The Way of the Wall Street Warrior

CHAPTER 16Laziness as a Virtue: Maximize Your ROTI

Up to this point, you may have been thinking, how the heck did this guy work as hard as he claims for over 20 years? Why isn't he dead?

I'm going to give you my secret. I did labor 80 to 120 hours a week for over 20 years and it did take a toll on my life. But I was able to sustain that level of intensity because I have that one innate human attribute to guide me—laziness. It made me mindful of my return on time invested (ROTI) and encouraged me to create smartcuts, not shortcuts, to create the best work in the least amount of time.

Smartcutter Extraordinaire

For all of us, there comes a time when the work is piling up and there's literally no end in sight. You know why? Because you're essentially a fixed asset and employers will always take as much as you can possibly give them. It's your job to self-regulate and learn how to say, “No.” Well, maybe not exactly, “No.” It's really “Yes, but … .” The “but” buys you more time or leads to “You need to duke it out with one of my other bosses to decide whose project is more important.” Regardless, you should purge “No” from your vocabulary. Only “Yes” and “Yes, but …” because what you're really doing is learning how to work smarter and not necessarily harder.

Here are some tips on how to do that:

• Focus on Big Decisions. An extremely successful strategy I mastered to maximize my personal ROTI was to use my immense brain power on only the big decisions. I'd use defaults for small ...