In his newsletter just now, Scott Gross, paraphrasing Chuck Coonradt, lists the reasons games are fun:

• The score is updated constantly.
• The score is visible to everyone.
• You get to play with people you like.
• You have the potential to play well.
• The entire team is rewarded.
• You have options to determine how you play the game.
• The game doesn’t outlast your attention span.
• There is an element of risk.
• It is possible to lose.

Scott's point is that if we can make work feel like this, maybe it's not work any more.

I like that.

Participated in a nice conversation with Sherri Rosen and some other very smart people about how to balance a deep desire to give a client value, and the potential for being taken advantage of.

How do you handle it when you're trying to give that little bit extra, because, hey, that's how you roll, and you realise that they're just taking advantage? Leave a shout for Sherri here, or pop on over to her blog and join the fray.

Recording engineer Jim Scott's first solo project was Sting's Dream of the Blue Turtles. Not exactly low profile. Reading an interview in the newest copy of Tape Op magazine, it's no surprise that he's become a mini-legend in the recording industry; not quite Tom Dowd, but, still, Jim Scott.

While describing what it was like coming to this career much later in life than most engineers, he commented on his methodology for getting noticed: "Being a little older actually worked out to my advantage—I already had life experience. If my job as a janitor was to clean the bathroom, I just did it right and then I did the next job they give me right and I got a reputation for doing things right . . . I don't think it's hard, but you've got to have a pride in it—in anything. Just do a great job and somebody will recognize it."

Do the work. What a concept.

Later, he comments on the sessions for a truly under-appreciated album, Red Moon by The Call. They were fooling around with guitar amps, looking for a particular sound. Group founder (and bass player) Michael Been said "I don't want anyone to say anything about the guitar sound until you play something good."

Yeah. Do the work. You can't measure progress by measuring, then progressing; you measure progress by progressing, then measuring.

Inspirational speaker and author Hal Elrod posted a question on Facebook recently: if you had a magic wand and could instantly change one thing in your life, what would it be?

Now, I usually ignore stuff like that (the random questions on Facebook) but Hal is smart and generous, and the question caught me at a time when I was missing my four older kids, so I responded.

Here's something that floored me: more than one person responded, "Nothing." (One even went so far as to claim that God controlled everything in their life, to explain why they wouldn't change anything. They thus deny the divine gift of free will, but that's another post for a different blog.)

Nothing. Really?

No vision or dental problems you'd like to eliminate? You're obviously much younger than I.

You wouldn't choose to work fewer hours, or have more money or time to give to charity?

How about the fact that, without divine intervention, you're gonna die someday? You wouldn't change that?

When you reject even the thought of change, that's not contentment, that's complacency.

This is what I've got, so that's what I should settle for.

Not me. If you're a business heretic, not you, either.

So, tell me: if you had a magic wand, what one thing would you change about your business?

And, before you say 'nothing' know that I'm going to absolutely hammer you with questions about why you wouldn't choose to work fewer hours, earn more in the same time so you had more to give to your favorite charity, or one of a million ways your business and your life could be better.

Of course, Hal is asking the question to find out what's on people's minds so he has a chance of helping them.

Me too. Sure, there's no magic wand. But your greatest challenge can still be addressed with that real-world solution they call 'hard work'.

I'm delighted that my books have gotten such excellent reviews at Amazon.com but I'm a little concerned that they're exclusively fours and fives.

Where are the ones?

It's an axiom of retail pricing that if no one is complaining about your price, you're not charging enough. I'm not entirely convinced that's true, but I do believe that you can't have insiders without outsiders. Insiders are the folks who know you and love you and would actually cross the street to speak to you.

Outsiders are not, as you might expect, the folks who wouldn't bother. Those are fence-sitters. Outsiders would actually cross the street to get away from you.

If nobody's crossing the street, either way, all you're doing is boring the fence-sitters to death as your business dies.

I've written about why you should write an annoying ad, so you can get folks off the fence while delighting the insiders. This is why. A bunch of fence-sitters aren't going to fire up your passion. Fence-sitters aren't loyal. They aren't advocates. They don't become an unpaid sales force.

Insiders are all that and more.

And how do fence-sitters become insiders? By reacting to your passion. Thing is, they might not like it. They may become annoyed and get off the fence on the outside.

That's okay. Just as long as some of them are getting down on the inside.

All ones and fives, no threes. Get 'em off the fence.