If a task comes naturally to you, if you can complete it with ease, that is a great thing! If a task is difficult and takes a lot of time, the complexity may be a symptom of a weak process. Meaning, the process hasn’t become second nature to you. A good sign that you haven’t completely mastered something is if you can’t produce results while being lazy.
Laziness is not a bad thing. Despite how most people use the adjective, a lazy person is often highly intelligent. They tend to be great negotiators, as they have practiced negotiating with reality to get what they want. Lazy people also tend to be great delegators. They know how to get other people to do tasks they don’t want to do or that they aren’t good at, with the least amount of friction possible.
The desired pinnacle of laziness is someone who can achieve almost anything by simply creating and teaching other people faster ways of completing tasks.
When hiring anyone for a project, give them a typical task that they would have to perform on a daily basis. After explaining what that task is, ask them, “How would you do this if you wanted to be lazy?” The word “lazy” can also mean, “pressed for time.” Their answer will highlight how they approach tasks under pressure. You will be able to see if they make tasks more complicated than they need to be.
When approaching any type of work, we should always seek to maximize our time. “How can I get the best results with the least amount of effort?” This question may seem self-serving and that is the point!
If you are able to get any type of work done with maximum ease, especially work you don’t want to do, you will find ways to be a better worker. The point of cultivating laziness is to become more useful. Lazy people tend to be the most useful on a team because they help others to simplify the way they approach their tasks.
Adopt laziness in the work that you do. It will prevent you from overthinking and it will help you make work more fun as well. If a task is complicated, you may want to ask yourself how are you the cause of the complexity. There is always a lazier way.
