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Motivation: count the money
gilest | Oct 26 2005
I'm one of the laziest people I know. And I procrastinate a lot. Today I tried something new, and it seemed to work. I counted up how much money I'd earned. Yeah, sounds dumb, sounds obvious; but it's not something I've been in the habit of doing before. I'm a freelance writer and some days earn me more than others. But today I made a point of keeping a mental tally of how much money the work I'd done will have brought in (once all the invoices have been sent, paid, and banked). At the end of the day I walked out of the house feeling somewhat satisfied that a Good Day's Work had been done. 12 Comments
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 I find it a really...Submitted by stevecooper on October 27, 2005 - 8:16am.
I find it a really strange thing when people get paid for the amount of time they spend in the office, because there's a really obvious hack, which you alluded to; your best 'hourly rate' is to do as little work as you can get away with, for as much money as you can arrange. If you get paid the same for working 20 hours and goofing twenty hours, or working 40 hours, then goof! It's the rational thing to do. At least in the short term. Can you tell me more about your idea, where you said "neither productivity nor value are as clear as they may seem when you put them in cash terms." If I take the position that 'productivity' is a measure of results per unit time, I'd think that a higher productivity means the same results in less time. When would that not convert to higher cash returns in a business? Can you give me an example where being twice as productive doesn't give you twice the return? Or am I working on the wrong idea? » POSTED IN:
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