I like to do a quick skim of a book I’m about to read to start building the semantic tree on which to hang what I learn when I get into the book, and what I was struck by as I skimmed through The Practice by Seth Godin was that it doesn’t actually appear to contain a specific practice.

This is my guess as to why…

In The Power of Moments, Chip and Dan talk about how it’s way more powerful to create moments for people to trip over the truth than it is to simply hand it to them.

In The Clues To A Great Story, Andrew talks about “unifying theory of two plus two”. He says that as humans we’re compelled to deduce and to deduct, and that if you give people 2+2 they’ll get sucked in, whereas if you give them 4 they won’t.

And so what I Seth is doing here is giving us what he believes to be the first principals of a practice, the 2+2 so that we can have our own ephiany and thereby own the wisdom.

I think there’s some generosity in this; we live in world that wants quick answers, a world that rewards people who claim to have quick answers, a world that says, “I want a practice, just tell me what to do”.

However, the liklihood that the practice will stick without an epiphany is low. And so a generous teacher resists giving quick answers in order to lead someone to an epiphany.

The flip side of this is that we still need to add up all the elements. It’ll only work if we do the work, and if we do, it’ll work really well.