Energy and Rest
Agent Pistone spent a good deal of time with both Lefty Ruggiero and Sonny Black, and he left an observation about them that I like better than a lot of management textbooks. Unlike Lefty, he writes, Sonny knew how to relax. Lefty was in mafioso mode around the clock: whatever they were doing, he always dragged in the business at hand. That was how he hid from the outside world. Sonny, though he was more powerful and more dangerous, behaved like an ordinary man in restaurants and in public: he didn’t shout, he didn’t make people carry his bags around after him. Outside his own world he came across as a regular guy you could laugh and fool around with. And at times like that, Pistone writes, he never tried to talk business.
Sonny went onto the tennis court in black knee socks, though he had no idea how to play. Sonny fooled around on the fairground rides and shot at the shooting gallery. Lefty sat in a heated hotel room, chain-smoking and grumbling about business.
Guess which of them rose higher. Sonny became a captain. Lefty, by his own account thirty years in the life, stayed a soldier, forever broke.
Work and Rest Are One Job
That’s the first thing I want to tell you about energy. Rest isn’t a break from work; it’s part of it. Just as a muscle grows not during the exercise but afterwards, while it rests, the mind builds up strength when it lets go of business. A man who never switches off doesn’t work more. He works longer and worse.
Lefty thought being in character round the clock was a sign of devotion to the business. In fact it was a way of hiding: from the outside world, from boredom, from himself. A man who talks about work all the time is often just afraid of being left alone without it. Sonny switched off and switched back on, and when he switched on, he thought with a fresh head.
Make switching off a habit. An hour a day when you don’t think about the business. A day a week when you don’t discuss it. A holiday when you don’t ring the office every two hours. The first few times it’ll feel as though everything is about to collapse. It won’t. And if it does collapse after one day without you, you’ve set the business up badly, and it’s better to find that out sooner.
Not Too Much, Not Too Little
Second: every man has a workload at which he does his best. Less, and he gets bored and drops his guard. More, and he runs out of steam and makes mistakes.
Pistone knew both sides. Before the operation, in 1974, he served in the New York truck-hijacking squad: they worked six days a week, sometimes went two or three days without sleep, and intercepted six or seven stolen trucks a shift. And during the operation there were months when nothing happened in the Brooklyn crew, and he was, in his words, bored stiff. And he notes that in that relaxed state it’s easy to drop your guard. Boredom is as dangerous as exhaustion, only quieter.
Look at your own people the same way. The one who yawns isn’t necessarily lazy. Maybe he just doesn’t have enough on his plate and is starting to slip from boredom. The one who snaps isn’t necessarily a bad worker. Maybe he’s been loaded with three times what he can carry. Find for each of them the workload at which he burns bright but doesn’t burn out. And don’t forget to find one for yourself.
Your Own Rhythm
Third: everybody has his own rhythm. Some think best in the morning, others at night. Some work in bursts, others steadily.
Dash tells how in April 1903 the Secret Service was running a big operation against the Morello gang. The agents knew the counterfeiters were night owls whose day started late. The first of Morello’s men wasn’t spotted on the street until a quarter to eleven in the morning. The Secret Service set its clocks by the gang’s routine. Someone else’s rhythm, as you can see, is information you can use too.
Pistone used rhythm as well. He kept up relationships with both Lefty and Mirra, who couldn’t stand each other. How did he manage? Very simply: Lefty went to bed early and Mirra stayed out late, so there was time enough for both.
Find out your rhythm and build your day around it. Do the hardest things in the hours when your head works best. Meetings and routine when your energy is lower. And find out your people’s rhythm: you may have a worker who brings you his best ideas at seven in the morning, and you’ll ruin him by making him sit in meetings until nine at night.
Test It on Yourself
Fourth: don’t take other people’s advice about energy on trust, mine included. Test it on yourself. Try going to bed an hour earlier for two weeks and see what changes. Try not opening your email before lunch for a week. Try taking a break every hour and a half. Some of it will work, some won’t. People are different, and you’ll learn more about yourself from two weeks of trying than from ten books.
A Safe Harbour
And the last thing, the most important. Everyone who works flat out needs a safe harbour. A place where he isn’t a capo, a boss or a salesman, just a man. For most people, that’s home.
The old men in our world had two rules about home. The first: home is your safe harbour, you have to look after it, because nobody wins without one. The second: home is no place for business. Your wife and children shouldn’t know anything that could hurt them, and they shouldn’t pay for your work with their peace of mind.
Pistone paid for his work with his family, and he writes about it without feeling sorry for himself. He couldn’t share what he was going through, not even with those closest to him. His daughters got used to the idea that only Mum had the answers. In the end his family came to hate his job, and the whole FBI along with it. The bureau closed the operation successfully. Pistone’s family had to be mended separately, and with no budget.
In The Godfather—the film, mind you—there’s a scene at the wedding where Don Corleone asks his godson, the singer, whether he spends time with his family, and tells him that a man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man. Coming from a man who earned his living the way Corleone earned his, it sounds strange. But the truth doesn’t stop being the truth because of that.
On Sundays Don Vincenzo didn’t discuss business; I’ve told you that already. I’ll add this: on Sundays he had lunch with his family, and at that lunch no one was allowed to talk about laundries, oil or money. Whoever started did the washing-up. In forty years, the one who did the washing-up was mostly me.