Poke the Box

When Was the Last Time You Did Something for the First Time?

  1. The Seventh Imperative: While traditional education and business focus on being aware, educated, connected, consistent, productive, and building assets, the most critical (and often ignored) imperative is the drive to ship and take initiative.
  2. Poke the Box: Life is like a “buzzer box”; you only understand how it works and how to own it by “poking” it—testing, modifying, and seeing what happens.

  3.  

    The Job is to Invent the Status Quo: Your goal should not be to simply catch up to how things are currently done, but to create the new standard for everyone else to follow.

  4. Initiative as the Foundation: In a connected economy where money and access are cheaper than ever, the only true foundation for success is individual and organizational initiative.

  5.  Starting vs. Thinking About Starting: “Starting” means going beyond the point of no return and committing to action, rather than just meeting, planning, or filing applications.
  6. The “Go” Force: All other inputs—ideas, people, money, marketing—are wasted if no one says “go” and pushes the project to launch.
  7. Draw the Map: Most people are looking for instructions, but the world rewards those who are brave enough to draw the map for others to follow.

  8.  

    Instigation Capital: Beyond financial or intellectual capital, “instigation capital”—the guts to say “yes” and move forward—is the most essential and rare form of investment.

  9. The Habit of Starting: Success is not about knowing exactly when to start; it is about developing a consistent habit of starting frequently.

  10. Failure is a Partner to Change: To innovate, you must be prepared to fail; avoiding failure is counterproductive because most initiatives require “wrong” starts before they succeed.

  11.  

    The Lizard Brain (The Resistance): We have a prehistoric “lizard brain” that uses fear to urge us to compromise and avoid being a “troublemaker”; you must learn to ignore this “resistance” to do great work.

  12. Don’t Wait to be Picked: In the industrial age, people waited for agents or bosses to choose them; today, you must choose yourself and be the “promoter” rather than the “organizer” waiting for orders.

  13. Beyond Quality to Remarkability: Quality (being “without defects”) is now the expected standard and a commodity; to thrive, you must move beyond quality to be “remarkable” through initiative.

  14. The Danger of Polishing: Excessive “polishing” of ideas or relationships often turns into stalling; the benefits of refining something diminish quickly compared to the value of trying something original.

  15. Buy a Season’s Pass: Instead of asking for permission for every individual task, sell your organization on your role as a permanent “initiator” so you can start things repeatedly.

  16. Flux vs. Risk: Many people confuse “flux” (movement and change) with risk and failure; as a result, they avoid movement entirely and become stuck in the status quo.

  17. The Internal Daemon: Most people already have a voice in their head suggesting “what about…”; the challenge is finding low-risk ways to act on that voice and poke.

  18. Starting Demands Finishing: If you start something but do not “ship” it to the market, you haven’t truly started—you’ve failed to poke the box.

  19. Reject Mediocrity: We often accept mediocrity because a product isn’t “broken,” but true leadership involves looking at mediocre services and wondering why they aren’t great.

  20. The Economic Formula of Poking: The decision is simple: when the cost of poking the box is less than the cost of doing nothing, you should always poke .