Earlier this week Brad Ruggles posted this funny video, How to Report the News, to his blog.  In it, Charlie Brooker describes and takes shots at the formula a lot of TV news stories follow.  Have a look.  (Pardon the F-bomb at the 25-second mark).

The video is hilarious.  But it is also eye-opening for me.

I never thought about the elements of a TV news story before.  But now that I’ve seen the formula, it makes TV news seem so disingenuous, so calculated, so boring.

I hardly ever watch TV news anymore, and this is probably at least part of the reason why.

Formulas are amazing and seductive…

We love to take things that are successful, analyze them, and condense them down into simple steps that we can follow to repeat those successes over and over without thinking.   I know I do.

I’m guessing you love formulas, too.  You clicked to read this post, didn’t you?

That’s cool, because in many situations formulas are great.  It’s hard to find fault with 12 step programs, cookbooks, and instructions for assembling a kid’s bike.  (Though, my appreciation for the latter has been known to wane on Christmas morning.)

But in other areas of life formulas can get us in trouble.  The financial formula that worked so well for someone else can bankrupt us.  Copying someone else’s formula when it comes to things like music, web design, leadership style can make us look like cheap imitations.  Using a formula or “standard procedure” can leave other people feeling like nothing more than a number.

Repeating the same formula in your church service or business meetings can start to feel like watching an episode of Scooby Doo, where the plot is predictably the same in every episode and they “would have gotten away with it if it hadn’t been for those meddling kids.”

So, when is it good to use a formula, system, or process and when is it not?  How do you decide?

I don’t know if this video is true or not, but it’s hilarious.

In addition to being funny, there’s an important marketing principle in there. If you want to get people’s attention you’ve got to stand out from the crowd. To often I see people (and organizations) who think they can be successful by mimicking what successful people (and organizations) are already doing.

They want to have a cool website so they look at other cool websites and make theirs like the others. Everyone is is blogging so they blog about the same stuff. Everyone is twittering so they twitter about the same stuff.

And to be honest, all to often I find myself doing the same thing.

When we do something that’s average, mediocre, or like everyone else, it’s probably boring and will be unsuccessful. Either kick it up or kick it out.

So, what makes you remarkable?

What makes you stand out?

It doesn’t necessarily have to be something you do better than everyone else (thought being #1 at something will make you stand out), just something different.

What mediocre things do you need to stop doing?

For 7 long years my daughter, Ainsley, has been a free-loader.  My wife, Jennifer, and I give her her own room, 3 meals and day (plus snacks), clean clothes, etc and we’ve never charged her a dime.  Well, that’s all about to change as Ainsley has gotten her first job offer.  So, now we are going to put her to work.

Here’s the email she received the other day:

Dear Ainsley,

We would like to know if you would be interested in working from home in
your spare time writing short articles for us. You will be paid USD 25.00
- USD 45.00 per hour writing these articles.

We will also pay you $12.00 – $50.00 per hour for posing in blogs, and up
to $450 for each fiction or non fiction story we ask you to write.

Press here if you are interested:

You have a 48-hour window to claim a position before we fill it.

Press here to begin and learn more:

All my best,

Freelance Home Writers Network

In a few weeks with any luck, Jennifer and I will be the ones playing in our rooms or outside all afternoon.  What do you think?

Thanks to my bro, Kurt, for sending me this hilarious video last night.  (At least I think it’s hilarious, but what do I know.)

YouTube won’t let me embed the video so you’ll have to click to YouTube to watch it.

How are you feeling these days?  Frustrated?  Depressed?

Maybe we just need to take a step back and put things into perspective.

Chances are you  are reading this on some really cool computer that didn’t exist 5 years ago in a comfortable chair in a heated/air conditioned building with plumbing and running water which is not more than 5 minutes away from a grocery store where you can any food you want or more than 20 minutes from a state of the art hospital which can cure a thousand diseases that used to kill people 100 years ago.

So, now how is your life, really?

If you’re drinking something, make sure you swallow first before reading this or you may end up wiping down your computer screen as I almost had to this morning…  Get ready for the newest health craze - the diet fork!

“By eliminating over-indulgence, and creating a ‘chewing fitness’ dieters can now assist in metabolism by chewing more, less portions, and taking longer to eat.”  Some of the key features include:

• Shorter and dulled teeth inhibiting user from grasping larger pieces of food at any one time
• Smaller triangular shaped surface area allowing dieter to hold less food than many other forks
• Uncomfortable grip compelling user to put fork down between bites, slowing the user’s eating speed

By Christmas everyone will have the new, amazing diet fork.