Chapter 323

"There are plenty of clock punchers out there—folks who are physically working but mentally retired.” Bill Treasurer

Mentally retired. I think most people have felt this way at some time or another. You start dreaming about going fishing or boating or motorcycle riding or camping or hiking or cycling or whatever leisure pleasure is your choice, and suddenly work seems like slavery and drudgery and the clock is moving backwards rather than forward and you can’t wait to get out of that building toward your imagined escape. This everyone feels at some point and I think it rather normal.

But when these feeling and these actions become systemic and habitual, things are turning serious. Everyone loses when this happens - the worker, the employer, the co-workers, the product, the customer, and the investors all suffer loss of some type when you and I are not engaged and not all there at our work. Each moment will start to feel pointless and a waste of time and a waste of our talents and efforts. Each hour will feel meaningless and you and I will start to travel mentally, to some other place, some other focus, some other fantasy or psychic prison, and rob this place, this job, this task, this responsibility of all that we could have given.

Of course you have to be of a certain age and generation to even know what a “clock-punching” actually is, I mean I haven’t actually physically punched a time card in a clock in 30 years. But I have still worked hard for the last 30 years, and each of these scenarios I mentioned above, can happen just as easily for those who own the business, as those who work in the business.

Save retirement for retirement. If you are engaged in an endeavor where you trade your time and effort for money and a paycheck, then give it all you have, you are worth that.