“Why don’t you ever whip me?” the colonel’s wife asked. She had already slept with the colonel’s entire brigade, but she was still eager for a little attention from the colonel himself.
“Because I’m busy,” the colonel snapped back.
That’s from Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. The colonel is busy because he is obsessed with putting on parades — parades that nobody watches, parades that the soldiers hate, parades that have no practical value.
Almost as little practical value as the time you waste, polishing and pondering a project that should have shipped in one-tenth the time.
Because, like sex, money loves speed.
I once tried to track down where this phrase comes from. I got as far back as copywriter Joe Vitale, but then the trail went cold.
I always assumed money loves speed because you get more time to keep working on other projects. More work, more money.
And I’m sure that can be a part of it.
But there can be a second part also.
And that’s that money, like sex, doesn’t like desperation.
And if you act busy, even if your other project is your own parade that nobody watches, money might come around and say, “Why don’t you ever pick me up?”
“Because I’m busy,” you can then snap back. “But we can schedule something for next Friday evening.”
Oh, and I once figured out a third way in which money loves speed. It’s something practical I heard in a conversation between marketers Rich Schefren and Kim Walsh Phillips. If you’d like to hear it also:
https://bejakovic.com/the-aggressive-other-meaning-of-money-loves-speed/