This is the term the VERY creative and productive Seth Godin uses when he is releasing one of his many products – a new book, a new business or one of his many blog posts.

Seth says that by SHIPPING you are staying ACTIVE. “When you run out of money or you run out of time, you ship…If mind-set is ‘I ship,’ that’s not just a convenient shortcut, it’s in fact an obligation. And you build your work around that obligation. Instead of becoming someone who’s a wandering generality – and someone who has lots of great ideas and ‘if only, if only, if only,’ you are someone who always ends up shipping.”

So why do most of us fail to “ship”?

Seth has an answer based on real brain research. “All chickens and lizards have a lizard brain. It is hungry, it is scared, it is selfish, and it is horny. That’s its job, and that’s all it does…It turns out that we have one too.” If you want to further research this on your own then Google: “amygdala”. This is a primitive part of the brain and Seth calls it the lizard brain. I have studied about the amygdala and it is what is associated with our FEARS.

Seth says: “…every single time we get close to shipping, every single time the manuscript is ready to send to the publisher, the lizard brain speaks up…The lizard brain says, ‘They’re gonna laugh at me,’ I’m gonna get in trouble…’ The lizard brain [screams] at the top of its lungs. And, so what happens is we don’t do it. We sabotage it. We hold back. We have another meeting.”

So we all need to learn to quiet the amygdala/lizard brain. Scott says in Making Ideas Happen: “To confidently quell the resistance triggered by our lizard brains, we must choose our projects wisely and then execute without remorse.”

GREAT ADVICE!