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Productivity guru Merlin Mann interviews best-selling business author Seth Godin about his new book, called Linchpin, discussing lizard and puppy brains, Bob Dylan, and why the cost of failure is so low that you should ignore your brain’s instincts.

Photo by sheilaellen.

The entire interview is available over at 43 Folders, and it’s chock full of interesting conversation about productivity and work (Godin even professes an affinity for Lifehacker), but our favorite discussion focuses on what Mann sums up as “beating back the fear and resistance that drive mediocrity.” After focusing on the driving factors that cause us to avoid taking risks (our brains evolved to see failure as a life-or-death concern, which is clearly no longer the case for most “risks”), Godin ends with this nugget:

The cost of failure is not that a saber-toothed tiger eats you… the cost of failure is nothing. The worst thing that will happen is that you will fail and no one will notice.

The upshot: Rather than avoiding risks for fear of failure, go for it. Your brain can try telling you that you’re risking your life; you’re not.

Hit up 43 Folders for the full interview, and share your thoughts in the comments. If you like what you hear from Godin, Linchpin is available from Amazon for $17.

Filed under: OS, Rumors, Odds and ends

Dan Frommer over at The Business Insider had a nice, juicy tidbit to send out to anyone who is interested in Apple tablet rumors: he’s apparently heard from someone who has seen the tablet’s operating system, but not the actual device.

There were three little quotes from the mysterious source in Frommer’s nugget of tablet gold:

• It’s “pretty” — obviously.
• “The UI has a good bit of new sexy to it.”
• “It’s a big iPhone, but it’s not just a big iPhone.”

Frommer goes on to mention recent reports that speculate that the user interface could have a “steep learning curve.” However, he also brings up the very valid point that Steve Jobs would never let a product out the doors of Apple if it was difficult to use or required a lot of learning.

What’s “difficult to use?” The original CultOfMac post Frommer alluded to was concerned about text entry, and cited Palm’s old Graffiti method as something that people had problems with. Even Apple’s own Newton MessagePad lost market credibility after its handwriting recognition was widely lampooned by the press. As for the rest of the user interface, it is impossible to imagine that Apple will introduce something that is harder to use than a Mac or iPhone. The “new sexy” could be the key Apple design touch that makes the UI something attractive, functional, and desirable.

Twenty more days… and I’m sure we’ll hear at least twenty more rumors.

TUAWTablet OS “has a good bit of new sexy to it” originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WebProNews dug up a pretty interesting nugget in an interview with Google’s Matt Cutts over the weekend at PubCon — there’s a faction of Googlers who are lobbying for site speed to be a factor in search rankings.

That’s not taken into account at the moment, although Google tries to boost the speed of its own services with a religious ferocity. (Consider that even a 100 to 400 millisecond delay can reduce daily searches per user by more than half a percent.)

Google pulls in a few hundred different factors in search rankings and pushes changes to the underlying algorithm at least once a day on average.

Cutts said:

We’re starting to think more and more about — should speed be a factor in Google’s rankings? I mean, in AdWords, if your site is slow, that can be a factor in how much you have to pay in AdWords.

Historically we haven’t used it in our search rankings, but a lot of people within Google think the web should be fast.

It should be a good experience, so it’s sort of fair to say if you’re a fast site, maybe you should get a bit of a bonus. Or if you’re a really awfully slow site, maybe users don’t want that as much.

(Via SearchEngineLand)

We all know that first impressions are powerful things. Billionaire Steven A. Cohen makes the most of first impressions taking a deep breath and holding it before he enters a room. How about you?

Poorly named weblog The Art of Manliness rounds up a few tips for commanding a room, including this interesting nugget from Cohen’s playbook:

Before he makes his appearance, he takes a deep breath, filling all of his lungs. He then holds his breath and walks into the room. As he talks, the air is naturally exhaled. This simple action increases blood to your face and makes you look “more radiant and lively,” and consequently more confident.

By taking a deep breath you force yourself to not only stand up straight, but also give a quick rush of blood to your head, giving you a slightly flushed and cheery look. It might sound silly, but people are always interested in meeting someone with energy and spunk. Just remember to exhale, because no one wants to talk to a corpse—unless it’s Halloween.

Do you have a ritual when meeting people for the first time? Share your first impression rituals in the comments.

Another work week is drawing to a close. If you’re less than thrilled by how you spent the last 40 hours, here’s a quick exercise designed to illuminate what you should be doing with your time.

Photo by Nogwater.

Blogger Steve Pavlina says that you can discover your life’s purpose in as little as twenty minutes. To do so, complete the following four steps:

1. Take out a blank sheet of paper or open up a word processor where you can type.
2. Write at the top, “What is my true purpose in life?”
3. Write an answer (any answer) that pops into your head. It doesn’t have to be a complete sentence. A short phrase is fine.
4. Repeat step 3 until you write the answer that makes you cry. This is your purpose.

Steve writes that “usually it takes 15-20 minutes to clear your head of all the clutter and the social conditioning about what you think your purpose in life is” and that you should expect to generate some repeats or similar answers. All this is fine so long as you keep on writing, even if your answers begin to resemble variations on “I don’t have a purpose” or “Life is meaningless”.

Also, it’s not enough to react emotionally to an answer, according to Pavlina. You need to keep going until the emotion brings forth tears. If you feel the urge to quit, take a two minute break and then resume. According to the post, around 80-90 percent of those who try this method will reach their answer in less than an hour.

Understandably many people will doubt its efficacy (if only it were this easy), but if you’re still searching for your purpose and have the time and inclination to try this out, let us know how you fare in the comments.

Ed. note: Hey all, for what it’s worth: The Pavlina post is admittedly a little over the top (okay, a lot over the top—most of his stuff is), but the nugget of the post isn’t all that bad. I’d certainly take the whole “life’s purpose” thing with an enormous grain of salt, but if you reduce it to a simple exercise for trying to gain focus, it’s not a bad suggestion at all. -AP