Here is a good follow-up to yesterday’s post about Ian Schrager and Edition Hotels. It’s a short post by Seth Godin that I’m going to reblog here in full:

The gulf between “risky” and “feels risky” is huge. And it’s getting bigger.

It turns out that value creation lives in this gap. The things that most people won’t do (because it feels risky) that are in fact not risky at all.

If your compass for forward motion involves avoiding things that feel risky, it pays to get significantly better informed about what actually is risky.

I like this distinction, a lot.

I’m traveling for work right now, which is why you may be noticing shorter than usual posts. But stay tuned because I’ll be making a big announcement later this week on the blog.

A few days ago, Seth Godin published a terrific blog post called the rationality paradox. It’s not very long (like most of his posts) and I like it a lot (particularly the bold part), and so I’m reblogging it in full here:

If you see yourself as an engineer, a scientist, or even a person of logic, then it’s entirely possible that you work to make rational decisions, decisions that lead to the outcomes you seek.

The paradox is that you might also believe that you do this all the time, and that others do it too.

But a rational analysis shows that this is far from true. Almost every choice we make is subconscious. We’re glitch-ridden, superstitious creatures of habit. We are swayed by social forces that are almost always greater than our attraction to symbolic logic would indicate. We prioritize the urgent and most of the decisions we make don’t even feel like decisions. They’re mostly habits combined with a deep desire to go along with the people we identify with.

Every time you assume that others will be swayed by your logical argument, you’ve most likely made a significant, irrational mistake.

Your actions and your symbols and your tribe dwarf the words you use to make your argument.

A few weeks ago Seth Godin wrote a post on his blog called: What 99% looks like. He used the example of a Turkish vlogger who had posted an interview with him to YouTube that received the following view count, up votes and down votes:

The point he wanted to make was that many of us will instinctively focus on that one number: 76. We will say to ourselves that 76 people hated our video, our work, so much so that they felt compelled to give it a decisive thumbs down.

His message was clear: “Ignore it. Shun the non-believers and ship your work.” 76 people out of 108,605 views is not even 1%. And 76 out of (10,827 + 76) interactions is still not even 1%. You could easily say that this video has a greater than 99% approval rating.

I love this message, because there will always be naysayers, especially if you’re doing something interesting and unique. In fact, having naysayers is probably a good litmus test to make sure that you are indeed doing something interesting and unique.

But here’s the thing. 

The YouTube metrics above make for a rather transparent platform. You can see that the video received 108,605 views and that 10,827 + 76 people felt so strongly about it that they wanted to leave a mark by way of a thumbs up or thumbs down. But most importantly, you can see that way more liked the video than hated it.

But what if it wasn’t clear that over 10,000 people were fans of your work? What if all you saw was how many people hated it? And what if those voices were amplified? That would be pretty discouraging, considering that many of us are already focusing on that number to begin with.

I can think of many instances where the fog is thick and we don’t have full visibility. That’s where it gets even tougher, but more critical, to “shun the non-believers.” There may be people out there who truly love your work and what you’re trying to do. You just may not know it, yet.