from Seth Godin blog:
Progress is a trade

It’s easy to imagine that over there, just a few steps ahead, our problems will disappear.

Pessimists, of course, are sure that instead of disappearing, tomorrow will make things worse.

The truth is pretty simple: All we do, all we ever do, is trade one set of problems for another.

Problems are a feature. They’re the opportunity to see how we can productively move forward. Not to a world with no problems at all, but to a situation with different problems, ones that are worth dancing with.

Progress is a trade

from Seth Godin blog:
Narrative and feelings

Which comes first? The feelings, the facts, or the story we tell ourselves that leads to the feelings?

It’s surprising that I ended up at the college I went to.

Back in 1978, there were two ways to visit campus if you were taking a subway from the airport. One route went through Harvard Square, with its magical campus, and then via bus down youth-friendly Mass. Ave., pass Steve’s famous ice cream parlor and on to the small school. The other route, the route the admissions office suggested when I called them, went through gritty Lechmere, then by bus past wood-frame houses built in the 1950s, then some more grittiness and then on to the back of the campus.

It would have been easy to use the feelings that the second route created in me, a solo traveler barely 17 years old, to invent a narrative about what was missing from this choice of school.

We like to think we make complicated decisions based on rational analysis, but most of the time, we actually make an emotional decision and then invent a rational analysis to justify it.

That’s why so many kids pick a school based on how it felt to go to a football game there in October. Or why it matters if it’s raining on the day you visit. Feelings first, then they create a story. Facts come in third.

If our goal is to help people make better choices, it helps to first create better feelings.

Narrative and feelings

The opposite of "remarkable:"

is

very good.

Ideas that are remarkable are much more likely to spread than ideas that aren't. Yet so few people make remarkable stuff. Why? I think it's because they think the opposite of remarkable is bad or mediocre or poorly done. Thus, if they make something very good, they confuse it with being virus-worthy. Yet this is not a discussion about quality at all.

If you travel on an airline and they do everything right, you don't tell anyone. That's what's supposed to happen. What makes it remarkable is if it's horrible beyond belief OR if the service is so unexpected (they were an hour early! they comped my ticket because I was cute! they served flaming crepes suzette in first class!) that you need to share it.

Are you making very good stuff? How fast can you stop?

Seth Godin - The Opposite of Remarkable

So, how did a chocolate bar turn into a Purple Cow?

Scharffen Berger doesn’t have a chance. They’re tiny. They roast their own beans, create their own nibs, temper their own chocolate… all in a small factory near the San Francisco airport. In a world filled with Hershey bars, how could they possibly compete?

By being remarkable.

Scharffen Berger isn’t for everyone. That’s the point. Chocolate for everyone has already been done. Hershey can’t grow any more. Their new ad campaign isn’t worth a fraction of what they’re spending. Either you seek out Hershey or it’s invisible.

Scharffen Berger, on the other hand, appeals to people who wouldn’t bother with a Hershey Bar. Chocolate fanatics. And chocolate fanatics are always seeking, always searching for something better. And when they find it, they tell their friends.

So, without spending a nickel on advertising, Scharffen Berger is now one of the fastest-growing brands of chocolate in the world. It’s amazing, a symphony for your tongue. You’ll take a taste, realize that you may remember that taste all your life, and then, if you’re like most people with a chocolate otaku, will tell your friends

Seth Godin Blog