How to Slack like a Pro

So I came across this presentation about how to be a slacker at work. This is something I take very seriously. With 24 hours in the day, 7 hours sleeping, 1 hour to get ready in the morning, 10 or more hours at work when you include lunch and commute, 1 hour to eat, 1 hour to take care of miscellaneous bullshit in the house, you’re left with 3 or 4 hours of leisure time in the day, and it seems like a lot less than that. If you watch one or two TV shows, congratulations that takes up the remainder of the time.

The beauty of slacking is that it allows you to get more done in less time by multitasking, sort of. You can take care of the bullshit tasks like paying bills, making phone calls, dropping stuff off at the cleaners, going shopping, etc all during that big 10 hour black hole we call work. Some people feel guilty about this, but I do not. Time is going by so fast and I don’t want to wake up tomorrow and be 50 years old wondering what I’ve done for the past 30 years.

This ‘Slacker@Work’ article shares my philosophy beautifully. The author (Connelly) believes Slackers have the gift of being able to stop at “good enough,” and go home unburdened by what was left undone. And to quote my hero Peter Gibbons from Office Space, “It’s not that I’m lazy, it’s just that I don’t care.” Slackers are phenomenal at achieving things that are important to them. Aside from that, they don’t give a fuck. It is this efficient use of their mind that sets them apart from the standard over-achiever. While the basic intelligent work horse will stress out and blow up their mind with trivial details and pleasing the boss, the Slacker frees up his mind to use in more important areas of his/her life.

In the book “The 80/20 Principle,” a German military officer is quoted that he sees 4 types of soldiers in his army: stupid & lazy soldiers- they don’t mess up anything and are ok to keep; stupid & hard working soldiers- they boggle things and should be fired immediately; intelligent & hard working soldiers- they do a good job and are apt to run lower level positions; and the intelligent & lazy soldiers- are suited for the highest level of offices. They have enough laziness to cut out the extraneous shit and advance themselves.

I should state here that I don’t advocate the useless, lazy, going nowhere in life type slacker that gives us real Slackers a bad name (yes I didn’t capitalize the first one on purpose). Real Slackers have motivation and drive, it’s just that we’d rather do what we enjoy than do crappy work.

Back to Connelly’s article, he suggests that you figure out who the most influential people at work (the gossipers, the people who everyone tends to believe, etc NOT necessarily your boss) and befriend them. Give them the impression that you’re a hard worker. Talk about how many hours you supposedly worked at home the night before.

Here’s a nice trick he lists to get a half day and still seem like a hard worker: Call in the morning to your boss and to the aforementioned influential people and let them know that you’re sick and won’t make it into work. Then relax for a few hours. Drive into work around 12:30 and say that yes you’re sick, but you just had to come in because you have so much work to get done. You will look like a hero! A half day of slacking and you come out seeming like an extra hard worker. Note that this doesn’t work if you come in in the morning and then leave home mid-day. This will make you look like an extra slacker.

Connelly also has other suggestions that aren’t particularly interesting, but here’s a trick to take a nap I thought of once when I was really tired at work but never had the balls to try: Find a desolate spot that hardly ever gets any traffic. Drop a coffee mug (half full) on the ground, along with some papers maybe. Lie down face down on the ground and go to sleep. Hopefully no one finds you. If they do, claim that you must have fainted or hit your head on something, whatever (hence the coffee and paper props). They wouldn’t dare to think you were napping, you poor thing.

Here’s a computer tip that every slacker needs to know: ALT+TAB. If you’re surfing the internet at work (and you should be), it is very obvious if your right hand races to the mouse and starts closing down windows while your face turns white in panic mode. The solution is Alt+Tab. Hold the Alt button with your left thumb, and tap the Tab button with your left index or middle finger. Doing so brings up a little window that shows everything you have open. Keep hitting Tab until you get to the window you want, then let go of Alt. Presto, you’ve gotten to a different screen without using the mouse. Note that the order of the windows is the order that you last visited them, so the trick is to have actual work (a spreadsheet for example) be the last thing you were looking at before you go on the internet. This way you just hit Alt+Tab once and it will immediately bring you to the spreadsheet since that will be the first icon in the window. Try it out, you’ll get it.

Another good thing to do: take on work in bunches. Have a list of let’s say 10 things you need to accomplish, and knock out some easy fast ones first. Then slack. If your boss comes by to check on you, hold up your finished accomplishments, or ask him/her a question about one.
Here’s a link to a page that has all sorts of great tips and tools for slacking: Don’s Boss Page. It includes fake spreadsheets to switch to and fake typing noises (scroll down to see the whole page).

Broken Piggy Bank

I've been hanging a lot of Japanese prints in my room lately to give it some sort of theme. The room's starting to look classy, and I've had to move other pictures around. This one framed pic of my parents I hung up not far from the light switch. Last night I reached my hand to switch off the light, and on the way back my hand hit the frame. It came down with the biggest crash and knocked over a little change jar I have on my desk corner.

I inspected the frame, figuring it was broken due to the loud noise it made and some bits of broken glass on my floor. It turns out that the frame smashed the glass change jar on its way down. Picture taking a hammer and smashing with one drop a 4 inch tall glass vase type thing with a bunch of pennies and Moroccan/Euro coins in it. I was surprised the frame did that, it was only a foot or so above the desk and it's not heavy.

The reason why this is significant is because of what that change thing represented. I put it in that spot because it's where the Feng Shui wealth corner is in my room. Here you put round, metallic type objects like tiny blue curvy vases filled with exotic coins. At first, I was a little concerned to have my wealth so figuratively smashed, but I tried to find some silver lining. Maybe the forces of Feng Shui are just being dramatic since I had to shell out $350 for the plumber that day (which is a lot less than I expected to pay). Or maybe it had something to do with my parents. Yesterday was their anniversary, and the picture was of them.

Then I thought maybe it’s symbolic of all the money that will be, um, exploding my way since I’ve been doing so many entrepreneurial activities lately, especially in the past few days. Maybe it’s symbolic of breaking open a piggy bank and coming into contact with a lot of money.

Some of these thoughts ventured out loud, and my girlfriend seeing my somewhat concern brought out the idea that maybe the money was just going to be so sizable that I need a bigger “piggy bank,” so Mr. Feng Shui sent me a little push. I like that one, I think I’ll keep it.

Quitter

This guy at work, 28 years old, married, completely a corporate guy etc, keeps leaving early or coming in late. This is not normal for him, he's a hard worker (ew) stay late hours (ewww) type. He's been sick, had doctor's appointments, gotten stuck in traffic, had family parties, etc. I strongly suspect that he plans on quitting and going on job interviews.

When I quit my previous job in October, I had to make up some stories. One day I had to leave early for an "allergist appointment." This was convincing because I sneeze and blow my nose constantly. Or at least I used to, now it's just a regular occurrence. Then one morning I called in late because I got stuck in traffic or something, but it turned out no one was there anyway for some strange reason. My last day of interviews coincided with our “Impact Day” where we’re supposed to do community service instead of work. Yeah I skipped that and said I went, sure I’m going to hell.

You feel so bad about lying about why you’re not coming in, but I guess you can’t really tell them the truth. It’s especially bad in a high job turnover industry like the one I was in. Now whenever someone leaves early or comes in late, I’m always suspicious that they’re really out interviewing for another job. People should really interview after work to make things easier.

Along this vein, I will be reviewing someone else’s thoughts on Slacking. I capitalize it because it is an important Subject and should be taught um...somewhere.

Joys of Home Ownership

Rewind: 2 months ago while in Florida, my roommate Davis gives me a call to let me know that the ceiling in the first floor dining room is dripping. Ummm ok I don't know what that means, I guess I'll wait till I get home to check it out. I get back from FL, inspect the ceiling, notice it looks a little stained yellowish. Press it, feels soft. Hmm water has to come from somewhere, and this spot looks like the shower might be overhead on the 2nd floor. Let me run the shower for about half an hour and see if any water comes down. None. Scratch head. Wait a few days...no water has been dripping. Problem must have solved itself! What a smart homeowner I am.

Fast forward: Last weekend while I was at a class on rehabbing real estate (ohh the irony) I get home and find out that the ceiling was dripping again. Now this time I take it very seriously. I spent all day looking at crappy houses that have all sorts of damage from water, termites, age, kids, smoke, gas, pets, and other sorts of wear and tear. I know the perils of H2O. Water is the enemy when it comes to houses, much like Oxygen is the enemy of prepared food.

I get home, poke around, ceiling's soft but not dripping right now. Does this mean the tub might fall through the ceiling and kill one of us? Is the water creating mold on the floorboards which will have long term health effects on future tenants? Will I get SUED?? Yes everything a landlord does should put 'will I get sued' in the front of his mind. Thanks rehab class, now I'm a paranoid schizophrenic. More on that later.

So I decide that I absolutely must find out what's causing the drip, cause it's not going to fix itself. I do some measurements, and realize that the drip is directly below the bathroom sink from the second floor, not the tub. I run the water in the sink for 5 minutes and sure enough, the drip starts up. Davis tells me to fix it whenever I get around to it. No way, this needs to be fixed immediately.

First I put a postit note on the sink to 'please not use it too much.' Then I call two plumbers for estimates. Apparently in these old rowhouses, the original plumbing starts falling apart after 40 years or so and this happens. Depending on how the plumbing wraps around the joists, the plumber can come up from the ceiling below and work from underneath (meaning I would just have to replace the piece of ceiling that was all rotted and drippy, which I would have to do anyway) OR if the plumbing goes over the joist, then he has to work from above and tear out the sink, rip apart the bathroom floor, tear out the toilet and i buy a new one, i pay to remove the concrete and miscellaneous shit and i have to buy/install a whole new bathroom floor. I am praying he can do it from below so it's less messy and so I can save hundreds of dollars, but we won't know till he cuts out a 'test piece' of the ceiling on Saturday to see where the joists are. Cross your fingers.

So this didn't faze me as much as it could have, probably because I've been attending these real estate investment classes. Whereas before I might have gotten really frazzled over paying $600-$1000 to repair something, now I see it as a necessary maintenance for a money producing investment. I saw a lot of examples of people buying a house for like $9,000 because no one else wanted it, fixed it up for $15,000 and sold it for $65,000. It's not as uncommon as you'd think apparently. This young guy taking the class with me bought a house off of foreclosure.com for $135,000 and has it contracted to sell in a few weeks for $216,900, in less than three months holding it. I'm sure none of these people cared about fixing plumbing, it's just something you do to get something you want (namely money).

Some other observations from my classes: Liability is a huge issue. Tenants will sue you all the time if they slip and fall. Well apparently mostly Section 8 tenants do that because they feel like the world owes them something. But cracked sidewalks, ceiling fans, and trees (sorry infiorno) are all a no-no. A lot of investors remove all trees from their property because if kids come by and hang out in your tree and fall, you get sued. Such a shame that so many trees must go just because courts award assholes money for nothing.

I heard of a 26 year old guy who own 40 rental properties. That's little more than 2 years older than me. He probably makes between $100 and $150k per year just in rents, after all taxes and expenses, and he doesn't have to do anything, just collect. He is set. That's where I'd love to be, but I don't know if I can pull it off in 3 years. 5 properties per year would be aggressive I think, but people say it's doable.

Excited about the prospect of this? I am. I feel like my day job is holding me back. I can't go to the courthouse and find good deals because I'm at work when they're open for example. I've been slacking so much lately and have no motivation to do anything at work. I can't wait to be done with it, someone just fire me already!