The Icarus Deception Book Summary - The Icarus Deception Book explained in key points

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The Icarus Deception summary

Name: The Icarus Deception
Rating: 4.3 (81 reviews)
Author: Seth Godin

Seth Godin

How High Will You Fly?

4.3 (81 ratings)

19 mins

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Creative Flow Simplify Podcast

Table of Contents

The Icarus Deception
Summary of 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? A creative code to activate your inner artist

The digital revolution is here to stay. Computers are getting smarter and smarter. Boring, repetitive and safe jobs associated with the nine-to-five grind are disappearing. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that you’ll have to adapt to the new digital economy.

So how do you do that? Well, you have to embrace creativity and become an artist. As Seth Godin emphasizes, art isn’t just about painting pictures and composing music, but any creative task that requires passion and ingenuity. Things, in other words, that computers just aren’t capable of.

Being an artist isn’t easy. It requires absolute dedication and a thick skin. It’s also risky: unlike those old-fashioned office jobs, there’s no guaranteed salary for your efforts. But it’s more fulfilling and better for society as a whole. After all, who wouldn’t want to live in a world in which people devote themselves to pursuing things they really care about?

But you don’t have to go it alone. These blinks put commonplace myths to bed and provide a wealth of advice on how to unleash your inner creative potential.

Along the way, you’ll learn:

why getting out of your comfort zone helps you do your best work;
how society uses shame to make people conform to its expectations; and
why obsession, grit and perseverance are more important than raw talent.

The Icarus Deception makes us overly cautious, but we need to move out of our comfort zone.

The future will be increasingly automated. Machines will take over more and more manual and administrative tasks. So, what’s left for us humans? Well, we’ll need to become a lot more creative. But we’ve been far too slow in recognizing this.

Blame it on the Icarus Deception. We live in a society in which we settle for too little. We’ve taken the Greek myth of Icarus to heart, but we’ve also misunderstood it.

Icarus was the son of Daedalus, a craftsman thrown into prison together with his son for disobeying Minos, the king of Crete. Daedalus had a plan, however, and started building wings for himself and Icarus to help them escape. He told his son not to fly too high so that the sun would not melt the wax holding his wings together. Icarus didn’t listen and soared towards the sun. Sure enough, his wings melted, and he plunged to his death.

Our culture has fixated on this part of the myth. “Don’t fly too high!” is the lesson we’ve learned. But that’s not all there is to it. Daedalus also warned Icarus not to fly too low, as the spray from the sea would saturate his wings and drag him down. Aiming for the stars can be risky, but so is being overly cautious.

It’s worth remembering this second piece of advice. If we want to thrive, we need to get out of our comfort zone, meaning we mustn’t fly too low.

After all, the world has changed. In the past, it was possible to land a safe and well-paid office job with rewards. That model came to an end in the 1990s. Today, steady employment is guaranteed only to creatives who aren’t afraid to take risks and initiate new ventures. Just think of internet startups like Facebook, launched at a time when the success of this kind of business model was far from certain.

We need to learn from that. The new comfort zone is all about creativity and connecting with others.

There are fewer gatekeepers and more opportunities in the new connected economy.

When a kitten is in distress, its parent comes and picks it up by the scruff of its neck and carries it to safety. A monkey, by contrast, has to actively grab its parent’s back if it wants to escape danger. In the new economy, humans need to be more like monkeys and less like kittens. We need to learn to be more proactive.

So, what defines the new economy? Well, two things stand out. It’s more connected and there are fewer gatekeepers.

We need to redefine humility and fully commit to our art.

There’s a Japanese word that describes what it’s like to fully commit to an activity and immerse yourself in it – kamiwaza. Literally translated, it means “like the gods.” That might sound terribly arrogant, but that’s because our own understanding of humility is flawed and in urgent need of redefinition.

Humility doesn’t mean accepting poor performance or not trying one’s best. On the contrary, there’s humility in working hard to become as good as you possibly can at something. When you fully commit to a task, you lose yourself in it and are no longer self-conscious about what you’re doing. That means you stop worrying about other people’s opinions. That’s real humility.

To become an artist, you have to be independent and develop grit.

What is grit? Not the stuff you sometimes find between salad leaves! In fact, it’s one of the most important assets an artist can have. To put it bluntly, if you want to be an artist, you must have grit.

Art isn’t just painting pictures or composing music. It’s any activity that you pursue creatively with the aim of producing something new in the world. Maybe it’s a revolutionary customer service system, or a new form of abstract painting. Whatever it is, you’ll need grit to get it out there.

Shame is the artist’s greatest enemy, so it’s best to focus on connection and ignore criticism.

Superheroes can achieve pretty much anything, but they usually have an Achilles heel. Think of Superman and kryptonite, the alien mineral that instantly robs him of his powers. Artists have their own kryptonite to contend with, though it’s altogether less exotic than a material mined on distant planets: shame.

So what makes artists so vulnerable to shame?

To become more successful, learn to recognize opportunities by becoming more observant.

The author Ray Bradbury once gave would-be creatives a bit of sound advice. The most important thing of all, he suggested, was to avoid getting stuck in one’s own mind. Being creative is about engaging with the world rather than constantly thinking about it. And if you want to engage, you have to learn to really look at the world.

So what’s the importance of this? Well, success is all about recognizing opportunities. Usually, however, we see the world through our own tunnel vision. We interpret things according to our preconceptions, which clouds our judgments.

True artists are characterized by their obsession with their art and not by their social status.

Steve Martin is one of the most successful comedians in the world but, actually, he’s not all that funny. How can that be?

Well, art isn’t as much about talent as it is about obsession. Martin is a classic example of this. In some ways, he’s an anti-comedian – he’s neither particularly expressive nor known for delivering laugh-out-loud punchlines. That explains why he spent so long failing at his chosen career, often traveling the country to perform shows in front of just three or four people.

Writing every day will make you more creative, but remember to be a kind boss to yourself.

Writers often talk about being “blocked.” But have you ever noticed that hardly anyone ever suffers from “speaker’s block?” Speaking just feels too natural to imagine not being able to get the words out there. After all, everyone gets up each day, sees people and talks to them. Writing, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter. Getting your thoughts onto paper is often the bottleneck in which your creativity gets trapped.

The key is to treat writing like speaking. And that means doing it every day!

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What is The Icarus Deception about?

The Icarus Deception (2012) takes aim at a myth as old as the ancient Greeks – that aiming high is bound to end in tears. Icarus might have flown too close to the sun, but we usually forget that he was also warned not to fly too low. Why does that matter? Well, we’re living in a new economy in which maintaining altitude on cruise control just won’t cut it. The new, global and connected economy is here to stay, and once “safe” jobs are being automated. Those who want to thrive better set their sights high. And that means one thing above all: living and working creatively.

Best quote from The Icarus Deception

Recognizing that the safety zone has moved might be the prompt you need to reevaluate your comfort zone.

—Seth Godin

Who should read The Icarus Deception?

Entrepreneurs
Dreamers
Artists

About the Author

Seth Godin is the bestselling author of several books, including Purple Cow, Tribes and Poke the Box. A popular business and self-help blogger, he also founded Squidoo, a blogging platform that brings people together who wish to write about and share their passions.

Categories with The Icarus Deception

Creativity Career & Success

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