Productive people, by and large, are honest people. Now, by that, I don't mean to say that they're somehow better than you or other people who are less productive. I just mean as a basic mode of being efficient in the world, it saves a lot of time. If you're consistently honest, and everybody knows you're honest, and they assume you're honest, of course, there are exceptions. Bernie Madoff seemed like the most wildly successful and productive person in the world. until it was discovered he was running the most massive Ponzi scheme ever.
Now he's rotting in prison, and he will spend a very unproductive final 30 years of his life doing nothing or maybe making license plates for $1 an hour. But that's the exception. And I don't want to make it sound like really rich people deserve to be rich because there's so much more honest than poor people. That's not my message at all. But when it comes to basic actions that an individual takes on a daily basis in business, in the workplace, in a career, and a family life in a home life, it is simply more productive, to be consistently honest, because you spent so much less time avoiding lawsuits and less time going to jail and less time paying fines, and less time being investigated. If you just do things, honestly, short term, sometimes it cost more could you have taken a a shortcut and budget a little it's possible.
I'm not saying protective people never do that. But by and large, they pride themselves in being honest and straightforward. And having the reputation for being honest and straightforward because he just made Like easier, you spent a lot less time dealing with angry people, if people feel you've been honest with them, you feel you spent a lot less time fighting off lawsuits if people feel like you didn't try to defraud them. So whether you think you're an honest person or not, and this is not a class on ethics or morality, I do think it's a good thing to be honest, just in and of itself. But that's not the point of this course. Regardless of your thoughts of honesty, if you want to be more productive, my advice is, be honest in your dealings in business and your personal life.
It's just going to save you a lot of time. Time you can use to do other things more productively.