• get promoted
• get a better job
• or find themselves in a better life

as a result of doing more than was expected of them.  The harder you work—and the more you do than is expected–the more you will attract the attention of your superiors and the sooner you will find yourself in a better life. In the case of my job as a garbage man, my hard work attracted the attention of my superiors at first in the wrong way—but then it paid off. In my job as a garbage man I was surrounded by men whose entire careers had been based on not doing more than was expected of them.  In contrast, I was of the belief that I should always do more than was expected of me.  This belief is something that I owe every success I have ever had to. In academics, this means studying more than is expected of you. In the work world, this means doing more than is expected of you in many, many ways.  When I was in college, if a teacher told us we had to write a paper of a “minimum” of five pages—I would write a thirty- or forty-page paper. “Why are you writing such a long paper,” my classmates would always ask me. “Because I want to get an A,” I would tell them.  And when I wrote such long papers and put so much effort into them, I always got As (often the only A in the class) when everyone else turned in their five-page (or maybe six-page) papers and got Bs and Cs. I even saw many people play with their margins to get to over five pages. The practice of law (which I did for some time) is like this to.  I remember one of my first insights into really great lawyering came when I was clerking for a judge.  I started to notice that the best lawyers from the best firms did very small, imperceptible things that other attorneys would not. For example, if they were sending you a bunch of pages paper clipped together they might put a sticky note between the paper and the paper clip so the pages were not marked with the paperclip indentation. This is, of course, excessively anal but it is an example of the smallest of details that the best attorneys do not miss. Their work is proofread meticulously. They are on top of just about every single thing they are doing to an extraordinary degree, and no detail is too small. In contrast, the work of average attorneys would be proofed far less carefully and contain far more errors, typos, and other sorts of things.  Forget about a sticky note so there is no paper clip indentation… Whether it is working as a lawyer or as a garbage man, there is always a way to do much more than is expected of you in every profession. There is no job where you cannot do more than is expected of you. You may not immediately see the results, but over time you will.  No supervisor misses their hardest and best workers.  You will soon find yourself promoted, given raises, given bonuses, and more. You will be offered a supervisors job eventually. Or you will be hired away by an astute competitor who sees how much you are giving and knows they can channel your energy. “If I give more than is expected of me, won’t I be used and taken advantage of?” you may ask. There is a remote chance of this occurring. But human nature is to give back in response to receiving. This is how it works 99% of the time. It is just a law of the world. I have seen so many attorneys get better jobs by giving more than is expected of them.  Other lawyers notice and hire them away. They rise up the ranks of firms. They attract clients who also see their devotion. They get to the top fast. It is like this in every profession. There is no other thing that has given me more in life than performing more than is expected of me.  Let your competitors in your job slack off and put in half-assed efforts.  A few years from now you will be living the dream while they are stuck or moving backward. If you are not doing your absolute best and withholding your best work, you are only prolonging your present situation and are dooming yourself to a life of mediocrity (for your abilities) or, at worst, failure. Resist the urge to do only what is expected of you.  Give all you can to everything you do and you will succeed. THE LESSON In every job, there is always much more to do than what is actually expected of you; by dong more than expected, you will attract the attention and respect of your superiors and find your life improving. When you withhold your best work, however, you only prolong your current situation and confine yourself to mediocrity. Put everything you can into all of your work, resist the urge to only put in the expected effort, and you will find your life and career approving accordingly.

• Have you ever known someone whose friends and acquaintances are always getting sick?
• Have you ever known someone whose friends and acquaintances are always having accidents?
• Have you ever known someone whose friends and acquaintances are always getting in trouble?
• Have you ever known someone whose friends and acquaintances are always in crisis?
• Have you ever known someone whose friends and acquaintances are always having financial problems?
• Have you ever known someone whose friends and acquaintances are always losing their jobs?
• Have you ever known someone whose friends and acquaintances are always unhappy?

I have, and I do not think there are a lot of coincidences when it comes to people and the misfortunes that plague their lives. There are, quite simply, people who will generally make those around them unhappy and create problems. While it seems to be a paranoid sort of assertion, I firmly believe that whether or not the people around us are validating or invalidating us is a large cause of our success or failure in life. This also goes for organizations. If you are in a good or bad organization, this can have a tremendous influence over what happens to you. One of my greatest sources of pride is the number of positive stories I could tell you about my former employees. Good things have happened to many of them in their careers after being with me for some time. The fact that good things happen to people associated with a given organization or person reflects well on that organization or person. Conversely, I know of law firms in which nothing much ever happens for the people who leave, and, in most cases, they experience one failure after another following their departure. Much of this has to do, I think, with the level of support the people may have received in their previous positions and the messages they have carried forth into their lives by virtue of this association.

• Did they learn to believe in what is possible?
• Did they feel validated?
• Did they develop confidence?
• Were they able to learn and incorporate a message about their own validity in the world?

If you are spending time with a person who is invalidating your efforts and your life, the odds are you will be negatively affected. Similarly, if you are around someone who is constantly validating you and giving you approval, you may benefit tremendously through your association with this person. The same thing goes for the organizations that we are part of. There are people out there who tend to better the mood, health, and general well-being of those around them, and there are those who do not. I am going to list a few examples of this; some of them may be upsetting and may even relate to you personally, but nonetheless they merit review. I have known of many people throughout the years who were closely connected with someone, whether it be a parent, mate, or someone else. The person they were connected with had a huge fear of the person leaving them, and therefore their personal interest was in keeping the person down, making sure that the person did not improve, or change, to such an extent that they could ever leave them. A parent who does not want his or her child to go away from home may feign all sorts of illnesses to keep the child around and may also discourage any of the child’s efforts at self-improvement. For example, if the child gets into an excellent out-of-state college, the parent may encourage the child to stay home and go to a local community college, for various reasons, instead of finding a way to make the child’s upward mobility to a better school a reality. A parent who has the need to feel superior to his or her child may also keep the child down in subtle ways. In personal relationships, a man or woman may discourage a mate from trying to get a better job, looking better, and so forth, for fear that this might lead to separation and abandonment. This person might relay negative feedback about his or her partner’s accomplishments but hold back positive feedback or information that is likely to be helpful. The objective of such people is to keep other people down. People can hold you back by direct means, and they can also do so through indirect means. For example, a friend or significant other who does not compliment or notice the positive things that you do, or who always finds fault in the positive things that you do, can have a very traumatic effect on you in the long run. Making you self-conscious of your faults and always pointing these out can also be a seriously negative influence. Relating about nothing other than negativity, impossibility, and so forth can also have a very negative effect on you. If any of this sounds familiar to you, it is probably time to evaluate your relationships. In most sports, there is something called the home team advantage, which means that when a team is playing at home, it tends to perform much better than when they play away. When a team is at home, it is encouraged and cheered on by people, and is supported by the spectators, whereas visiting teams are often booed. Consider this explanation from Wikipedia:

In most team sports where the concept of home and away stadiums is found, the home team is considered to have a significant advantage over the visitors. Due to this, many important games (such as playoff or elimination matches) in many sports have special rules for determining what match is played where. In association football, matches with two legs, one played in each team’s “home,” are common; it is also common to hold important games at a neutral site. In many team sports in North America (including baseball, basketball, and ice hockey), playoff series are often held, with a nearly equal number of games at each team’s site; as it is usually beneficial to have an odd number of matches in a series (to prevent ties), the final home game is often awarded to the team that had the most success over the regular season. In some sports, this tends to be a huge ace in the hole, such as basketball, where historically the home team in deciding games has won 78 of 97 games, up until the second round of the 2007 NBA Playoffs. Home field advantage is especially pronounced in NCAA Division I American football, where teams like LSU, USC, Ohio State, Penn State, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia, and many others win consistently at home. Many college football stadiums also have nicknames that represent the loudness of the stadium. Autzen Stadium, home of the Oregon Ducks, has been nicknamed the “Autzen Zoo” because of how loud it gets, and Kyle Field, the home of the Texas A&M Aggies has been nicknamed the “12th Man” because of the loudness there. That can be attributed to the fact that many of the largest football stadiums in America are college stadiums, such as Michigan Stadium, which seats 107,501, about 35,000 more than most NFL stadiums. However, teams that are nearby may have less of a home field advantage. Such examples may be UCLA-USC or Cal-Stanford, where the visiting team’s fans often equal or exceed the home crowd and the only effect the visiting team has is they have to wear their road uniforms and play on a nearby field. Sometimes during bowl season, a team will happen to play a bowl game in their home stadium and sometimes be designated as the visiting team in their own home stadium, and thus, receives the home field advantage despite not being the home team. On the high school level, where schools often share stadiums, when the co-tenants play each other, one school manages to pick up a not so rare, but advantageous road game in their home stadium. On the professional level, several teams either get to play road games in their home stadiums or play a road game nearby. When the Jets and the Giants of the NFL meet, whoever the visiting team is gets an extra game at their home stadium. A similar situation occurs when the Lakers and Clippers of the NBA play each other. Other series where teams get to stay close to home on the road include: (NFL) Raiders-49ers, Ravens-Redskins (MLB) A’s-Giants, Dodgers-Angels, Mets-Yankees, Cubs-White Sox, Cubs-Brewers, Orioles-Nationals (NHL) Islanders-Rangers-Devils, Ducks-Kings, Oilers-Flames, Senators-Maple Leafs, Canadians-Senators, and in the NBA, Knicks-Nets, Kings-Warriors and Lakers-Clippers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_advantage

The home team advantage is one of the most important concepts in sports and it is a proven factor in how well teams do. If this concept applies to teams, how do you think it can apply to everyday life? There are people who support us, validate us, and make us feel good, and this helps us do well more often than not. There are also people around us who fail to support us, and this hurts us. When a team away from home scores a goal, people boo or do not make the team feel validated for its efforts. When the team away from home does something wrong, people may cheer. The psychological message transmitted is that people only approve of the team away from home when they are doing poorly. Many people associate with people and groups of people who treat them like they are not the home team; others associate with people who treat them like they are the home team. Your success in your career and in your life will in large part be determined by whether you are living, working, and associating with a “home team” crowd or an “away team” crowd. When I was in high school geometry class, after the first exam, our teacher drew a giant circle on the blackboard, representing the shape of a horse-racing track. He then put little dots in several places along the track and said something that I will never forget:

“This is where you all started in the race, but everyone’s position can change. Some of you will pass one another at some point, and the person who is in first right now may not keep running and may end up in last place. Conversely, the person who is in last may keep running, training, and trying to do better and may end up in first place. You need to realize that the race for the best grade will take all semester, and just because you are one place right now, this does not mean it is where you will end up.”

This is a really simple example and the teacher was talking only about our geometry class at the time; however, it is a metaphor that stands true for our lives. People begin the race in a certain place, and then some people end up doing much better than others, and this is just how it works. The race keeps going and just because someone starts the race in first place does not mean he or she is going to finish the race in first place. When you trace the cause of someone with a lot of potential falling behind in the race, when you see sickness and ill health, when you find people not trying hard enough, when you see failure and despair, generally somewhere along the line you will find someone who has been negatively affected and otherwise discouraged by people somewhere along the way. It is an absolute fact of life that the company you keep will have an effect on what happens to you. In athletics, it is common for some players to be extremely good at a sport despite not being tall enough (in basketball), big enough (in football), and so forth. What generally separates these players who do not have all the physical attributes of success is the sheer determination and self-belief inside of them. Having heart and drive can make all the difference. Heart and drive are what push people to the top of any profession and any job. If you are going to reach your full potential, you must possess heart and drive. This is something that wins races, despite any uncontrollable obstacles that may arise. Heart and drive can be killed, though, if they are not supported. The best thing you can do for yourself is to put yourself in a position where you are supported, where you have the home team advantage. Having the home team advantage is something that can help you win in the game of life.

1. I certainly have never been on the evening news giving my opinions before the United States Congress.
2. I do not sit in the office of the President of the United States and give him advice about what to talk about in speeches and write speeches for him.
3. My actions and opinions are not mentioned weekly in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

I now look at these men with profound respect because the lesson their careers hold is something I have certainly learned from, and you can too: Work ethic and consistency trump brilliance and talent. There are many people with a lot of talent, or who know a lot. These talented people may know more than the next person. They may be better socially. They may have a better idea of what needs to be done. They may have better educations. They may be better sales people. They may be more connected. But when it comes right down to it, none of this really matters if the talented person cannot simply “show up” and do the same thing over and over. The people who win and become the most successful are the ones who generally put in a massive effort over the long run. Nothing is more effective than being consistent. The Grand Canyon could never have been built by one giant flood. Instead, it was built over millions of years by a consistent flow of water that applied a small amount of pressure and erosion over time. So, too, it is with your career. If you are consistent, you will achieve a lot more over time than if you are not. Talent and brilliance have sex appeal. Talent is something that blows us away. Several years ago, I was sitting in the living room of my mother’s house in Detroit, and in the other room was a man who was providing one of the most brilliant analyses of the meaning of the world I have ever heard. The more this man’s mind worked through an idea, the more brilliant I realized he was. At the time, I was 27 and had been through college and law school. In addition to practicing law, I was also teaching in a law school. I had heard a lot of very brilliant men speak in my career, but the person I was listening to was incredible. As I listened to this man speak, I was firmly convinced he was the most brilliant man I had ever heard. After he left, I found out he had an extraordinary IQ and had received a PhD from Princeton. However, he had never applied his skills. Instead, he was living in a small $350 a month apartment and had lived there for years. He did not use his brilliance in his job and, instead, his talent went to waste because it was not being consistently applied. He had worked in multiple jobs in his career. What if this man had decided to spend his career writing? What if this man decided to spend his career teaching? He did none of those things and, despite incredible talent, nothing ever happened. We need to apply our talents. Talent is fickle. Sometimes talent shows up, and other times it does not. In contrast, being consistent requires a high level of tenacity. You need to keep plowing through. You cannot give up. Anyone can be a better performer in one thing or another for a short time. What really takes skill is to consistently perform over time. This is what my friends’ fathers were all doing. Imagine 30+ years of doing the same thing and climbing within the same organization. This consistent effort is what creates the best results and enables people to win over time. Only certain people are born with brilliance and incredible talent, but anyone can exercise their option to work hard. When we are consistent, we make small bits of progress on a daily basis. Making small daily bits of progress are what transform careers and lives. Anything you focus on consistently will make you better. Many people lack the ability to consistently focus over time, and instead believe one small flash of brilliance or talent will make a difference. This is almost never the case. Consistency and work ethic always trump brilliance and talent. THE LESSON Consistency and commitment trump brilliance and talent; the most successful people are those who put massive long-term effort into their careers. Only certain people are born with innate talent or brilliance, but consistent effort lies within the reach of anyone and is ultimately a much greater factor in success. Anything to which you apply consistent focus will show progress.

If you’re the kind of driver who sometimes has trouble finding the brakes in your car, you should be driving an Audi. Last month, in 35mph crash tests of an airbag-equipped Audi 100, the mannequin in the driver’s seat suffered the lowest crash force ever recorded by the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration, NHTSA, in this kind of test. And yet, according to the Center for Auto Safety–a self styled public interest organization that sells its research to plaintiffs’ lawyers–the Audi 100′s predecessor, the Audi 5000, was as deadly as the Audi 100 is safe. It exhibited “sudden acceleration,” a fatal propensity to take off at full speed even as the terrified driver rammed the brake pedal to the floor. CBS’s 60 Minutes ran a devastating exposé of the Audi 5000. Audi customers fled. Lawyers cashed in. The American public was saved, yet again, from the perils of technology gone awry. Only one little noticed footnote remains at the end: There was nothing wrong with the car. The Audi story is by now, dismally familiar. “Sudden acceleration” accidents occurred when the transmission was shifted out of “park.” The driver always insisted he was standing on the brake, but after the crash the brakes always worked perfectly. A disproportionate number of accidents involved drivers new to the vehicle. When an idiot-proof shift was installed so that a driver could not shift out of park if his foot was on the accelerator, reports of sudden acceleration plummeted. But a story to the effect that cars accelerate when drivers step on the accelerator doesn’t boost television ratings or jury verdicts. And driver error is understandably hard to accept for a mother whose errant foot killed her six year old son. So with the help of such mothers, CAS and CBS knitted together a tissue of conjecture, insinuation, and calumny. The car’s cruise control was at fault. Or maybe the electronic idle. Or perhaps the transmission. 60 Minutes, in one of journalism’s most shameful hours, gave air time in November 1986 to a self styled expert who drilled a hole in an Audi transmission and pumped in air at high pressure. Viewers didn’t see the drill or the pump—just the doctored car blasting off like a rocket. Junk science of this kind moves fast. Real science takes time to catch up with this kind of intellectual cockroach and squash it. Government agencies in Japan and Canada, as well as in the US, conducted painstaking studies. The Canadians who are franker about such things, called it “driver error.” In America, where we can’t attach blame to anyone whose name doesn’t end with Inc., it was called “pedal misapplication.” And unsurprisingly, it’s not just Audi drivers who commit it. So, in the long run, the truth does come out. In the short run, the lawyers swoop in. Most soon recognized that they couldn’t prove any defect in the Audi’s engine or transmission. But our liability system today is a master of the bait and switch—the switch was to “pedal misdesign.” No doubt about it, the original Audi like other European cars, placed brake and accelerator pedals slightly closer together than is usual in many American designs. This allows the good driver to move faster between the pedals in highspeed emergency. Perhaps it also makes it easier for the bad driver to mix up the pedals. Nobody, including NHTSA, is quite sure whether, overall, the old Audi pedal placement was marginally better or marginally worse. End of case? Hardly. With Audi shellshocked and vulnerable from the earlier junk engineering claims, the pedal placement lawyers moved in. The 60 Minutes story starred a mother who had run over her six year old son. On the air, she insisted that she had had her foot on the brake the whole time. When her $48 million claim came to court in Akron, Ohio, in June 1988 the investigating police officer and witnesses at the scene testified that after the accident the distraught mother had admitted that her foot had slipped off the brake. The jury found no defect in the car. Trial judges in New Jersey and New York have overturned bad pedal design verdicts against Audi. Last July a federal court in Pennsylvania issued a summary judgment for Audi. And that should have been the end of Audi’s legal troubles. Except that it wasn’t. An appellate court reinstated the New Jersey verdict: an appeal is pending. The New York case was settled before retrial. A California jury returned a $3.5 million verdict against Audi on a pedal placement theory, after the plaintiff’s lawyers abandoned a sudden acceleration claim. Another appeal is pending. Today, Audi is reportedly defending itself in more than 140 different suits, and damage claims are in excess of $5 billion. Not that the aggregate claims have the slightest connection with reality, of course. At one point, a single demented plaintiff in New York filed identical $5 billion claims in both federal and state courts; both have since been thrown out. How about the US government safety report? In July, 1989, shortly after the report was released, Audi ran a hopeful advertisement titled “Case Closed.” “The case is not closed,” responded Robert Lisco, a Chicago plaintiffs’ attorney. “Those guys must be smoking something.” 60 Minutes never even acknowledged the final US findings, although it did grudgingly note identical conclusions of an earlier, blue-ribbon study, and then proceeded to rebroadcast inflammatory videos from the earlier segment. CAS denounced the government study and cheerfully cranked up yet another sudden acceleration smear, this one against Cadillacs. Lawyers for the “Audi Victims Network” brazenly declared that the report strengthened their clients’ cases. They may be right. The largest suit now pending against Audi is an Illinois class action, ostensibly representing 300,000 or so Audi 5000 owners. The charge? That because of the sudden acceleration controversy, Audi’s have lost resale value. Yes, sudden acceleration is real. A powerful engine kicks into gear without warning or reason. It crashes through a respected business, ruins the livelihood of hundreds of innocent dealers, and devalues the property of hundreds of thousands of bewildered car owners. The windfall goes to those who destroy and then successfully blame others for the wreckage. For heaven’s sake, where are the brakes?

As a consequence of the 60 Minutes story, sales of Audi’s in the United States collapsed. According to one account:

The show had an enormous impact in the marketplace. Sales of all Audi models in the US, which had peaked at 74,061 in 1985, plunged sharply after the 60 Minutes broadcasts. “It was a nightmare for the company,” says Thomas McDonald, former head of public relations at Audi’s parent, Volkswagen of America, Inc. “We lost billions of dollars in sales and revenues. Audi’s average annual sales of 14,000 cars from 1991 to 1995 were just 19 percent of its pre 60 Minutes peak.”

No one was ever able to duplicate the alleged occurrence of unintended acceleration with the car. Not a single person who filed a case against Audi ever won. Nevertheless, even to this day a perception still seems to linger in the marketplace that Audi’s are somehow dangerous and unsafe. What the Audi example teaches and has always taught me is that perceptions are one of the most important things to take note of. 60 Minutes, with all of its marketing might, was able to shape perceptions and the way people viewed Audi cars. Despite the fact that nothing was wrong with the car, 60 Minutes changed the way an entire generation of people perceived the automobiles manufactured by a particular company, and this almost destroyed the company in the process. One of the most powerful and important aspects of our careers and our lives is how we are perceived by others and how we control our own perceptions of those around us. People can use perceptions to their advantage or to their disadvantage. The most successful people are able to use perceptions to their advantage. After all, everything we may surmise about a person, a job, or any situation is based upon our perceptions. Often how something is perceived matters more than the facts surrounding it. For years I have opened the paper each week and seen various advertisements by American car companies wherein they try and compare their cars with German or Japanese rivals. For example, the company may have a chart that shows that the American car stops in a five foot shorter distance, that the car accelerates a little faster that its Japanese counterpart and that its JD Power Initial Quality Survey score is higher. I have seen these advertisements and their corresponding charts for 25+ years–and every single year American manufacturers have sold fewer and fewer cars in the United States. At the same time, the Japanese have continued to sell more cars each year. What is going on here, I think, is that people simply have different perceptions. The Japanese cars are perceived as better. The advertisers can throw around all of the facts and figures they want. People simply tend to have a better perception of Japanese cars. Perceptions matter more than facts. A couple of years ago my assistant was out purchasing me a little television for my bedroom. She called me from the store and gave me two options. One was a brand of television I had never heard of, LG, and the other was a Sony. She told me the LG one was bigger, had a nicer picture, and was a lot cheaper. I did not care. I told her to buy the Sony television. This was all because of my perception of the Sony brand. I had a much better perception of Sony than I had of LG, and consequently there were no facts that could change my mind–not even the fact that the LG model may have indeed had a bigger and better picture; and it definitely did cost less than the Sony model. Many people feel that their job search and the quality of the job they get is a battle of their résumé, and that their entire future depends on what is visible on their résumé. For example, people who go to the best colleges often assume they will get a much better job than those who go to lesser colleges. People who have the best work experience believe they will generally get the best job. There is a tremendous amount of truth to this reasoning; however, more important than any of this is how we are perceived. Perceptions matter far more than facts. When I was recruiting full time, I remember that I did not care as much about what was on someone’s résumé as who they were and how they were perceived. My greatest love in recruiting was managing how an employer perceived someone, which was always my greatest skill. Managing a perception instead of just the black and white characteristics surrounding a person was probably the most important thing I could do. I remember I met a girl once who was losing her job at a highly prestigious law firm in Los Angeles. I sat down with her and learned that she had grown up on a hippie colony with her parents, and that her father had some extreme beliefs about growing his own food and so forth. She had been rebelling against this lifestyle over the course of her entire life, and consequently she had become incredibly disciplined and motivated to succeed as a lawyer. This material made for incredibly interesting reading for the law firms that interviewed her, and I remember that her being perceived as someone who was “rebelling against the antiestablishment” went over very well. I remember writing a 15-page letter to the law firms about this aspect of this woman’s personality. What most recruiters would have done with this girl is send her around to law firms and so forth without managing her presentation–and therefore the perceptions of those that might hire her. She would have simply been presented as someone seeking a position at a new firm, a girl who had had a job at a good law firm and who had attended a decent law school. This would not have done her too much good, however. What the best recruiters do and what really changes everything around for the job seeker is when the perceptions of the employers about the prospective employee are conscientiously and properly shaped. There is a very good documentary on HBO about the disgraced Evangelical minister Ted Haggard. Haggard was a well known Evangelical leader who was the former president of the National Evangelical Association, representing 30 million Christians. He was also the Founder of the 14,000-member New Life Church. In 2006, Haggard resigned after a male prostitute claimed that Haggard had hired him numerous times for gay sex and used crystal meth with him. The fascinating documentary follows Haggard after being expelled from the Church as he moves from town to town looking for work. Unable to get a job, Haggard eventually gets a job as a traveling insurance salesman. Seeing Haggard go from a powerful man who is on top of the world and lecturing tens of thousands of people, meeting with American presidents, and being interviewed on major news programs–to someone whose entire range of possessions now fits in the back of a U-Haul truck was incredible. What makes the Haggard story so interesting is that it shows, like the Audi example, that everything is about perceptions. The public perception of Haggard was changed overnight when it came out that he did not represent what he stood for, having engaged in behavior that was considered immoral. The public perception of Audi was changed overnight when people started to believe the car was incredibly dangerous, because of a news program. Ultimately, the truth was that the Audi 5000 was among the top cars in terms of safety on the road. You need to realize the power of perceptions in your life, and to use them to your advantage. Aim to control, shape, and influence the perceptions that others have about you. Consciously work to create the image you will project to those around you. One of the most fascinating things to me about recruiting has always been what happens when a given law firm gets a bad reputation. The law firm may have earned a bad reputation due to a partner going to prison, or due to consistent layoffs, or something else along these lines. In most cases, the reputation is confined to only one aspect of the law firm. For example, out of 10 practice groups in the law firm, there may be a problem with only one practice group–not every practice group. What ends up happening, however, is that people often do not go beneath this skin to recognize that the true problems within the law firm are really confined to only 10% of the entire organization. What this means is that there are less applicants and therefore more opportunities available for people to get jobs at this firm, who might not otherwise get jobs there. This is all due to a poor perception about the firm that is not well founded. Perceptions are often far more important than facts. You will get a better job due to how you are perceived over and above how good your résumé is. You manage how you are perceived by the people you know, how you present yourself to the world and how your reputation will grow. The most important thing you can do in your life and career is make perceptions work for you. THE LESSON Perceptions matter more than facts; others’ perceptions of you, your perceptions of others, and how you control both are the most important aspects of your career. Realize the power of perceptions in your life and use them to your advantage. Aim to control and shape the perceptions that others hold about you by shaping the image that you project to the world.

• “You’ll never be able to do that.”
• “That’s for other people, not people like us.”

We receive these sorts of messages again and again. Whether someone is trying to get you to buy something or is afraid of you improving because it will illuminate his or her own inadequacies, it is important that you are aware that others around you may be trying to keep you down, make you insecure, or control how you feel about your life. Do not allow others to control or influence you negatively, and be aware of this kind of behavior. If you allow others to influence how you think or feel, you will be in service of them and not in service of yourself.

LOS ANGELES (CNN) — Mark Hughes, the founder of Herbalife International, one of the world’s leading distributors of herbal products, died of an accidental overdose after mixing alcohol with a “toxic level” of antidepressants, authorities said Friday. Scott Carrier, of the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office, said final autopsy results found that Hughes, 44, had high levels of both alcohol and an antidepressant in his blood. The cause of Hughes’ death recalls that of his mother. Hughes’ mother died of an accidental overdose of prescription diet pills when he was 18. He often cited her death as motivating him to succeed in the herbal products industry–to provide millions with products that were not available to his mother. Carrier attributed the death to “alcohol-Deoxpin intoxication.” Deoxpin is an antidepressant, which Hughes was taking to “treat insomnia,” the coroner said. Hughes’ blood-alcohol level was recorded at .21 percent. A “toxic level” of Deoxpin was also found in his system at 2.1 micrograms per milliliter, Carrier said. Hughes was found dead in his Malibu mansion May 21. The initial autopsy, conducted on May 23, was inconclusive and required additional tests. In February 1980, Hughes founded Herbalife International. It has since become one of the world’s largest distributors of herbal products, with sales of about $1.7 billion annually.

At the time of his death, I knew people who were working at Hughes’s Malibu mansion, including people who were installing incredibly ornate marble floors–and even Hughes’s personal trainer. For people who knew Hughes, it was no mystery that he had been headed down the wrong path. His personal trainer would sometimes show up at 8:00 a.m. and find that Hughes had been up drinking all night and had not yet gone to sleep. Another time, the personal trainer allegedly came over in the early afternoon; Hughes was drunk and made himself vomit so that he could exercise. It is definitely surprising that a guy like Hughes had a serious drinking problem, since he was running one of the largest health food companies in the world at the time. Someone going out there promoting health and wellness, who became incredibly rich doing so, seems unlikely to become a raging alcoholic. Hughes did not need to work. He had all the money he would ever need and seemed to have it all. The guy who would walk around telling everyone “Happy Friday” actually used to work for Hughes at Herbalife. He wanted to be someone like Hughes, who had all that money and power, so that he could sit around and do nothing. I wonder, however, what he thought of when he learned that Hughes had died such a tragic and senseless death. Did he still see the value of having nothing to do? The interesting thing about success is that once people have achieved incredible goals, they often become complacent, and then they start having the most problems. There is a huge danger to complacency because when you reach this state, everything in your life can end up going to hell. You are never truly happy because of the things you get; instead, you are happy because of what you become. If you are not becoming something (i.e., progressing toward a goal) you will generally not be happy. What makes people happy is the process of continually becoming something and growing. If we are not growing then we are dying. Regardless of what your dreams may be, most people are not and can never be happy being complacent. Some of the guys I knew growing up made complacency their goal in life. They are complacent now–and fat and boring. Their lives revolve around things like looking forward to Happy Fridays. They live for the weekends. One of the greatest challenges in your career and in your life is to learn how to handle, or more specifically, how to avoid complacency. Complacency can literally destroy your career and life. You are either moving up or you are moving down. You cannot afford to move down, but when you are complacent, you will most certainly end up moving down. You need to learn to judge yourself by your potential rather than by what your peers are doing. Also, you need to surround yourself with people who have high expectations for themselves so you too can have high expectations for yourself. Pay very close attention anytime you are not challenged and any time you feel like you might be getting too content. A good coach does not allow a player to rest on her laurels and you should not rest on your laurels either. You need to be your own coach and constantly push yourself forward. If you do this, you will achieve more in your life. THE LESSON Avoid complacency, as it can literally destroy your career and your life. You are either moving up or moving down, and complacency will always place you on a downward trajectory. Surround yourself with people who will continually challenge you to become better. Surrounding yourself with mediocre people will introduce mediocrity into your own life; when you surround yourself with people who accept nothing but the best, you are likely to become exceptional as well.

• On one hand, the culture of Athens left a legacy of art, drama, architecture, philosophy, the enjoyment of wealth and opulence, the idea of a governmental democracy and a strong navy.
• On the other hand, the government of Sparta left a legacy of asceticism, military supremacy on land and oligarchy (rule by a few).

These two societies fought repeatedly between the years of 500 BC and 350 BC. Their clash was a fight between two civilizations in the fullest sense. Each believed that their society and their way of doing things was the correct way. They fought in different ways and they ran their societies in different ways. Most of what we know about the Spartans comes from the writings of the Athenians, because the Athenians were the ones who spent their time writing and thinking. And since the Athenians did not like the Spartans, the writing is somewhat biased. I believe, and have always believed, that being a successful job seeker requires you to be more of a Spartan than an Athenian. In fact, I would propose to you today that a great deal of what is wrong with our current economy is due to many of us approaching our careers and our jobs more like an Athenian would than a Spartan would. I have been witnessing what appears to be a decline in a solid work ethic, job finding skills and the ability to do good work in the United States since I have been a young child. It seems to me that this decline is just getting worse and worse. Most people use all their sick days each year, even if they are not sick. Many people who are not working spend years unemployed and refuse to take a job unless it pays as much as their last one. In the automobile industry, unions have contributed to a slow death among American automobile companies by demanding more and more benefits and less and less work. Our government is bailing out companies and banks when they cannot make a profit. Our leaders are intellectuals with no experience running armies or groups. Worst of all, there is something developing in this country where we reward people for making mistakes. For example, between 2000 and 2005 hundreds of thousands of Americans made an incredible amount of money buying and selling houses. Now that the economy has started to slow down and they are no longer making money, we are stepping in to fix all of this. It is like a child running back to their parent for help. Our health care costs are incredibly high compared to other cultures. The people of our country are very unhealthy and do not watch their diets. Our highest paid workers in the law and other disciplines form communities online where they spend more time complaining about what they are making than appreciating what they have. Our jobs in this country have begun migrating to places where people can do them more cheaply and are hungrier for work. With manufacturing, it happened already with jobs migrating to China. In the information technology sector our jobs are going to places like India. Our country is getting fat, lazy and developing a massive sense of entitlement. We are turning into intellectuals, as opposed to soldiers. Our children spend time playing video games and not learning. Our national test scores are going down on an almost annual basis. We are innovators in many sectors, but something is changing. We have a sense of entitlement about what we deserve and yet we are not delivering. Much of the success we have experienced in the recent past has been the result of financial chicanery and financial manipulation. The cultural icons of our youth are other kids who have never worked. Some of our most popular shows at this point in time are of people who are not even required to memorize lines. Instead, a camera follows around young adults on shows such as The Hills, as they go on dates and socialize. Our country spends more than it saves. Our government has a deficit and most households do as well. There is something going on in this country that is more “Athens” than it is “Sparta,” and it is dragging us down. I know there is not a lot you can do about what is going on–and I know you may not agree with me as well. However, what you can do personally is be more “Sparta” than “Athens,” and being more “Sparta” than “Athens” is something that can help you reap incredible rewards in your career. As I will discuss below, being more “Sparta” than “Athens” will enable you to: (1) get a job more quickly, (2) be more effective in your existing job and (3) survive in all economic conditions. In ancient Greece, Sparta had the most feared military force there was. The Spartan soldier was, and still is, legendary. A Spartan soldier’s training began at birth and the Spartan soldiers never lost a battle in the conflicts that waged between the small city-states of ancient Greece. When a baby was very young, it was tested for weakness and deformity. Babies were bathed in wine shortly after being born by their mother. The babies that survived the bathing were brought by their fathers before a governing body of Sparta (a council of elders known as the Geousia). Babies that seemed as if they would be unlikely to become strong soldiers, or who were considered “puny”, were thrown in a gorge to die. (If a baby made it past this stage and died in another manner later on, they were not even allowed a headstone. The only Spartans who were allowed headstones were those of Soldiers who died in battle where Sparta was victorious, and women who died in childbirth or a divine office.) For those who were allowed to live, the training of the Spartan solider was nonstop and savage. Spartan boys began formal military training at the age of seven in what was called the Agoge system. The boys lived communally, and were given grueling physical training and learned to work with weapons at a young age. Men could not not live with their families until they left active military service at the age of the thirty (Spartan men remained in the reserves until the age of sixty). Plutarch, a Greek historian and essayist, wrote that for many Spartan soldiers going to battle was a welcome relief from the grueling training: “For the Spartans, actual war was a holiday compared to their tough training.” What is so significant to me about this early aspect of Spartan training, is the incredible focus that the young were forced to develop at a young age. Their lives were all about their jobs and they were toughened and taught to be “warriors”. Instead of being coddled by schools, they were toughened by schools. They were pushed both physically and mentally in these schools. The emphasis in the schools was not on being academic. For example, while Spartan boys studied reading, music and and writing, the boys were punished if they failed to answer questions laconically (i.e., briefly). The idea for Spartans was that they were to be warriors who were educated but did not sit around debating the nature of good and evil, for example. The idea of intellectualism and debate was not something that was part of Spartan society. A Spartan was trained as a soldier whose job it was to get something done. While I am not sure I personally would be all that comfortable with the Spartan educational system, what makes it so interesting to me is that it emphasized utility and action over the converse. The idea that was being taught was that focus is what is important. By being focused, you are much more likely to reach your point than by talking around the truth. The Spartans’ educational system was geared towards this focus. In modern society, our academics will traditionally sit around debating this or that. Our best students are often those skilled in the art of giving long-winded answers. Lawyers spend a great deal of time debating this or that, and this makes up a giant portion of what goes on in our culture. Students in school are coddled and given the sorts of learning environments that “nurture” them. While I am not going to debate this in great detail, I would go so far as to argue that the nurturing of our modern educational systems gives people in the United States a certain sense of entitlement about what society owes them, instead of what they owe society. This coddling ends up instilling a sense of entitlement that may go on in peoples’ lives forever, and continually put them in the role of being takers rather that doers. This is not something that would have happened in Sparta. In Sparta, failure was also something that was not allowed. According to Thucydides, when Spartan men were going off to war their mothers, wives, or a woman of significance in their lives would present them with their shield and the statement “With this, or upon this.” This meant that the solider could only return to Sparta having won the battle, with their shield in hand (“with this”) or dead (“upon this”). Spartans who returned to Sparta without their shield were presumed to have thrown it at their enemies and then fled–something that was punishable by death or banishment from Sparta. The entire Spartan culture was one that enforced incredible discipline upon its soldiers. For example, one Spartan legend discussed a man who ran away from battle and back to his mother. Instead of comforting him, the mother chased him around the streets hitting him with sticks. In our current society, failure is allowed. While there is nothing wrong with failure, it should never be an attractive option. Celebrities and well known figures repeatedly go into rehab for drugs and alcohol. We quit jobs if we do not feel we are being treated as well as we could be. We coddle people for failing and give them “easier” tasks to do if one task seems too difficult for them. Our government steps in if people make horrible economic choices and does not allow them to fail. We pay people unemployment who get fired from their jobs. We bail out companies with government money that are making bad products that no one wants to buy. When a Spartan went off to battle they had no choice but to succeed. There would be no warm homecoming for them if they failed. Consequently, the Spartans did not fail and always won their battles among the city states of ancient Greece. According to one commentator:

The life of a Spartan male was a life of discipline, self-denial, and simplicity. The Spartans viewed themselves as the true inheritors of the Greek tradition. They did not surround themselves with luxuries, expensive foods, or opportunities for leisure. And this, I think, is the key to understanding the Spartans. While the Athenians and many others thought the Spartans were insane, the life of the Spartans seemed to hark back to a more basic way of life. Discipline, simplicity, and self-denial always remained ideals in the Greek and Roman worlds; civilization was often seen as bringing disorder, enervation, weakness, and a decline in moral values. The Spartan, however, could point to Spartan society and argue that moral values and human courage and strength was as great as it was before civilization. Spartan society, then, exercised a profound pull on the surrounding city-states who admired the simplicity, discipline, and order of Spartan life.

Sparta’s emphasis on military supremacy and a simple lifestyle was the major emphasis behind Plato’s book, The Republic, which was one of the first attempts to formulate an ideal community. Was Sparta ideal? In many ways I believe it was. In our current society everything is just far too complicated. Our emphasis on leisure and eating has made us a nation that is predominantly overweight. Our ability to manufacture goods the world wants to buy continues to decrease. As a group, we do not have discipline. Our military is not valued and held in esteem by many of our highest leaders. We surround ourselves with luxuries and more emphasis seems to be put on this for many of us than on the value of our work. In contrast to Sparta, Athens was a very different society and far less rigid and militaristic. In Sparta, the emphasis of the society was on the military and in Athens the largest emphasis was upon culture. Some very important accomplishments were made by Athenians in science, art, philosophy and other disciplines. For example, the philosophers Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and the playwrights of Euripides, Aristophanes, Aeschculus all lived during Athens’ golden age in the fifth century BC. Athenians believed that they were culturally superior to the Spartans. They enjoyed luxuries and foods from all over their empire. The homes of wealthy Athenians were very nice and had inner courtyards. A good description of Athens also comes from Pericles famous funeral oration:

Further, we provide many ways to refresh the mind from the burdens of business. We hold contests and offer sacrifices all the year round, and the elegance of our private establishments forms a daily source of pleasure and helps to drive away sorrow. The magnitude of our city draws the produce of the world into our harbor, so that to the Athenian the fruits of other countries are as familiar a luxury as those of his own.

In contrast, Spartan men were taught to get along with almost nothing. Spartan citizens were not permitted to own gold or other luxuries. These differences between the Spartans and Athenians remind me of a conflict I see today all around me. There are people who talk a lot about what they are going to do and read a lot about what others are doing and have done, and there are people out there doing things and actually getting work done. Which are you? I would encourage you to be on the side of action, self denial and create effective contribution, rather than on the side of those who simply talk and do very little. One of the greatest conflicts I have personally witnessed in working with thousands of job seekers over the years has been a similar conflict–there are job seekers who are Spartans and there are job seekers who are Athenians. The Spartans are always the more successful in the long run. When I was around 18 years old my parents stopped giving me money completely. I did not have a traditional home to come home to where parents cooked and looked after me, either. Without any money coming in and expenses that included car maintenance, gas for my car, clothes, books for school and other essentials I was put in a position where I had to work. While I resented my parents for their personal situation which put me in this role at the time, it was something that I ultimately came to appreciate as I got into my 30s because I realized how much more scrappy it made me compared to others. In ancient Sparta, the boys were intentionally underfed so they would always be hungry and so they would develop the skill of being able to steal food. Here, without any money coming in, I needed to toughen myself and learn skills that other kids my age were not learning at the time. I sold knives on the street. I worked as a pizza delivery boy. I worked in the school bookstore. I started a business doing asphalt work. I worked on cars in my spare time. I did not have the same luxuries and other accouterments as other kids had. I also knew that I did not have any “backstop” if I failed. If I did not have any money then I would simply not be able to function. I needed to look out for myself. This was something that personally toughened me up. It made me quite self reliant and it put me in a position where I learned over time how to make use of existing resources, find the best deals for things and make the most of what I was given. This is an incredibly valuable skill to have, and as a “Spartan” I toughened myself up quite a bit. What this means for you and your job search is that you need to put yourself in the position of a Spartan. If a Spartan were looking for a job today they would show up to an interview ready for work. They would not debate the idea of retreat or running home if they did not get the job. They would not debate the idea of quitting the job if they were unhappy with the work conditions or they did not like their boss–they would make it work. They would only accept victory. Moreover, a Spartan would go to work ready to work and would work very hard. A lot of people enjoy sitting around and talking about things. They are undisciplined when it comes to their job search and quite lazy. Many may purchase a book or two here and there, and not do anything with it. Others may lament the state of the market and cite accounts in newspapers and other sources that there are simply not enough opportunities. They will sit around and try to see what benefits they are entitled to. They will take all of their vacation and sick days. Instead of working on their existing weaknesses and acknowledging them, they may move between jobs to find employers who will not bring to light their weaknesses. None of this does them any good in the long run. I think a lot of what is wrong with this country today is that we are too Athenian and not Spartan enough. I would encourage you, in your job search and career, to be more Spartan than Athenian. THE LESSON While Athens prioritized culture and intellectualism, the people of Sparta devoted themselves to simplicity and discipline. You need to approach your job search as a Spartan, not an Athenian; don’t retreat from the negative aspects of your life and current job, but rather make them work for you and remain focused on your success.

• They sign up for a course in school, forget they are enrolled, and get an F in the class–crushing their chances of getting into a good graduate school.
• They constantly have strange health problems.
• People around them seem to constantly be dying or having accidents for no apparent reason.
• They are robbed and beaten up, even in good neighborhoods.
• The sewer pipes explode in their house and destroy their home a week after they forget to pay their home insurance.
• They get fired and dismissed from jobs after being accused of things they did not even do.
• They touch a microwave oven to heat up some food and the microwave breaks.
• Their cars keep breaking down–even new ones–and they are always late and missing out on this or that.
• They have strange auto accidents, like being directly behind a truck making bottled water deliveries, which suddenly discharges its load onto the freeway, causing them to drive into a ravine.
• They have a couple of drinks and go for a bike ride, then get arrested and thrown in prison for drunk driving.
• The companies they join go out of business.
• They lose an important sporting competition because they have a bizarre accident right before they are to compete.
• They constantly lose purses, keys, and other personal articles.

I could go on and on about various people like this whom I have seen bad things happen to over and over again. However, the most interesting thing about these people is that they just seem to swim in a constant stream of bad luck. Like clockwork, one issue or another continually affects them in a negative way. As these issues affect these people, they become resigned to a belief that the world is an unfortunate place, and that it is just difficult to make things work. In the job and career realm, these people always have a difficult time. Rather than getting ahead, they are plagued with one thing after another that seems to make the workplace extremely difficult. If you think that none of the above (extreme) examples relate to your own situation, or that you cannot learn anything from the examples above, you are wrong. Your effectiveness in the world is largely based on the level of control you are able to exert over your surroundings. Some people are controlled by their surroundings and others control their surroundings. Your sanity, success, and happiness in the world will come in direct proportion to your ability to control your surroundings. The person who is affected by one negative occurrence after another is typically someone who is unable to control his or her surroundings. The person who thrives in any environment is one who is typically able to control his or her surroundings. What is competence? When we say someone is competent, what we are essentially saying is that the person has the ability to control his or her environment and what happens around him or her. A competent surgeon is able to control her instruments and perform an effective surgery. A competent proofreader is able to proofread work and correct any errors that may occur. Competency means being able to control the outcome and effectiveness of our work, rather than being controlled by external factors. When we call someone incompetent, what we are essentially saying is that the person cannot control the outcome and effectiveness of his or her work. An incompetent individual is someone who is unable to do a good job. The idea of incompetency is that the person’s work and environment dominates him or her, not the other way around. Over the years we have had lots of people work in our various companies whose jobs were to fix computers, phone systems, and so forth whenever they went down. Right now we have someone absolutely fantastic doing the job. These systems hardly ever break down around this guy, and when they do, he fixes them instantly. Before he joined our team, we had another person in his position, and the computers always broke down. There were viruses on the computers. The phone system was always having problems. With this new person, everything works perfectly and almost all the time. The reason is competence. This man has taken preventive measures to make sure that everything is working all the time. He is aware of what could or might go wrong at any given time–before it actually does. When he fixes something, he puts it back together and does not leave any aspect of his work unfinished. If he does not understand something fully, he speaks with as many others in the field as he can, and he makes every effort possible to fix the problem. This person is, in a word, competent at what he does. His work area is clean. There are no unfinished projects. He knows his business and does not take on work he does not understand. The opposite would be if he did not finish assignments completely, and let his work pile up. If he disassembled a computer and then did not reassemble it, and just moved on to something else. If he failed to read up about the latest developments. If he were not out there networking and exchanging information with other computer engineers. What would happen to him in this case is that his work would eventually take control over him, not the other way around:

• Phone systems and networks would be going down all the time.
• People would be yelling at the person, and he would eventually be at the mercy of his work and the world.
• He would not receive any pay raises.
• He might lose his job.
• He would be agitated all the time.
• He might start drinking too much.
• He would make justifications for the problems he was having at work due to old computers or phone systems, and use these excuses in discussing his performance with management.
• He would begin searching for another job to relieve the pressure–and then another one after that.
• The process would repeat itself at each new job.
• He might yell at his wife and kids at night.
• He might be angry with his employers–and the world at large.
• He might sue an employer for firing him.

You see, all of this would be caused by this person’s inability to control his environment. Controlling your environment is among the most important things you can do. People who are exceptional at their jobs and in their lives are generally able to control their environment and to resist being controlled by their environment. When I joined my first law firm with a group of around fifteen other recent law school graduates in 1997, there was a young partner in the law firm who was a little bit insane, I think. I suspected the partner was a cocaine addict but I was not sure. You see, this guy rarely came into the office, and when he was there, he would grab an associate and give some cryptic instructions to do this or that. He might tell the associate that it would take “at most three to four hours”–when in reality it was a twenty-five-hour job. The associate would do the work and might find herself being berated or humiliated by the partner for not doing some task that was not part of the original assignment. The partner would then lie about having assigned the task, when he had not. The entire process of working with the guy was quite exasperating for everybody in the firm, because of his outrageous behavior. As a young attorney starting out in a law firm, the most important thing you can do is complete assignments and impress the partners you are working for. I remember that a very talented young associate was given a workload by this particular partner, and after a few days the associate flat-out refused to work with him anymore. He made a point of going to the head of the law firm at the time, John Quinn, and telling Quinn that he would no longer be able to work with this particular partner. This was something that people just did not do, and everyone in the office was very impressed that the young associate had done this. The guy who refused to work with the partner was one of two people in this class of fifteen who ultimately ended up making partner in this law firm. He never got flustered and was always respected by his peers. I think that the reason he was so effective and able to do so well was that he knew the importance of controlling his own work environment. He refused to work with a partner who did not allow him to control his own work. A few years ago, I had a very talented assistant working for me. She had gone to an excellent college and had finished near the top of her class. Her work ethic was exceptional and she did a really good job in everything that she undertook. She was working on a real estate matter with me, and the real estate agent she was dealing with kept lying, not showing up for appointments, and telling me and others that the young woman had said things she did not. It was a bizarre situation, and the real estate agent eventually ended up losing his license for similar behavior. I remember one day my assistant took a stand and refused to work with the agent. “I’ve had it. I am not going to work with someone who lies and changes things around. It makes it impossible for me to do my job. You can fire me if you want, but I simply cannot continue like this.” This girl was controlling her environment. By controlling her environment she was able to make sure that she could do her work effectively. Because the lying, scheming, and so forth of the real estate agent was making it impossible for her to control her environment, she refused to have anything to do with him. You need to control your environment at work. This means lots of things–like not taking on more work than you can handle and making sure you do everything with competence. One way of not controlling your environment is by just being plain lazy. Being lazy means letting work pile up, not doing your job, being preoccupied with things besides work and so forth. I do not have a lot of sympathy for lazy people, and neither does the rest of the working world. Lazy people never end up doing all that well at anything. These sorts of people are let go from organizations rapidly and frequently. Darwinian forces in most organizations typically take over quickly, and the lazy end up having major problems. The lazy and the careless are people who perpetually fail to control their environments–probably because doing so requires energy and focus. These people can create major problems for organizations and themselves. Another, more unfortunate example of failing to control your environment is taking on too much work or, similarly, doing work you do not really understand. This is a huge problem that affects countless individuals in the workplace. When you are good at something, people may give you more and more work. You need to know when to say no and you need to develop a keen ability to politely decline any assignment that is beyond your scope of expertise. Many people come into jobs and soon get in way over their heads–trying to take on too much work. I have seen this time and time again. When you have more work than you can handle, or you are doing work that you do not understand, you are not controlling your environment; instead you are being controlled by it. When I started the same legal job I mentioned earlier, there was a girl a few doors down from me who had recently graduated from Yale Law School. The girl was absolutely brilliant and very hard working. We shared secretaries who worked at the same station, and I used to see this woman’s time sheets, which she would turn in every day. After I had been at the firm for around six months, I started noticing that the time sheets she was turning in each day were adding up to a full twenty-four hours. This meant, effectively, that she was working entire shifts of twenty-four hours without a break. I would notice these hours adding up to twenty-four hours at least a few times each week, and it was astonishing to me. I could not imagine, at the time, working this many hours on anything. Within several months of this woman’s starting these twenty-four-hour shifts, she had left the firm and gone to work for the government. I do not know why she did this; however, my guess is that she simply had taken on too much work. She had become unable to control her own work environment. Had she been able to turn down work and refused to work such long hours, she would have been controlling her environment–and she might not have burned herself out of what promised to be an illustrious law career. Control of your environment starts with you. I know of employers who will not hire people who are grossly overweight, drink too much, or smoke. People have actually said this to me before. Why? The reason is that the employer figures that people who are grossly overweight, drink too much, or smoke are unable to control themselves, their urges, and their body and therefore will be unable to control their work. I knew of an attorney once who had a job offer from a major law firm and was invited out for drinks with an important partner a few weeks before he was supposed to start. The partner ordered two drinks over a few hours and the prospective new associate ordered four drinks. He was not hired on account of this, for the reasons mentioned above. I will never forget that one. You show your ability to control your environment by the way you dress and carry yourself. I have heard of people not being hired for important jobs due to their collars being frayed. I know of contractors who will not hire people who do not organize their tools well. All of this translates into an ability to control your environment. The person with the frayed collars is showing that he does not care about having a professional appearance, evidenced by his refusal to update his wardrobe or to get new clothes. Having a professional appearance is important in many lines of work. The contractor who is unable to keep his tools organized is not controlling the tools of his trade; therefore he looks weak to the potential employer. If you have ever known someone who seemed a little crazy, it is likely due, at least in part, to an inability to control his or her environment; chaotic surroundings often lead to a chaotic state of mind. The stresses of the world impact this person over time and to an extraordinary degree, and things are constantly going wrong in this person’s life, all because this person is acted upon by the environment–not the other way around. People who are chronically stressed out and upset are typically being acted upon by the environment, not the other way around. One of the greatest dangers (and opportunities) out there is when an individual gets a promotion or a company starts to expand when things are going well. This is always a giant opportunity for the individual or group to move to a higher standard. With more responsibility and growth often comes the challenge of controlling more variables in the work environment. In this case your standards, your attention to detail, your desire to do a good job, and your ability to exert control over your work environment, all determine if you will succeed. If you have watched films about the military, or if you have ever been in the military, you know that there are countless procedures that are in place. People are always communicating back and forth, seeking clearance for this procedure or that procedure. Certain high-level military personnel may even call the president to seek clearance for one thing or another. The reason so many procedures exist in the military is that it would be impossible for the military to control its environment without the procedures. An absence of procedure would equate complete chaos. The larger a company or organization is, the more procedures you are likely to see. There may be multiple levels of management, legal divisions, marketing teams–and all sorts of procedures in place for every one of these groups. All of this enables the company to control its environment so that it is optimized for continued growth and expansion. Organizations cannot function without numerous procedures and various methods to assist them in controlling their environment.

• A lack of procedures, standards, and ways of controlling incoming work can lead to major difficulties and problems, and often lead to individuals having stress, emotional problems, career difficulties, and more.
• A lack of procedures, standards, and ways of controlling incoming work can lead to major difficulties and problems, and often lead to companies having stress, organizational problems, severe business difficulties, and more.

An interesting trend happens in the economy: There are “booms” and then there are “busts.” During a boom cycle, lots of people are being hired in a short amount of time. In short, there is a lot of opportunity. During a “bust” the exact opposite starts occurring. People are let go and fewer people are hired. The people who remain inside of organizations are given more and more tasks, and their work is made more efficient. Productivity typically increases during a “bust.” All that is occurring here, essentially, is that the organization is exerting more control over its environment in order to survive. Control means having fewer workers, monitoring what each worker is doing, having higher hiring standards, and so forth. Those who are the most efficient at their work are generally kept on. When a group is rapidly expanding during a boom, a lavish and decadent sort of culture often sets in: Expenses are not overseen very carefully, and there is a great deal of unnecessary spending. Things get out of control, and the company starts to lose profits. When the bust cycle occurs, control is brought back. The ability of an organization to exert control over its workers, expenses, and so forth has a direct connection to its ultimate success in both good and bad times. Poorly run organizations are unable to control their workers, they are unable to control their expenses, and they are unable to control their products–and they ultimately go out of business. Everything in terms of an organization’s success is about control. Just as an organization’s success depends on effective control, your own ability to succeed in your career and life depends on your ability to control your environment, and to not be controlled by it. THE LESSON You need to control your work environment. People who are successful in their work and personal lives are generally able control their environment, and resist being controlled by it. Do not take on more work than you can handle, and make sure to competently handle the work that you do take. An organization’s success depends on its control over its assets, and your own success similarly depends on your ability to control your environment rather than the other way around.