Overview
It may not seem like it, but laziness is a trait worth aspiring to. I’m not talking about vegging out all day and letting the dishes and laundry pile up. I’m talking about the kind of laziness where you avoid unnecessary work. Where you focus on the most impactful things possible and delete, defer, or delegate the rest. That kind of laziness can actually be extremely valuable.
There’s a right kind of lazy. In this article, we’ll touch on what that means and how it can be a valuable approach in your business and in life. Specifically, we’ll discuss why laziness is a good thing, how you can be lazier, and the concept of long-term lazy.
Why laziness is a good thing
Lazy and productive? Seems like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? After all, most people think of lazy as a bad thing – unwilling to work. The precise definition means disinclined to exert energy. What if that’s not always a bad thing? What if you make it a point to avoid wasting time and effort on things that don’t matter? You sure could get a lot of useful things done. Below are three reasons worth considering for adopting a laziness approach.
Great inventions spur from laziness
Consider the remote control. Before it was invented, people had to actually get up to change the channel! Can you imagine doing that today with the hundreds of channels at our disposal? We’d probably even push back against more channels without it, so the remote control actually encouraged more channels! Innovation tends to spur more innovation!
Laziness focuses you on what really matters
Lazy people don’t like mindless, repetitive work. They don’t settle for “the way we’ve always done it.” They’d rather work on high-impact activities: developing other people, managing by exception, strategic projects, and continuous improvement. They focus on the minimum viable solution, rather than perfection. Chasing perfection is a proven way to miss your opportunity, especially in a world where change is only accelerating!
Laziness can lead to creativity
When you have sufficient capacity to just think rather than an endless pile of active tasks, it’s amazing what your brain can come up with. AI tools are only enhancing our creative juices, giving us great examples to start from. Take this mindset: you weren’t hired just to do your job – you were hired to think, learn, and improve. The best companies not only encourage this, they specifically ensure time is set aside for thinking and reflecting. What might seem lazy can change the world!
How you can be lazier
Ready to be lazier? It might sound silly, but it takes commitment! Below are five things you can start doing today to be lazier in the best way.
Be aware of everything you’re doing
So many people wander through life on autopilot like they’re in a trance. Technology has only made it worse because most people use it as a crutch. Awareness is the key to understanding our most valuable tasks and where our opportunities are for reducing waste and optimizing how we get our necessary tasks done. Keep a log of two things: the time (and frequency) it takes to get tasks done (as granularly as you can), and errors that arise along the way. Eliminate the work that isn’t needed. Optimize and automate the stuff that is, starting with the biggest impact.
Use shortcuts wherever you can
I’m not talking about cutting corners on quality. I’m talking about keyboard shortcuts, saving favorites, and pinning files so it takes less time to perform actions you do frequently. I’ve built hundreds of macros that are fundamentally just shortcuts combining 2, 3, 5, or 10 steps. Some of them only do one thing, but it would otherwise take 4-5 clicks to traverse through the various menus. Remember the remote control example – I’m building my own remote control everywhere I can!
Fail fast
Don’t be afraid to learn from what’s not working and adapt or move on to something else. After all, it’s not truly failure when you’ve learned something. I often help reframe the word fail as an acronym: Future Attempt In Learning.
Clear some time to think
This was a hard one for me too. It drives my wife crazy that my brain is always on and I seem to be always doing something. But some of the best time I invest is when I’m free to just think. Go for a walk. Sit outside. Take a shower. Have a meal by yourself. Write down your thoughts throughout the day, and a couple times a week, organize them and reflect on them. This carries over into your subconscious while you’re sleeping. Some of my best ideas have come from my brain figuring things out overnight!
Teach someone else to do it
Delegation is one of the toughest skills to learn. But if you want to really advance your career, you have to maximize your ability to delegate. Start with the easiest, lowest-risk tasks. Build mutual trust in the team you delegate to. Freeing up time by delegating leads to high-leverage decision-making and focusing on the most crucial tasks possible. If others perceive you as lazy, say “Thanks!” But help them understand why this is so important: to develop others and free your capacity for the things you do best. Just thinking should absolutely be one of them!
Long-term lazy
The ultimate approach to being lazy is to be in it for the long term. What does that mean? It means you get to be lazy over and over again without even trying! Below are four thoughts that show you what I mean.
Apply an efficiency mindset
The efficiency mindset has three parts: think once, apply often, and refine when necessary. Design a process to where you don’t have to think it through every time. It could be as simple as building a cheatsheet or a template (like all the groceries you should consider for your shopping list). You’re re-leveraging that thinking over and over again! That’s the right kind of lazy!
Set defaults wherever you can
Have you ever used autopay for your bills? How about saving a favorite order in a restaurant app? Those are great ways to be lazy! They save so much time that otherwise would have been the same thoughts over and over again! Spend the time you save reviewing and being analytical. For any software tools you use, set as many defaults as you can – the colors/formats, the starting page, the values you tend to enter – these not only save time, but can reduce errors as well.
Be organized
It’s not sexy or exciting to take the time to be organized. But it’s an amazing way to be long-term lazy. As Benjamin Franklin said “You can spend a minute organizing or an hour searching.” Being organized – physically and digitally – is a great way to always be ready, often well into the future. Nothing is more frustrating than looking for something when you’re already late!
Build things to be reusable
I’ve gotten thousands of tasks thrown at me over the years. Sometimes they are unique and there’s little chance I’ll ever leverage the finished product again. But 90% of the time, it’s reused, even when that’s not the intention. Here’s an example. A colleague of mine would download an Excel file with about 60 sheets in it – one for each store. She’d rename each sheet to include the store number. It took her about 15 minutes each time and she did this once or twice a week. I built a macro (now called Bulk Sheet Rename) that can do it in a couple seconds. Think through how it should work, and leverage that thinking over and over again. Then update it if you need to. Why don’t more people do things that way? Because they think they’re too busy, when in fact they are usually too busy not to think that way and get more done!
Summary
Striving to be lazy is one of the best things you can do to be more productive, further your career, and develop your team. You just have to be the right kind of lazy. It starts by understanding that means you’re minimizing effort to maximize output, focusing on what matters most. Pay attention to how you’re spending your time – it might surprise you how much opportunity you have to be lazier! Then leverage that thinking over and over again with minimal effort!
I’m long-term lazy. Who’s with me?!? If you have any thoughts on how we can be lazier in the right ways, please share your thoughts in the comments below!
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