Only Working When You Feel Like It?

He's made a study of what mental habits cause us to be either "naturally successful" or "naturally struggling".

I personally have not been making headway on my goals for a while now, so I would say I've been struggling.

One key idea is whether one chooses to focus on what one can gain or on what one might lose as you pursue a goal.

A focus on potential losses makes one fearful, more likely to be paralyzed and ultimately fail.

If you ignore the potential losses and focus on what you can gain, you more naturally just take the actions required to get what you want. Flow is the way to go.

- John Wooden

Answer: "Because the value I provide to the company through the work I do more than justifies my salary, regardless of how many hours I spend, and what time I arrive, in the office."

Shorter answer: "'Cause I get shit done."

The problem here is a fundamental misunderstanding by your new coworker of exactly how the employer/employee relationship works, as opposed to how he, or really most people, believe it works.

In his understanding, the relationship stops with the employer, and the employer is paying for his time the same way he might pay at a meter for parking his car. What he's doing while his car is parked will vary, but he is expected to pay the same amount at the meter per unit time regardless of how worthwhile being parked there is to him at any point in time. In the same way, an employee is paid for seat time. The service he provides to his employer may vary depending on what the employer has him doing, but he expects the same remuneration regardless.

I suspect by your confusion, you see the same misunderstanding as I do. The relationship chain does not stop with his employer; instead it recurses out one or more levels from there until it reaches a customer paying for the product. This is where the value of the work is realized, when you find the person who will purchase the good or service on behalf of themselves, rather than on behalf of someone else further up the chain. More often that not, this last person in the chain will end up paying based on something other than time. If this customer refuses to pay more than employer is paying for your time, you are not productive enough, regardless of what sort of sense of entitlement to employment you think your diligence and hard work provide for you. You cost more than you produce; thanks for playing.

If you generate enough value for the actual customer that your employer is happy with the cut they get, then it absolutely should not matter how many hours you put in to generate that value.

It really comes down to a question of which is more important in being an employee: the value you produce for your employers customers; or how well you demonstrate your willingness to work hard, be a team player, demonstrate a strong work ethic, be diligent and obedient to the chain of command, or any of a myraid other things that might increase the value you produce to your customers, but are not the same thing as producing value to your customers.

The market is brutal; it couldn't care less how pious and moral you are.

It's an issue if you aren't working at all, but as long as you're getting your work done and your job function doesn't require client contact, why should your employer care?

That aside, I guess this approach might work in a results-oriented work environment (not that I've seen many).