Seth says you can start now

All great programmers learn their art by “poking the box”, coding something and seeing what the computer does, then changing it and seeing what the computer does until they figure out how the box works, according to uber-guru Seth Godin in his book Poke the Box: When Was the Last Time You Did Something for the First Time?. Whether your “box” happens to be a computer or a market or something else, you need to be taking the initiative to be poking, testing, modifying and understanding.

The book is essentially a motivational manifesto encouraging people to get started with actually doing something, rather than just thinking about it or allowing distractions to let you think you are making a valuable contribution without initiating something. Many people are paralysed into inaction by the fear of failure, but the people who succeed the most tend to be the people who are willing to risk failing the most.

Rather than being organised into chapters, the book dances around the theme in a single long chapter. It is quite a short book, but it is better for a book to be short than to be filled with artificial padding. The author is in many ways THE guru when it comes to creative marketing in the new digital environment, and anything he writes is worth reading. I was happy with what I learnt from the book, and I felt it was well worth what I paid for it.