Applied Laziness

Quality time

2004-05-19T23:35:00.000-04:00

(Cross-posted from Wicked Smaht Thoughts)

Over the past decade or so, we've heard so much blather about "quality time" at home that the phrase has become a parody of itself. No one can say it without irony, or at least air quotes. Personally, I think that the concept of quality time was invented by people who felt guilty about how little time they were spending with their children, so they decided, "It's not the quantity of time I spend at home; it's the quality." Right.

The funny thing about kids, though, is that you have to have quantity time in order to get the quality time. You see, they determine when quality time arrives, but you have to be there for it to happen. You can't just sit Junior down and say, "Son, we're going to have some quality time now, and make memories that will last a lifetime. Want to know the meaning of life?" I've seen some friends try -- God help them -- and the next sentence is usually something like, "Son, please don't wipe your boogers on my pants. I just got them back from the cleaners."

What I want to know is, why doesn't anyone ever talk about quality time at work?

At work, we trade quality time for "face time," proving our commitment to our company's success by daily wasting hours of our time there. We say, "I could be doing something better with my time, but because I love this place I'm going to sit here and surf the Net until my boss goes home. That's what makes me a valued employee." And then we go home just in time to kiss our kids good night, spend a little quality time with the TV, and go to bed.

Have you bought into this? Ask yourself these questions, and then try to answer them honestly:

At the end of the day, what are you most proud of: the things you accomplished that day or the time you put in?

When you go to a performance review, what measure do you use to prove your value to your company?

Does "hard worker" feature prominently in your self-description?

That's what I thought.

What if we switched the measurements? What if we sought quality time at work and face time at home? What would that look like?

For one thing, we'd probably accomplish a lot more in both places. At work, we'd look at our day and ask, "What can I accomplish today? How can I make a meaningful contribution to my company's bottom line and my coworkers' lives?" We would think twice before scheduling that meeting, because that's a lot of quality time in one place so it will have to generate a heck of a return. We would start proving ourselves by what we delivered rather than how much effort we expended.

We might even stop bragging -- sure, it sounds like complaining, but we all know you're bragging -- about how busy we were, and how everyone wanted a piece of us. Instead, we'd brag about how we got everything done in time to see all seven exruciating innings of our kid's baseball game, including the inning where every batter hit a home run because the entire infield was chasing a field mouse.

We might stop taking up space and start making the most of the only totally irreplaceable resource on this earth: time.

By the way, this doesn't just apply to people with families. I'm not advocating free time for moms and dads, with the singles picking up all the slack. Though if any of you want to babysit, please let me know. Even if you don't have a family, there has got to be something better you could do with your time than spend it at work. Do you have any dreams? Then pursue them now, before the sleep deprivation of early parenthood makes your brain so soft you forget what those dreams were. No dreams? Then borrow someone else's for a while until you come up with your own: volunteer somewhere where people are trying to get a second chance at life. That way, you get two lives for the price of one.

This isn't the social equivalent of string theory: it's a simple decision to put your effort where you say your priorities are. You don't have to wait for your boss to give you permission, either. If you deliver everything he asks you to do, and you do it well, he can't really complain if your car leaves the parking lot before his. And if he does really give you a hard time, then I bet that a lot of companies will be impressed by someone who has the courage to be "an efficient, delivery-oriented employee," and who refuses to simply take up space. I know I do.

Mother, brother, sisters, and me

2003-11-17T17:07:00.000-05:00

Every company is, in essence, an extended family. We have the parental figures, the sibling rivalries, and the uncle no one likes to talk about. We also have all of the emotional connections that people used to form only with family and neighbors. Some companies embrace this fact, creating an "Us against the world" mentality, or welcoming their new employees into "the Globalcorp family." Other companies try to "keep things on a professional level," maintaining that employment is nothing more than a fiscal contract to provide labor in return for wages, and it's never personal.

The fact is, it's impossible for work to not be personal. People are emotional creatures, instinctively seeking connections with everyone we meet. It is impossible to spend 8 (or more) hours per day with a group of people and not form a bond with them, which is why it is ludicrous to me to see managers and human resource professionals try to deny this basic fact: we are family.

50 years ago, companies still acted like families, with all of the positive and negative results that you would expect. Workers felt a sense of belonging, of commitment, of brotherhood with their employers and fellow employees. The overriding career goal was to find a company where you could spend your whole working life, working your way up through the ranks until it was time to take your gold watch and retire. This was a direct descendant of the family trades of the previous centuries, where the son either learned his father's trade or apprenticed in another trade and likely married into his master's family. There was both emotional and financial security in this model, and people mixed work and family much more freely than they do today.

Of course, not every family gets along, and the bitterest feuds are among blood relations. These same expectations for a stable career and a lifelong commitment to a corporate parent were the fuel behind the union riots and other violent management/labor clashes of the early and mid-1900s. Had the arrangement been merely a financial one, perhaps tempers wouldn’t have flared so brightly.

Recent trends of the last two decades -- job-hopping, a highly skilled technical work force, exaggerated boom/bust cycles in business -- have reduced the sense of family at work and have encouraged the notion that "it's nothing personal." Now we think that it's best to go where the money is, exchanging one job or one work force for another when the price is right. While this attitude is financially convenient for both sides of the employment contract, I would argue that the hidden cost is much greater than the financial benefit.

Whether or not it is logical, people need to feel a sense of camaraderie with their fellow workers. They need to feel that they are working for something bigger than themselves, be it a greater cause or a larger group. They work harder and feel more satisfaction from their work when they see others benefiting from it. If you take that away from them, make it all about me, my job, my paycheck -- essentially reducing them to numbers on a balance sheet -- they quickly lose motivation and their work suffers.

It is considered common knowledge in HR circles that you can’t motivate someone with a paycheck. Money is a necessary part of the equation (a man's got to eat), but it should be treated as a reward for work well done, not the reason for doing the work in the first place. People have even been willing to forgo their paychecks during tough times when they believed in their company. Why, then, do we so quickly reduce people to cost centers when times are tight? Why do we make it so easy for them to jump ship the moment that a slightly better offer comes along?

I believe that we need to recapture that sense of family in our workplaces. We need to stop trying to draw the line between "work" and "home," as though there were some way to bifurcate our personalities into "Work Joe" and "Home Joe." We need to take the same principles that we rely upon to build strong families and use them to build strong companies. If we do that, we can recapture that sense of dedication that leads to such great leaps in creativity and productivity. We can build an atmosphere where, even when things go wrong, everyone pulls together to make them right. We can harness all that energy that is currently being wasted in 8-, 10-, or 12-hour days and give people their lives back, without sacrificing excellence.

This isn't a dream: I've seen it happen, albeit on a small scale. It is possible to build relationships and products at the same time, if we are willing to make the effort to hire the whole person, not just the skill set.

Unfortunately, this is no grass roots movement. The attitudes and practices that make this possible must start at the top and trickle down. Unless the leaders of a company are willing to also be the heads of the family, any mid-level effort at building the family/team will eventually be sabotaged by rapid growth, reorganization, layoffs, or just plain poor management. It has to be a family affair.

2003-07-25T09:34:00.000-04:00

Making progress stick

The Lazy man's archenemy is work done twice. To someone who wants to do the least amount of work for the greatest gain, doubling that work for no extra gain is revolting. So how do you avoid covering the same ground more than once?

Mark your trail
Take notes in every meeting and publish them ASAP. Volunteer to take notes and publish them for everyone and you will receive two immediate benefits:

You will gain everyone's appreciation for saving them the trouble of taking notes.

You will own the official memory of what happened in that meeting. While I don't recommend trying to record things that didn't happen, you will have the advantage of being able to phrase things as you would have said them, eliminating any gray areas that could cause trouble later.

Taking notes is especially useful when asking someone to agree to something they don't like, because nine times out of ten they will conveniently forget the disagreeable part of the decision. If you work with anyone who habitually says, "I never said that," or "I don't remember agreeing to that," you can either start publishing notes or start buying Maalox by the case.

This short-term memory loss appears to grow stronger with each successive career advancement, so if you are dealing with anyone at VP level or above, sharpen your pencil.

Learn to write
This is the corollary to the previous point. The ability to communicate clearly and concisely in writing will immediately separate you from the crowd, because no one seems to do it anymore. If you can show people that reading what you wrote will be worth their while, you can make decisions more quickly, reduce the number and duration of meetings you have to attend, and make your decisions stick. Written communication has the immediate benefit of recording a decision process so that you don't have to go back later and try to remember what was said. Email and discussion groups also allow people to contribute to the decision process whenever they have time, so you don't have to wait a week to put them all in one room in order to get their attention. Build credibility with your writing, then drive people to make decisions in writing, asynchronously, by email or discussion thread.

Silence = Assent
Make it clear from the beginning of a project that there will be one decision-making process, and not participating means agreeing with the decisions made by those who did. If someone is too busy to take part in the process but has to approve the decisions, arrange the reviews in advance. Look out for the executive team member who never responds to email or comes to project meetings. Hunt that person down before you make any major decisions, to ensure that he doesn't hunt you down 3 weeks later.

Make a decision
Push to a decision, any decision, before making a decision to make a decision at a later date. Better to settle even part of an issue today than to spend an hour or more of everyone's day with nothing to show for it.

2003-07-02T23:20:00.000-04:00

By the way, in case you somehow managed to stumble here from some random place on the Web, I post my less focused thoughts here.

2003-06-24T17:20:00.000-04:00

Why?

The essence of applied laziness can be distilled to one word: "Why?" While the lazy man asks, "Why do I have to do anything?" the Lazy (note the capital "L." Thanks, Fools.) man asks, "Why am I doing this?"

"Why?" separates the wheat from the chaff. It divides the world into Things I Do Because They Make Sense and Things I Do Because I Have To (aka, Things I Will Only Do if You Make Me). When answered, "Why?" gives purpose to a man's actions, direction to his steps. The man who knows why will not only work to the best of his abilities, but will vigorously defend his choices against all doubters. Knowing why gives you purpose, which every person needs in every aspect of their lives to be both happy and successful.

The time spent asking why pays incredible dividends. It keeps you away from the dead ends and false trails that waste so much of our time every day. Those who don't take the time to ask why spend five times the effort delivering things that no one wants, writing papers that no one reads, or scheduling meetings that no one wants to attend. They fill their days with busyness, but never get down to business. They run like madmen toward a perceived goal, thrilled to be making such great time even if it's in the wrong direction. If you don't ask why, you may meet all your commitments only to find that you have failed anyway. You will give people what they asked for, but not what they needed.

"Why?" has received a bad rap in recent years. When everyone is working on "Internet time," the person who asks why is perceived as a slacker, or worse, an obstacle to progress. "Just Do It," is the answer, "We don't have time to talk about it anymore." But if anything exemplifies the dangers of not asking why, it's the Internet boom. Here are some questions that I bet some investors wish they had asked about 4 years ago:

Why would people pay shipping on a 50-lb. bag of dog food when they can get it from the grocery store?

Why do you think people will pay you for something they can get for free elsewhere?

Why is a company with no profits and no prospects worth $1 billion?

Why do you think that idea will make money?

A few well-answered whys could have saved everyone a lot of trouble.

To be sure, "Why?" can't always be answered right away, and a fanatical search for ever-deeper levels of "Why?" can result in the infamous analysis paralysis. But the fear of paralysis shouldn't completely overshadow the value of analysis.

A man without an organized system of thought will always be at the mercy of the man who has one. -- Edwin Cole

Here's how to ask "Why?" effectively: keep asking until you're satisfied that the answer you receive justifies the effort it implies. If you're trying to decide what you want for dinner, simply knowing that fried yucca plant sounds good is probably enough. If you're about to start a $2 million dollar project, then you better know that it will contribute at least that much to your company's core value in a sustainable fashion.

I have seen companies spend millions of dollars because "our competitors already have it," even when the thing they were building was outside their corporate mission, detracted from their primary source of revenue, and was completely outside their ability to maintain. Someone really should have asked why again.

Properly asking why entails both persistence and discernment. You have to ask the question enough times and in enough different ways that you get real answers every time. Otherwise, it can quickly become a conversation with a three-year-old:

"Why does that happen?"
[long involved answer]
"But why?"
[another long involved answer]
"Why?"
"Because that's the way it is."
"Why?"
"Because I said so. Eat your dinner."

One of these days, I'll talk about some of the kinds of "Why?" questions to ask when you really want to be Lazy.

2003-06-06T14:22:00.000-04:00

Corporate Body Image

I played football from fifth grade through high school. Even though I was always one of the biggest guys on the team, from junior high through my sophomore year in high school I played small. I let littler guys push me around, I took the hits instead of delivering them, and instead of bowling guys over I tried to go around them. I drove my coaches crazy, so even though they needed my size on the line they kept trading me out with Jeremy Norris, this skinny little guy who looked liked a stork wearing shoulder pads.

You see, I also skipped third grade, so I was always a year behind everyone else in physical development. In grade school, even though there was only one guy in the whole school who was taller than I was, I never forgot that I was young. This problem got worse when puberty hit, because suddenly my body got too big for my brain. I always felt smaller than I was and the fact that everyone else was a year ahead of me developmentally only magnified the issue by comparison. It wasn't until my junior year that my brain caught up to my body, and then I became a one-man wrecking team on the football field. Sometimes, I even hit the right people. Whoever I hit, though, they felt it.

"As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." -- Proverbs 23:7

We are who we believe ourselves to be: not at the surface level of positive thinking and showing a brave face to the world, but in that deep, instinctive place where we find ourselves in the dark of night, or in the car at rush hour. So, too, with large organizations: they behave in ways that are consistent with the corporate consensus of what kind of company or group they are. If they think they are a lean, agile startup, they act how they think a lean, agile startup should, both positively and negatively. If they think they are a large, stodgy corporation, they act accordingly.

Some examples:

Company A was a venture-funded Internet IPO baby. It grew from 100 people to over 1000 in less than two years, going from a single office to having branches all over the globe in the process. Despite the massively increased complexity of its business and load on its infrastructure, Company A continued to make decisions locally and with a short-term focus. Inefficiency increased geometrically with each new office or system, and support staffs -- From Finance to IT -- were too busy battling crises to ever think beyond the end of the week. Even while the company saw revenues increase dramatically, margins steadily eroded, but "as long as the train came into the station," no one cared how it got there. When the economy slowed down and revenues faltered, the margins were so poor that the company had no choice but to perform drastic layoffs, which only exacerbated the problem. While the company's founders were on television and magazine covers touting their visionary leadership, their company collapsed under its own weight.

Company B, on the other hand, was spun off from an established and respectable "old industry" company to take advantage of a new service niche. Its business was similar to its parent company, but it used new technology to try to break new ground in its sector. While it inherited the financial stability of its parent, its leadership was also made up of many old staffers who were attracted to the new career opportunities at this "startup." Thinking to save time and avoid the pitfalls of most new companies, they borrowed much of their process whole cloth from their old jobs and tried to impose them on their new environment. Despite the newness of the company and the demands to drastically reduce time-to-market of new products, time was wasted daily in meetings to discuss documentation that no one really knew they needed. Things were done because "that's the way we do it here," even when no one could define the value of a given task. Company B, which had used its established reputation and superior resources to take the lead in its new industry, quickly saw increased competition from both established competitors and true startups. While the company's executives led seminars at their old headquarters on "breaking new ground with old tools," the company's competitive position eroded daily.

In both cases, the brains of the operation had images of their companies that were disconnected from the reality of what was going on. The other parts of the body -- the people working at the departmental level -- could have told them how hard it was to get anything done if the leaders had known how to ask. The whole organization suffered as a result of this cognitive failure.

Accurate or not, body image drives behavior. If a person is anorexic, she looks in the mirror and sees a fat person even when everyone else sees a skeleton with skin. Until that person accepts that her perception of herself could be wrong, she will continue to try to lose more weight even if it kills her. In the same way, until an organization accepts that its self-perception may be out of synch with what it wants to achieve, it will carry on with business as usual all the way to bankruptcy court. The only way to truly affect change in an organization is to understand the corporate body image and attack it directly.

But where does the corporate body image reside, and how can you tell when it needs to change? In the body, the individual body parts send signals when something is wrong: the stomach feels hunger pangs, the muscles feel weak, or the feet feel pain. In an organization, the signs are often more subtle. Few people are willing to wave the red flag, especially when times are good, and say, "Something is broken over here!" The pain signals come through casual conversation, not through official memos.

In order for pain signals to reach the brain, the nerves have to carry them and the brain has to receive them. An organization must not only have open formal lines of communication, but must have leadership that actively seeks out feedback. This must be more than an "open door policy" that reads to normal employees like an offer to put their own heads in the guillotine. The leaders of the organization must:

Engage their employees in individual dialogue, whether by email, telephone, or over lunch.

Encourage every manager to be a spy for change, seeking to understand the spirit of their groups.

Walk into every conversation with ears open and mouth closed, listening for the throwaway comments that reveal a person's true underlying attitude.

Listen to their own words, to see if they are consistent with what they claim to believe.

Listen to the way people talk about the company, their projects, and their jobs. Are they excited to be there? Do they have a sense of purpose? Do they know how they contribute to the company? Or are they simply marking time and waiting for the end of the day?

Most importantly, an organization must listen to its malcontents, especially the loud ones. While it is easier to brush off the complaints of someone who always seems to have something to say, you do so at the risk of becoming dangerously numb to the pain. True, some people are simply complainers, but they usually sound the same note over and over again. They can be filtered out. The ones to listen to are the ones who question everything but still work hard, who challenge leadership decisions and ask for reasons, who ask, "Where are we going with this?" Keep these people close and listen to them, for there is at least a kernel of truth in what they say and they should at least receive credit for having the courage to speak.

This may seem like an obvious idea disguised under a new name. In fact, I got halfway through this post and almost decided to quit. But I have seen enough companies or groups within companies fail spectacularly because they couldn't reconcile who they thought they were with who they needed to be that I believe this is at least worth thinking about, so I will. What do you think?

2003-05-23T15:50:00.000-04:00

A quick Google showed that I am not the first person to come up with this concept, especially in a high-tech context. InfoWorld: In praise of laziness: February 15, 2002: By Chad Dickerson:

Who knew PERL programmers could be so creative with language? No matter. I still have more to say on the topic, and I am sure that I can be at least as profound as an engineer. Actually, it's somewhat encouraging to know that the idea of applied laziness is already out there. It makes me feel that I might be on the right track.

Next up: Corporate body image.

2003-05-16T10:32:00.000-04:00

Fair warning: these posts are going to jump around a bit. Much as I would like to build a solid argument that convinces you that I'm right, then show you how to improve, I'm not writing a book (yet). I'm piecing this together as I go, so come along with me if you want, and enjoy the ride as we figure this out together. So while each post won't build upon the last, I promise to at least try to write something worth reading.

So, on to today's thought!

The Process Monster

Having a good process can help you save time and energy, as long as the process doesn't become an end in itself. One of my favorite business authors, Steve McConnell, talks about having a Rigid, Inflexible Process (RIP). I prefer to think of it as the Process Monster, or "this is how we do it" syndrome.

When the Process Monster rears its scabrous, time-devouring head, you go from trying to get everyone moving in the same direction to forcing everyone to march in lockstep. The Process Monster stifles creativity, tramples efficiency, and generally makes everyone stupid. He tempts you with the promise of stability, repeatability, and security, then he turns you and everyone around you into paper-churning automatons. He demands a constant diet of forms, minutes, and butt-covering documentation, which he processes and spews out into a giant file system full of "historical data" that no one ever looks at again, except when they need text to copy and paste into a new document.

Here are some signs the Process Monster has already taken control:

You spend days or weeks filling out a form or template then never look at it again.

The "Quick Reference Guide" for your process is 56 pages long.

No one ever asks, "Do we need to do this?" or "Why are we doing this?"

If someone does ask why, the answer is a sigh, followed by, "Because that's the way we do it here."

You schedule a meeting because the schedule says it's time for one, then try to figure out an agenda for it.

Even simple efforts have to go through all the steps, just so they can be checked off.

Most of the documentation you produce is 90% recycled. Not the paper, the text.

When the Process Monster reigns, people spend more time checking to see if they have followed all the steps than they spend thinking about the problems they are trying to solve. They are so afraid of stepping off the beaten path that they go the long way around, even when an obvious shortcut is available. It is easier to halfheartedly do the extra work than to try to explain why the skipped a step. The organization becomes dull and stupid, no matter how smart its individual members may be, because the Process Monster allows no initiative, and creativity is punished, whether explicitly or implicitly.

Why do smart people leave big corporations and take the risk of starting their own companies? They talk about excitement, risk and reward, or being their own bosses, but the truth is this: they finally grew tired of the Process Monster's reign. Creative people, smart people cannot be kept down forever. Eventually they get tired of rowing in the galley, look down, and realize that there are no chains on their legs. Then they break out.

To be honest, though, not everyone is frightened by the Process Monster. Many find his presence comforting, a security blanket against the uncertainty of a complicated world. The Process Monster's drug's are simplicity and certainty, and he hooks a lot of people who wouldn't touch another controlled substance. But the world isn't simple, and it never stops changing, so the Process Monster's promises are illusions. His drugs will drain your life, as surely as any narcotic, while convincing you all the while that everything is just fine.

Do you know the Process Monster? Have you already sold him your soul, or is he just prowling around the edges of your group, looking for some poor sucker to invite him in?

2003-05-15T17:35:00.000-04:00

Doing Things, or Getting Things Done?

Too many people (and companies) confuse doing things with getting things done. They feel that, as long as they are busy, they must be making progress. In my experience, though, the busiest people are usually the least effective. They're like hyperactive gnats: buzzing here and there, hovering around someone just long enough to be annoying before buzzing off somewhere else. They work really hard, but don't really accomplish anything. Many even brag about the long hours they work, then complain that they still can't meet all their commitments. To me, that's just perverse. At some point you have to ask yourself, "What's the point of all this if it's not getting me anywhere?"

Here are some signs you're just doing things, without getting anything done:

Your schedule is full of meetings, the primary result of which is to schedule another meeting.

Your inbox is full, and it's not spam. You can't remember the last time you answered all your email the same day you received it.

Your response to most questions is, "I'll check with [insert one of many names here] and get back to you."

You eat lunch (and maybe dinner) at your desk, or not at all.

You complain about working 60 or more hours per week, but you're actually kind of proud that you're so important to the company.

You can't remember the last time you asked yourself, "Why am I doing this?"

Sound familiar?

The sad thing is that we've come to accept that this is the way things are, and that the alternative is manual labor or [shudder] teaching. You may even read this and say, "Well, duh! What do you do, play foosball all day?" I would argue that it doesn't have to be this way. It's possible to do something once and not again, to make decisions that stick, and to feel like you're moving forward in life. When did spinning our wheels become the best way to drive?

Here's my challenge. You show me any day, any project, any process, and I'll bet you lunch I can eliminate half of it without you even noticing it's gone. I'll bet that you'll even get things done faster, if you have the guts.

2003-05-15T09:43:00.000-04:00

Let's get this out there right up front: I'm a lazy guy. I won't take one step out of my way if it feels like a waste of time. I always look for the shortest route to work, the fastest way home, and the quickest way to get a job done. I hate wasting time, mine or anybody else's. Especially mine. All in all, I'm a very busy man, and I don't have a lot of energy to spare, anway.

That said, I don't think laziness, in and of itself, is a bad thing. The desire to expend the mimimum amount of energy to survive is a genetically programmed survival mechanism that allows organisms to get by when food is scarce. That's good, right? Only now, for most of us, food isn't scarce. If anything, we have too much of it, too conveniently, which has completely screwed up our programming, leaving many Americans fat and out of shape. But that's a topic for another blog.

You see, while I don't buy the whole primordial soup theory (mmm, soup...) I do think Mr. Darwin's theories were basically correct: the creatures with superior habits, thought processes, or innate abilities in their current environments prevailed over those without. I happen to believe that this is the result of divine planning rather than a global process of trial and error, but that doesn't negate the basic theory. Just its conclusions.

Stay with me here. According to our theory, good, helpful habits survive, while destructive or even unproductive habits remove themselves from the system. In this way, the species survives. So, why do we still have this energy-conserving mechanism we call laziness? Is it just a vestigial trait, like a tail stub in our brains? Has civilization progressed so quickly that we have essentially outrun evolution, making it obsolete? Or does laziness still serve a purpose?

In case you're too lazy to leap to your own conclusions, I'll get to the point: I think laziness still serves a very important purpose, if we can just apply it to different circumstances. Food is no longer scarce, so we don't need to literally preserve our energy so that we can keep breathing tomorrow. Time, on the other hand, is an increasingly precious resource, so much so that I would argue many people are dying for lack of it. I think we should apply our innate laziness to conserving time -- in every aspect of our lives, but especially at work -- so that we can put all that abundant food and energy to better use.

To further that cause, I'm going to use this space to start capturing my own ideas applying laziness to work. Even if no one else reads it, at least I'll have captured these thoughts so I don't have to keep trying to remember them later. I'm lazy that way.