44. Procrastination

44. Procrastination

Investment banking analysts may be at the office 24/7, but that doesn’t mean we are working the whole time. While there may be enough to do so, even us elite minds cannot concentrate for 15 minutes straight unless one of our bosses is standing right behind us….shit, sorry sir, back to work…Anyways, like everyone we have the need for speed (the drug not velocity) and also the need to procrastinate, which is why I am typing this entry right now. I have discussed a few ways that analysts procrastinate in other entries of this blog, including Brickbreaker and reading blogs, but these are only the tip of the iceberg my friend. If one wants to become a true analyst master of looking like you are working while you are actually perusing job sites, there are a few things to know, and a few better procrastination tools.

The first thing to know is “Alt + tab.” The combination of this simple keystroke combination, and an open excel model that someone else built in 2002, will make it easy to hide the movie you are watching when an associate or MD walks by your desk. Wouldn’t want them to see you watching “Mamma Mia!” on hulu.com or surfthechannel.com, when you are supposed to be building an LBO model for some pitchbook. For any halfwit analyst, using “Alt+tab” becomes a natural instinct whenever you hear footsteps or sense the presence of someone else.

Another brilliant procrastination tool was sent to me a while back that is a few games put into excel. These games includes mini golf and Pac Man (the game with the yellow guy, not the football player who makes it rain in strip clubs), and are simply the full games but pasted into an excel files. This allows you to use “Alt+tab’s” cousin “Ctrl + tab.” Using this nifty shortcut you can easily move to another spreadsheet you have open, so your associate will not have to wonder what your open Internet explorer window is that is hidden.

While I’m the kind of guy that procrastinates with the basic reads, including espn.com, cnn.com, nyt.com and the intellectual pagesix.com, some people aspire for better sites and procrastination activities. Some analysts like to read about themselves so they turn to blogs written by other analysts or dealbreaker.com. During layoffs and bonus time, Dealbreaker gives little updates called “Bonus Watch 2008” or “Layoff Watch 2008” where analysts can read about what bonuses are given at different banks and what level people are being canned at other banks and their own. If you are an ambitious analyst you can pull a great prank by emailing Dealbreaker and telling them that you heard that half of the analysts in your group are being fired, or that bonuses for analysts at your bank will be half of what they were last year. This will likely cause your fellow analysts to shit the bed and maybe even quit out of misery, which moves you up the bonus ladder. Very niiiiiiice!