Linchpin summary

There’s a big, grey mass of people out there for whom work means showing up for X hours a day in return for a monthly paycheck. They see their work as a frustrating and tedious chore, a necessary evil in their lives. And guess what? Their lack of motivation does not go unnoticed by management, and when times get tough, they are the first to be fired.

This army of drones provides an opportunity for those who refuse to be unremarkable: the so-called linchpins, who are indispensable to their company.

Becoming a linchpin means being brave enough to stand out of the crowd. But why is this so difficult? Why do most of us shy away from the limelight?

The human brain evolved in stages, and one of the earliest parts to develop was the so-called lizard brain. It generates primal emotions like fear, hunger and anger, and it used to play a very important part in our survival; for example, by telling us to run away from saber-toothed tigers. Because this role was so important for our ancestors’ survival, the lizard brain still exerts a great deal of influence on our higher thinking.

In many ways, we are brought up to fit in. Consider school: we’re taught to prepare for exams, keep our heads down and follow instructions like, “Use #2 pencils.” Coloring outside the lines gets you a D, and not doing as you’re told gets you detention. Is it any wonder that by the time we reach a working age, we are afraid of doing anything that might make us stand out from the crowd?

This is why most people are content to just show up at work and do what they are told. They are afraid of being special and afraid of ruining the safe and secure status quo.

Not all artists are painters, sculptors or composers. Anyone who changes other people by giving them an emotional gift is an artist.

A customer service person who uses his smile and charm to change an angry customer into a delighted fan of the company is just as much an artist as Picasso is. Similarly, the founder of online shoe store Zappos, Tony Hsieh, is an artist of great customer service. You can be an artist at your job, too, but not if you just show up and grudgingly do the bare minimum until it’s time to go home at the end of the day.

How many of Picasso’s paintings can you name? Two? Three?

He actually painted over 1000 works of art. That is the nature of artists; they produce.

For a long time, the economy has been based on equitable trades, preferably enforced by a contract: “You can listen to my music if you pay me twenty dollars.”

Genuine gifts – as in giving someone something with no expectation of getting anything in return – were practically unheard of. In fact, if you tried to give a stranger a genuine gift, for example by offering a shared cab ride to someone going in the same direction as you, they would have probably refused, because they were nervous about how they should reciprocate the favor.