"Know the moment when to work diligently".   *-- Ernie J. Zelinski

"But lo! mem have become the tools of their tools."  *-- Henry David Thoreau

"Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top."  *-- Virginia Woolf

In the nineteenth century, when asked to give a lecture for a large fee, Swiss naturalist Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz replied,  "I cannot afford to waste my time making money."  It's too bad that people today have the same priorities.  The world would be a better place if we did.  To be sure, the nature of modern society dictates that we work to earn a living.  When we overdo that earning a living, though we suffer the loss of a relaxed, satisfying and properous lifestyle.

Consciously or otherwise most people accept the formula for leading satisfying worthwhile and successful lives that is espoused by corporations, educational institutions, the media and advertisers.  Few stop to think why they are doing what everyone else is doing.  Most of those who think are afraid to do something differnet even if they desperately want to.

When it comes to earning a living and having a good life, the majority of people think that the single most important thing to do is to work hard.  These people are wrong.  What they need, in fact is to learn how not to work hard.  Learned workaholism is difficult to give up because its practise provides a perverse form of gratification.  Morever, the Protestant work ethic has influenced us to believe that working hard is virtuous regardless of the results we attain.

Although you may have been hardworking all your life, you can transform yourself into a lazy, intelligent and productive person all at the same time.  Hardworking and hardheaded individuals focus on the number of hours they put in, you must focus on results.  The difference can be remarkable in terms of the income you make and the balanced lifestyle you are able to lead.

To adopt a more relaxed approach to earning a living, we must be constantly alert so that the hardheaded people who say it can't be done don't influence us.  For example, Stephen M. Pollan in his book Live Rich advises his readers:  "Making money is hard work.  You have to wake up earlier, work harder all day long and go to sleep later than everyone else.  The only ways to make money without hard work are to inherit it and to win the lottery."  By following this advice, we will find inevitably and tragically that hard work leads to inferior results.

An alternative to Pollan's advice is a much more positive and properous approach to making a good living and having a great life.  We can adopt and follow the premise of self-made millionaires such as Robert Ringer author of Million Dollars Habits and Robert T. Kiyosaki author of Rich Dad Poor Dad.  They advice that provided you make your mind your greatest asset, money is not that difficult to obtain.  And provided you save and invest a good portion of what you obtain, it is not that difficult to mutiply.  In other words, it is not hard work but creativity and astute investing that lead to high monetary results.

Written by:
The Lazy Person's Guide to Success : Ernie J. Zelinski 

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