Narcissistic Entitlement Syndrome

The word “narcissism” comes from the Greek character Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection and was made famous by the Greek poet Ovid. The story is one of great psychological complexity. In the story, Echo falls in love with Narcissus and gets rejected. The story makes it clear that Narcissus is only able to love himself and not others. Conversely, Echo completely loses herself in her love for Narcissus and has no sense of self at all. At the end of the story, Narcissus tells Echo, “I would die before I would give you power over me,” [Read more]

Choose an Employer Who Is Marching Forward

There are generally two types of employers in this world: the employer who is marching forward and the employer who is in retreat. There is also a third type of employer (for whom nothing is changing) that merits some discussion as well. However, for the most part, there are employers who are marching forward and employers who are retreating. What I am about to share with you could be the most beneficial advice about choosing between employers that you will ever receive. When I started my first job with a law firm, the firm was growing at a meteoric [Read more]

The Importance of Being Well-Liked in Your Job

One of the most persistent problems people in the work world have is their failure to collaborate with, and learn from, their co-workers. Several factors are necessary for success in any job and in advancing your career. Being well liked and collaborating are two of the more important factors. This is at odds with many people’s personalities. Salespeople thrive on competition and being number one. Attorneys, accountants, and engineers, among many others, were once quite competitive at academics and spent a lot of time studying to get an edge over their peers. In some work environments, [Read more]

Consistency is More Important than Brilliance

There once was a speedy hare who bragged about how fast he could run. Tired of hearing him boast, Slow and Steady, the tortoise, challenged him to a race. All the animals in the forest gathered to watch. Speedy ran down the road for a while and then paused to rest. He looked back at Slow and Steady and cried out, ”How do you expect to win this race when you are walking along at your slow, slow pace?” Speedy stretched himself out alongside the road and fell asleep, thinking that there was plenty of time to relax. Slow and Steady walked and walked. He never, ever stopped until he came to the finish line. The animals who were watching cheered so loudly for the tortoise that they woke up Speedy. Speedy stretched and yawned and began to run again, but it was too late because the tortoise had crossed the finish line. After that, Speedy always reminded himself, ”Don’t brag about your lightning pace, for Slow and Steady won the race!” -From Aesop’s Fables A few years ago I was moving from one house to another. I drove to the local U-Haul and picked up a van. I am not sure how it is in other cities, but around Los Angeles there are usually about 25 guys who stand in front of U-Hauls on the street waiting to help people move. It’s the same with Home Depot and other stores. I have not [Read more]

The Best Career Advice You Will Ever Receive

When I was around 14 years old, I moved out of my mother’s house and in with my father, his new wife, and her daughter in a different part of town. I would stay there for a few months, attend a different school, then move to Bangkok, Thailand, and attend school there. At this new school, immediately I learned that one of the most popular girls in the school liked me a lot. She started calling me and having her friends invite me to parties. She would come over with various gorgeous friends to watch television at [Read more]

Try as Hard as You Can

Many people want and demand a lot out of life. They want the happiest family, the best material goods and vacations, the best homes, and the best cars. They demand the best in everything. They also want the best jobs and the most advancement. Often, these same people feel very angry and upset if life does not provide them the things they want. A lot of people are very upset with the world. They are angry about jobs they have lost. They are angry about advancements and breaks they have not received. In fact, these people believe the [Read more]

Love Your Work And The People Who Give It To You

From the time I was 19 until I was about 27, I spent a good portion of my summers doing asphalt work around Detroit. That included asphalt sealing, hot tar crack filling, and asphalt patching. It was seasonal work and most people in Michigan only seal their asphalt once a year. ”Around Detroit” is a blanket term because I was working in three counties and in an area ecnompassing hundreds of miles. Essentially, I would travel to areas where people could afford to maintain asphalt. Seven days a week, I would get up as early as I could and go out to start the day at one of my jobs. Sometimes my drive was about an hour. Sometimes it was 15 minutes. Most of the time, I drove about 30 minutes. I made this drive each day because I had work to do. Every day I had work to do was an extremely exciting day for me. Once I got to a work site, I would count on the people around the area – neighbors, other businesses, and passing traffic – to see the work I was doing. I would stop cars and tell them I was in the neighborhood and willing to work. If I was in a residential area, I would knock on doors and tell them I could do work for them. I would do everything within my power to get work, and I always got business. I worked seven days a week. I worked so hard some of my employees would quit the job from exhaustion only after a few days. There were, however, people who lasted. In addition, while doing this work I maintained a profound respect for the people for whom I was working. I did everything in my power to do the work to the absolute best of my ability. I took the work incredibly seriously. I loved my job. The worst thing that could happen to me was not getting work. I knew if I did not do a good job one year, the next year I would not get the work again. I knew people talked, and the better I did in one area, the more work I got. I remember one year I showed up at a house in a certain neighborhood where I’d worked for several years, and a widow answered the door. She told me her husband had died and she could no longer afford the service. Although it was a nice house in an [Read more]

Do Not Get Involved in the Social Side of the Office

Several years ago we had an employee at one of our companies who was extremely intelligent. This person was older and had worked at several jobs before coming to our company. Although he’d never excelled at any of these jobs, he’d done well enough. He was hired as a writer to assist with various tasks for our companies. His abilities were not bad, and had he simply kept his head down and done his job I am confident he would still be here. Instead, this person was our company’s worst nightmare and still is to this day. The characteristics this person exhibited hurts more [Read more]

You Must Produce and Do Quality Work

At Toyota’s headquarters in Tokyo, one of the most striking things you see when you first enter is a collection of three pictures. The first is of Toyota’s founder, the second is of Toyota’s chairman, and the third, which is much larger than the other two is of W. Edwards Deming. The company believes Deming is the man whose teachings and philosophies made the company what it is today. Deming taught the Japanese about quality and how to continuously improve quality. In fact, the success of modern Japan after World War II as an economic and industrial [Read more]

Increasing Efficiency is Your Best Route to Employment Security

The cheapening of any article in common use almost immediately results in a largely increased demand for that article. Take the case of shoes, for instance. The introduction of machinery for doing every element of the work which was formerly done by hand has resulted in making shoes at a fraction of their former labor cost. Now almost every man, woman, and child in the working classes buys one or two pairs of shoes per year, and they wear shoes all the time. Formerly, each workman bought perhaps one pair of shoes every five years, and went barefoot most of the time, wearing shoes only as a luxury or as a matter of the sternest necessity. In spite of the enormously increased output of shoes per workman, which has come with shoe machinery, the demand for shoes has so increased that there are relatively more men working in the shoe industry now than ever before. The workmen in almost every trade have before them an object lesson of this kind, and yet, because they are ignorant of the history of their own trade, they still firmly believe, as their fathers did before them, that it is against their best interests for each man to turn out each day as much work as possible. Under this fallacious idea, a large proportion of workmen deliberately work slowly so as to curtail their output. Almost every labor union has made, or is contemplating making, rules which have for their object curtailing the output of their members. Those men who have the greatest influence with the working people, the labor leaders, as well as many people with philanthropic feelings who are helping them, are daily spreading this fallacy and at the same time telling them that they are overworked. -Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) From the time I was 18 until I was about 27, I spent most of my summers working as an asphalt sealant and maintenance contractor around Detroit, Michigan. One of the main jobs I did involved putting an asphalt sealant on parking lots and driveways. At the beginning of my first summer doing this work, I used to purchase the sealant in five-gallon pails. Then I starting purchasing the sealant in 55-gallon drums and installing a pipe on the drums to drain [Read more]

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