A Me Too Post on Squidoo

A veeery long time ago (Jan 2000), Seth Godin argued against competence in this FastCompany article. Competence is the enemy of progress, because competent people want to repeatedly apply skills they've perfected. This renders them helpless in the face of change and blinds them to new opportunities. So what we should strive for is serial incompetence, because you won't get anywhere if you don't try.

Earlier this week Squidoo was panned on TechCrunch. In both the original post and the nearly 100 comments that followed, there was much speculation on whether Godin will lose credibility as a result of Squidoo's (so far) less-than-stellar performance.  From Godin's point of view, though, Squidoo is probably just a part of his ongoing effort at being serially incompetent. One example he uses in his article is Charlie Trotters', a Chicago restaurant where there's a different menu every night. The beet-kumquat-chocolate soufflé on Tuesday might not have gotten great feedback, but it's not an indication that the chef is untalented.

In fact, maybe Squidoo's main problem is that not enough people embrace incompetence. I signed up for an account but never completed any lenses. I know something about many things, but not enough about anything to stake my claim as the be-all-and-end-all authority. So whatever information my lens includes would be incomplete. And if my content isn't outdated already, it will be by the time I click on the 'publish' button. That would make me an incompetent expert, and who (besides Godin) wants that?