Poke The Box is a new book by Seth Godin challenging you to do one thing: initiate. The premise goes that the number one skill needed in the new economy is instigation. Everything else needed to succeed has become more available and cheaper than ever, the only thing missing is a willingness to start. To start something new. To start something untested. To act on a dream or a vision or a notion for how you might like to impact the world. To create change that matters and make a difference that will make a difference in your life and the lives of people around you.

I’ve decided that this material, this manifesto, is the kind of thing worth focusing on. Worth playing with. Worth taking beyond a simple reading and integrating into my every day life. So, while the fire is still burning bright in my belly, I’ve decided to teach a five-week course on the material. Spreading it to those who are interested in a way that makes it as easy as possible for you to integrate the information and allow it to start benefiting you immediately.

I know, it’s scary sometimes to think about starting something new. After all, if you start something and you fail, the blame lies squarely on you. You were the initiator of this great failure. But as Seth puts it after describing the epically bad failure that was the XFL debacle: “So what?”

Great success is dependent on holding a posture that risks great failure. But the biggest advantage granted to anyone who adopts this posture is simple: Failure’s can be cleaned up and learned from far more often than someone who doesn’t risk failure will actually stumble upon true success.

I’d have loved to included more quotes from the material in this short little blog post, but since I haven’t written a post in almost two months, I chose to take a different approach. Every day I’m going to take 15 minutes to write, edit and publish a blog post. This simple exercise will help me get in the habit of starting; will allow me ample opportunity to experience what it’s like to put out something that failed to get my point across, or brought clarity to how I’d like to say something differently; and more importantly, this will force me to ship. It’s far less likely that I will let ideas that excite me fade away into obscurity if I’m publishing a blog post every day. And when I start publishing ideas, day after day, I will get in the habit of making a difference in the world. Or at least attempting to. And there will be nothing to stop someone who’s read my ideas from poking at me to actually bring it into form. Or to ask me to help them apply it in their life. Or to offer me an idea of their own.

So here goes. My 15 minutes are almost up. Time to see where this takes me.