:1px;max-height:0px;max-width:0px;opacity:0;overflow:hidden">School trains people to work as maintainers. “The sculptures are all here in the gallery, make sure they are still here at the end of the shift… The floor is clean when you start, make sure it's clean when you finish… The policy manual has seven ... </div>
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<h3><a href="https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/609077766/0/sethsblog/posts~Maintainers/" target="_blank">Maintainers </a></h3>
<p>School trains people to work as maintainers. “The sculptures are all here in the gallery, make sure they are still here at the end of the shift… The floor is clean when you start, make sure it’s clean when you finish… The policy manual has seven rules in it, please don’t break them… The next ten patients are going to need allergy tests…” There are customers to be served, standards to be maintained, work to be done. Important work, no doubt, but not thrilling.</p>
<p>A few people somehow avoid these lessons and become instigators, impresarios and disruptors instead. They’re not only dancing with infinity but completely unsure what’s going to work, and yet they are hooked on leaping forward.</p>
<p>I think it’s possible to switch from one posture to the other. I know that it’s incredibly difficult, though.</p>
<p>Choose wisely.</p>
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