This morning, Seth Godin posted this:

You rock

This is deceptive.

You don’t rock all the time. No one does. No one is a rock star, superstar, world-changing artist all the time. In fact, it’s a self-defeating goal. You can’t do it.

No, but you might rock five minutes a day.

Five minutes to write a blog post that changes everything, or five minutes to deliver an act of generosity that changes someone. Five minutes to invent a great new feature, or five minutes to teach a groundbreaking skill in a way that no one ever thought of before. Five minutes to tell the truth (or hear the truth).

Five minutes a day you might do exceptional work, remarkable work, work that matters. Five minutes a day you might defeat the lizard brain long enough to stand up and make a difference.

And five minutes of rocking would be enough, because it would be five minutes more than just about anyone else.

It is a great example of the quick shots of inspirational adrenaline that Seth scribbles out nearly every day (sometimes multiple times a day) on his blog. But I would amend his wise words just in the slightest and add emphasis to one line in particular.

First, the amendment. I don’t think five minutes is enough. I also believe that we are capable of much more than that. I appreciate that Seth is letting us off easy, but I personally feel that I can work in flow for between 30 minutes to 2 hours almost every day. For more on Flow, a brilliant practice that you should be bringing into your business life, you can go here.

Now for the emphasis. He says that a potential great work is “to deliver an act of generosity that changes someone.” I say that the greatest work you can do is lift another person with your generosity. I would emphasize Seth’s point that the work you do in a day is measured by the people you can effect.

If you are in business, your output of a product or service is only as good as the positive change it creates in the lives of your customers. But you, as a human, are also only as good as the positive change you are directly making in the lives of your people. Your employees, your co-workers, your family and friends should all end each day feeling appreciated and fulfilled, bettered for having passed through another day of trials, growth and human interaction.

And that typically takes you just a little longer than five minutes.

The other day I had someone ask me, “Hey, I saw that you know thousands of people on your LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter pages, could you ask one of them to get me a job?”

I felt utterly stunned at having to state the obvious, “I don’t actually know most of those people.”

I love social media sites. I spend entirely too much time on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter… especially Twitter, but I want to establish a clear distinction between social media sites and social networking.

“Social Media” is the term that generally groups together websites where the majority of content is created by the users. Typically they use log-ins, account names and personal profiles to connect people and focus on the “interactive” elements that have been key to the web 2.0 progression. We think of sites like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Flickr. But “Social Networking” existed long before Web 2.0.

Mankind is a social animal with a long tradition of societal interdependence. Ashton Kutcher, the self-appointed champion of the Social Web, recently said:

“[H]uman beings are born not able to even sustain themselves, so at the end of the day, if you ultimately did something in your life that was great, you at least owe your mom.” –Ashton Kutcher from AK FTW, SKY Magazine, Feb. 2010.

Social Networking is the normal and timeless practice of making connections and helping people out. Using technology to facilitate these contacts makes it easier and more efficient, but just as in the past, “It’s not about the number of contacts you have; it’s how you use them.”

Another great quote about the effectiveness of this new tool today and its potential in the future comes from one of the all time greats in peer-to-peer marketing, Seth Godin:

“Social media is either a time-wasting, wool-gathering, yak-shaving waste of effort or, perhaps, just maybe, it’s a crack in the wall between you and the rest of the world. It’s a choice” –Seth Godin

Make your choice. Use your tools wisely.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 24-page original story is here and it is a great story in its own right. However, besides the title and the lead character’s name, it has little in common with Fincher’s film. My wife says it borrows heavily from the 2003 novel The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I haven’t read it, so you’ll have to take her word for it. Or, if you don’t feel like reading it, you could just wait a few month’s and see it in theaters. I just read that Brad Pitt’s production company has picked up the title, which is set to release later this year. I, for one, won’t be going to see it. Unless I decide I’m in the mood for another romantic time travel film.

I found this amazing video of a guy biking through the song Prisoner of Society on Guitar Hero World Tour. (If that made no sense to you, then you need to take 3 and a half minutes and watch this video.)

For more on the video, you can read this guy’s comment. As many of the nearly 1 million viewers noted, this video is good… a little TOO Good. Many YouTubers were immediately suspicious. Well, I first learned about the ad from Creativity.com, who was praising the work of Droga5, the agency that created it. So, yes, it was created by professional Ad Men. No, it was not shot by a group of GHWT loving kids in Indiana with a lot of free time on their hands, as we were deliberately meant to believe… but is that dishonest?

Another example is the band Boyce Avenue. The story is cliché and inspiring– three brothers in Florida start recording cover songs on YouTube, quickly gather 3 million views and 1 million fans, then start recording their own stuff and now they are releasing multiple platinum-selling albums and going on a national tour. I saw the video. These guys are good… a little TOO Good. You be the judge.

The inventor of Murketing, Rob Walker points out that today’s consumers assert they are not influenced by the messaging of “the Man’s” corporate broadcast media nor the silver-coated brand imaging of Mad. Ave’s Ad Wizards. But all our consumer data reports that we are buying MORE than ever before and our purchasing is (even more) based on Branding and Perceived Value.

So, in conclusion, today’s consumers want to buy, they just don’t want to be sold to.

What this leaves us is companies manufacturing “Homemade” advertising. Professional advertisers and marketers are now turning their talents to making messaging that looks like it came from amateurs. That it was made by your peers. I add my own word to the marketing lexicon-

Promateurs. noun. def. – The ad agency that made Bike Hero, the recording label that created Boyce Avenue, the makers of LonelyGirl15, and others. Antonym – Amfessionals. def. – The makers of the Doritos Super Bowl commercials.

For those of you without your McCalendars handy, we are in Week 3 of the 2008 McDonald’s Monopoly game. (If you don’t know what this is about, you can educate yourself on the topic on your own time using the greatest reference known to man, wikipedia.org, then come back here and read the rest.)

For many of us Die-Hard monopoly fans (I use the 1st person plural, here) this is an exciting annual event where a classic American board game involving fake money and dumb luck is paired with the international icon of American sloth and gluttony. And big macs.

The biggest difference in McOpoly this year (that’s mine, by the way, I just made it up but I am registering it as soon as I finish typing this) is that you can not only play it with the old-school paper tear-off “game pieces” tabby-things, you can also play online! Well, that and the grand prize is reduced from $5 million to a $1 million annuity paid out over 20 years, which, using the present value of an annuity formula:

We can determine to be, approximately, something much less than $1 million dollars. (Do your own math, I’m busy.)

All that being said, I am on my 24th consecutive day of eating only McDonald’s food -but not just any food- you see, they’ve tied the tear-off paper pieces ONLY to what he wants you to buy, Big Mac, Large Fries, Large Coke, that kind of stuff. “He” being the clown, of course.

At any rate, I did a little searching to see why I haven’t won yet, and I learned this bit of interesting knowledge: my odds of winning are actually “approximately 1 in 184,698,474,” To give that any sort of comparison, the oft-quoted odds of getting struck by lightning are 1 in 244,000. So, I am actually 75 and a half times MORE likely to get struck by lightning than to win the million dollar McOpoly® prize.

You see, the little paper bits are rigged. There’s nothing random about it. They’re all distributed “randomly” except for 1 piece of each set, the most famous being Boardwalk, of which there are 3. In the world. And don’t fool yourself by thinking, Well, I can still win the online prize. That’s rigged, too!

The same properties you can’t win in “Real Life,” namely the last property in each set listed alphabetically and Boardwalk, you can’t win online. The code you put in on each paper bit to roll the virtual dice determines where you can land. The Clown has successfully taken all of the fun out of the fake money and dumb luck game that so many Americans have cherished.

In summary, with the 2008 McOpoly® Game, the only Real Winners are the people that did not realize the Game was happening, Collected no game pieces, did not pass Go, and did not endure the ultimate price of contest entry- 1 month of eating reheated burgers and greasy fries.
–Shawn Butler

Oh, and the attribution for the awesome McSticker above is that superhero of the blogosphere, Steve Sneeds. The equally awesome McJoker image is from a post on HALOLZ.com.