When you work for a company, you’re likely to encounter the productivity paradox, which can be summarized as follows: The more work you do, the more work you get. Being more productive, while beneficial to your company, is likely less beneficial to you. Ask most bosses if you can work fewer hours as long as you get your work done and the answer will probably be the same: if you can get all of your work done in fewer hours, think of all the extra work you can get done if you put in the full amount of time. The trouble with many jobs is that there is not a direct correlation between the effort you put in and the pay that you get out. Working twice as hard won’t get you twice the money and may just serve to raise expectations.

That’s why extra time may be better spent

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Just hearing today’s date out load can send shivers down the spine of many a taxpayer. While the deadline to file your taxes may seem scary to some, it really isn’t much different than most other deadlines. Filing your taxes may invoke fear in addition to the actual time crunch, such as fear of audit, inability to pay, making a mistake, etc, but most of the angst comes from the fact that they must be filed by a specific time. Sure, it’s easy to file an extension (use Form

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As part of his Motivation Monday series, David at MoneyNing spoke out against consistently taking sick days on Mondays and Fridays. His point was that using sick time to create an extended weekend won’t fool anyone, is irresponsible, and may even lead to losing your job.

I usually agree with a lot of the commentary at MoneyNing, but this is one area where we totally disagree. Taking full advantage of all of your time off is a subject that I’ve covered in the past. I wrote a 2 post series on this subject for the Lending Club blog. Here are those posts: Raising Your Hourly Wage and Lack of Vacation

As I said in my Raising Your Hourly Wage post, “I’m not suggesting that you exploit your sick and personal time but rather take full advantage of it when the need arises.” Being sick (or even just tired) is highly subjective. If the weekends wear you out and you need time on Monday to recover or if you

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Ignoring raises is a great method to save a little more each month. When you get a raise, try to continue living on the money you were making before the raise. You might splurge for a celebratory dinner, or allow yourself to spend the portion of your raise equal to inflation, but otherwise you could refrain from an increased standard of living. If you were surviving on your prior paycheck, then you should be able to use the increase to pad your savings, pay down any debt, or increase your investments.

Most companies that offer 401K plans to their employees also offer some kind of company matching. They may give you a dollar for dollar match, a 50 cents on the dollar match, or similar up to a certain percentage.

Whatever amount you contribute to you 401K, you should contribute at least enough to get the full company match. This match is basically free money that can add significantly to your portfolio gains. Imagine you put $1000 into your 401K and your company matched 50%. The match could make up for otherwise poor performance. Even if your portfolio didn’t appreciate over the course of a year, on your investment of $1000, your account would be worth $1500 thanks to the match, which amounts to a sizable 50% gain.

If the portfolio did appreciate, the gain would be even larger. The extra funds from your company match will continue to grow as the interest compounds between now and when you make withdrawals at retirement. There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but company matching is about as close as you can get.