Lazy Man and Money

How to Bribe Your Coworkers

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I have long subscribed to the adage that “you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.”  If you’re nice to people, they’re more willing to work with you in the future.  Keeping them happy makes your own job easier.  It’s not fun going to work when you have to pull teeth to get information from people.

Toward this goal, I make efforts to be flexible, and to be available for any questions.

I’m also the guy who occasionally brings in donuts.  Not every week, but probably once every 4-6 weeks.  It’s not terribly expensive, but you can buy a lot of goodwill for the cost of a donut.  Recently, when our business partners (accountants) were in the middle of their month end processing, I brought them a box of donuts, too.  These people aren’t actually on my team, but on a team we interact with frequently.  Imagine if someone in an adjoining department brought in donuts for your team.  My small gesture was very well received – even the second level manager thanked me.

Was there an ulterior motive?  Sort of.  I knew that those people would be testing our new system soon.  My company is in the middle of changing a lot of processes, and software deployment is currently not a smooth process.  So I was giving them a positive impression of my team weeks before they got to the point of testing.  In hindsight, this was a great idea, because the deployment is taking forever.

I also have candy at my desk.  Most of the time, I’ll go to Costco and buy big containers of M&Ms, but I’ll occasionally mix things up a little bit.  I recently found a great post-Halloween deal on Reese’s mini peanut butter cups.  I bought six pounds.  On a couple of occasions, I’ve handed out ice cream bars in the afternoon.  Once, my boss’s boss was talking to my boss, and I handed an ice cream bar to both of them.

[Author’s note: I also have an incredible sweet tooth, so this is not entirely altruistic.  So I end up consuming a lot of donuts and candy.  I’ve been gaining a few pounds, but managing to still stay on the slender side of the spectrum.]

The end result of all this bribery is that when I have a question, others members of the team are always willing to drop by my desk and help resolve the problem.  Chocolate has become the lubricant of productivity.

In the next few months, I will begin pursuing a position in management.  There are many management styles.  I’m more of a mentoring type of manager.  My overall philosophy is that happy employees will be productive employees.

There are many ways to help an employee have job satisfaction.  Donuts, chocolate, and pizza are definitely the easiest.  But it’s also important to work with them to upskill and gain expertise in their areas of interest.  I firmly believe that there is an art to finding the balance between what an employee wants and what is best for the organization.  There will be time when an employee just needs to suck it up, because every job has tasks that aren’t fun.  But it’s also important to work with the employee to identify that work they enjoy doing – or want to learn – and finding where they intersect with the company’s goals.  Sometimes overall productivity might take a dip in the short term, but this may be necessary to build a base for higher long term productivity.

Because happy employees are productive employees.

When “Work” Isn’t Work…

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I’ve mentioned before, I’m a huge fan of the NFL’s New England Patriots. (Stick with me a bit non-football fans.) At least one day of the week, you will find me my “Do Your Job” shirt. Quite honestly, I consider the team to be the best run organization in the United States… and possibly the world.

That may sound like exaggeration, but I submit this Tweet as strong evidence:

As you can see the Patriots were 9.5 underdogs (Las Vegas thinks they are going to lose badly) only 6 times this millennium… and they responded to this extremely rare situation by winning 5 of them. Last night’s win was the latest example of them performing the feat.

After the game, I read an interesting article on ESPN between Coach Bill Belichick and an unknown, future star named Julian Edelman. Edelman relayed this story:

I remember my second year, I was doing a cold tub at like 12 o’clock at night, at the facility, just happy to be on the team. Coach was there on the treadmill watching film, and we just so happen to walk out at the same time.

So I ask him, ‘Coach, it’s pretty unbelievable you do this all the time.’ And he goes, ‘It beats being a plumber.’

“Nothing wrong with plumbers or anything, but you know, it’s unbelievable.

I can recall Belichick being quoted saying a similar thing at least a half dozen times.

When you read my About page, I have four points for why I picked the “Lazy” adjective. The biggest reason is my slogan, “Making my money work, so I don’t have to.” (Shhh: I’m redesigning my site with this as my tagline like it was years ago.)

However, one thing that I’ve overlooked is that there are different degrees of “work.”

For Bill Belichick, plumbing is a very bad kind of work. Personally, I’d go with heavy construction as one of the worst. On the other side of the spectrum, Peter Gibbons trades his office job for construction and he seems to love it.

The canonical example of a bad job is working at a fast food restaurant. Just like no one ever says, “I want to be a junkie when I grow up“, no one ever says, “I want to be a fry cook.” (Exception: this awesome story)

Sometimes, I can understand the appeal of being a fast food restaurant worker. I wouldn’t want to do it long term, but I can appreciate working rotely for some time. I often joke with my wife that I wash the dishes 7 times a day not because I like a clean sink, but because I like to give my brain a rest.

This meandering word-soup has brought me to two conclusions:

  1. We may be able to agree that there are different levels of “work.” We might even generally agree that some work is more unsavory than others. However, there are also some outlier exceptions for some people.
  2. Money is the great equalizer when it comes to work. If you have enough money, you can quit anything that you consider “unsavory work” and do that thing you love within reason. (I had to add that last part because “Patriots coach” is already taken… and I’d be terrible at it.)

I’m starting to see the difference between “early retirement” and “financial freedom.” The first can be thought of as “not working.” The second can be thought of as “having the ability to choose your work (or not.)”

The Case For Being Un-Lazy

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For seven years now, I’ve been known as probably the Laziest Man on the Internet. There are a multitude of reasons why I embraced that moniker with the negative connotation.

I think sometimes it gets misconstrued. The idea behind Lazy Man and Money is that you don’t have to work very hard to make your money work for you. You simply have to make smart choices with your money. It’s following these fast financial fixes and other similar tips. For example, my favorite tip is buying your own cable modem, so you don’t have to rent it from cable company. For me, it paid for itself in 10 months. Yet some people will give their cable company and extra $300 over a few years. It’s being smart enough to know that $40 bottles of juice add up to $5000 a year for a family of four… and that’s just simply not making a smart choice for your money unless you are making a half million a year.

When your money works for you, it frees you up to do other things you love. For example, many people are paying big expenses on their mutual fund investments. Over a few decades that’s a lot of money that could have remained in your pocket by simply understanding a few simple things about investing. The tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars can make the difference between retiring early or being forced to work a few more years.

How many times have you meant to do something with money, but “You got lazy”? I think most everyone can answer dozens of times right? You put off creating another bank and automatically siphoning part of your paycheck there so that you don’t save without seeing it. Maybe you put off rolling over a 401K plan with funds that have big expenses to an IRA where you can pick funds with small expenses.

By being lazy with these very easy money decisions that can make a big impact, you are setting yourself for a lot more work down the line.

However, today I wanted to touch on the subject of being a hard worker. Seven years ago, and perhaps even further than that, I subscribed to the notion that by simply working smarter than most people, I could avoid working harder. Seeing how hard movers worked during our recent relocation make be believe that I wasn’t all wrong with that thought. However, over time, I’ve come to realize that if you don’t work hard, there will someone who is willing to work smart and hard, leaving you at a competitive disadvantage… whether that be for a new job, a promotion, starting a business. Also, there are some people who are such hard workers, that they can win business simply on that sweat alone. Finally, luck plays a factor. While we know that luck is the residue of good design, we shouldn’t overlook that, like fingerprints, no two people have the same luck.

To put this greater context, I think back to my youth when I used to play basketball with my friends. I’m not the most athletic person, but for some reason the kids in my neighborhood were very athletic, most of them making the high school varsity team. Make no mistake, the team that had me had a liability in any 2-on-2 or 3-on-3 games. However, I would scrape for every loose ball.

It’s like this quote by Will Smith, “The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be out-worked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be all of those things you got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there’s two things: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple, right?”

I follow the New England Patriots religiously and there are quite a few players on the team who weren’t even drafted. You look at their leader, Tom Brady, and he was a scraggly 6th round draft pick. I’ve article after article about how when he was drafted he’d bribe the security crew to open up the facility early and even let him stay there overnight. You won’t outwork Tom Brady and you probably won’t outsmart him either. He’s going to have his bad days just like everyone, but they won’t happen very often. He’s still the guy who competes for the MVP every year and hopes to make the team.

So when mention that being a lazy is a good thing, take it as conserving resources for things that really matter. When you’ve taken the steps to secure your financial future (live frugally, make your money work for you), it gives you the freedom to be the Will Smith of acting or Tom Brady of athletes… even if your passion doesn’t quite pay as well as theirs’ do.

Are Your Resources Swallowed Up By Parkinson’s Law?

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parkinsons-law-crowding.jpgEvery time I’ve heard about Parkinson’s it’s been in the context of the debilitating medical condition that my grandmother died of. Recently I’ve read about a different kind of Parkinson’s – Parkinson’s Law. Even if you don’t recognize the name, I’m betting that you’ve come across the phenomenon. Wikipedia’s definition is very brief, Parkinson’s Law is the adage that “work expands to fill the time available.”

Three Ways I’ve Been Impacted by Parkinson’s Law

If you read a little more into the Wikipedia definition, you’ll see that a more general definition is “the demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource.” I’ve found this to be true of nearly every project I’ve tried to accomplish in life. Specifically it applies to at least three areas, work, space, and money.

Parkinson’s Law of Work/Time

This was the base case mentioned from the outset. Have you ever had that book report that you put off until the last minute? I always choked it up to procrastination, but maybe it was Parkinson’s Law. In my years as a software engineer, I’ve rarely seen a project finish under the projected time allotted for the work. This is theme that’s prevalent in Frederick Brook’s Mythical Man-Month.

Sadly, I find that this continues with my writing today. In fact, it’s several times worse, because I have some long term projects that have no definitive due date on them. When there is no due date, the work expands infinitely. I need to work on this. One idea I’m thinking of is enlisting my wife as a project manager. I’d explain to her each week what I’m looking to accomplish. At the end of the week, we’d go through and make sure that I have it – instant accountability!

Parkinson’s Law of Space

Do you have a problem with clutter? Ever think that if you just had more space, you’d be magically organized? Maybe it works for you. It doesn’t work well for me. If I have a really big desk, I will use up every inch of that space with stuff. I think I rationalize it as, “I still have more space before I have start to clean.”

Maybe it’s not your desk, but your clothes closet. Or maybe it’s a McMansion that you need to fill with furniture. Or maybe it’s crowded kitchen counters.

Parkinson’s Law of Money

Have you ever gotten a tax refund or raise? Was your first thought in your mind that you can now buy that pair of Jimmy Choo shoes or a plasma television? Yeah, I’ve never had those thoughts either ;-). That’s probably because you are reading this site and likely have read other personal finance sites.

The average person does think like this and some call it lifestyle inflation. If you make more money, the demand for your money rises.

Possible Solutions for Parkinson’s Law

While there are many solutions here are a couple that I’ve found help me.

  • Time – I stay on track when I work at home with a kitchen timer. I divide my tasks into smaller, manageable pieces. I then give myself 10-15 minutes to finish the task and move on to the next one.
  • Space – My wife and I live in a 1100 sq. ft. apartment. We could probably squeeze into an 800 sq. ft. place with a little spring cleaning. I like to focus a little more on thinking small and doing more with less space. Maybe that means having a Wii instead of a pool table.
  • Money – I pay myself first. If I don’t see the money in my checking account I can’t spend it. If I can get it in a tax-advantaged retirement account, I’m sure I’m not going to spend it frivolously.

Do you have a problem with Parkinson’s Law? How do you solve the problems that can arise from it? Let me know in the comments…

Photo Credit: Guacamole Goalie