Seth Godin, best selling author, entrepreneur, speaker, founder of the popular Web 2.0 site Squidoo, has just released his latest book Linchpin – Are You Indispensable? I read a lot of reviews and watched a few interviews with Seth Godin about his new book. Linchpins are people who make positive changes in others’ life by throwing away the rule book of an organization. It strikes me that it is easy to become a linchpin if you establish work from home careers for yourself.
If you’ve just graduated from college, are laid off, have taken the early retirement, are stay-at-home parents, or are simply retired and want to do some thing that will change people’s life, you can start a work from home career easily now than ever before. With the availability of the Internet and cheap hardware like a $700 laptop, you can chart your own destiny and become a linchpin. Here are nine ways that will help you become a linchpin when you work from home.
1. Change People’s Life. Most of organizations promote people who follow their rules and exceed the quota. If you start spending your time that will change others’ life, you will be left behind. A work from home career gives you ample opportunity to meet people whose life you can change using your knowledge and expertise.
2. Throw Away the Rule Book. There is no rule when you’re working from home. You don’t have to meet any quota by the end of the day.
3. Find Time To Help Others. You can set your own schedule and can make it flexible. You can always make up the time lost while helping somebody by working any hour of the day.
4. Use Better Tools. As you control the work environment, you can find the most productive tools that best fit your need. In most organizations, you can only use a prescribed set of tools. Even if you don’t like those tools and you know there are better tools out there, you cannot replace them easily.
5. Save More Money. As you avoid unnecessary expenses of commuting, eating out for lunch, day care for your children, office party, etc., you can save more money and help others.
6. Be More Productive. When you work at an organization, you spend lots of time doing really nothing, for example attending meetings, filling out forms, time sheets, travel expenses, etc. You will get more time to work on self assigned tasks that you love and that you believe will impact positively somebody’s life.
7. Impact Your Child Positively. You can bond with your little ones better and improve their live positively. You don’t have to put them in the day care center. You can strike a perfect balance between professional and personal life.
8. Improve Job Security. You can vastly improve your job security. Organizations will relentlessly seek out more compliant and cheaper labor to replace you. With the globalization and availability of web-based communication tools, they will find your replacement easily.
9. Become an Artist. Seth Godin points out that when you don’t follow the organizational rule book, you become an artist. What better way is there not to follow the rule book than working from home? This is where he shatters the notion of arts and artist. Watch the video interview for more on this topic.
I have placed an Amazon order for Linchpin.
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