Lazy people aren’t completely useless. As they go about their days, their imperfections help them in many ways.
Here are 4 helpful insights that one can learn from lazy people.
They Inadvertently Declutter Their Lives
Shopping online has made it easy to get access to all kinds of items — essentials and others.
Some button clicks and voila, your product is being hauled from several miles away by some sucker and will be dropped off shortly at your doorstep.
But my brother is way too lazy to do even that. I can’t remember the last time he went to a store (online or brick-and-mortar) to upgrade his wardrobe. All new additions to his collection are through gifts.
I initially didn’t appreciate his lack of proactiveness in this regard.
But as my own closet gets stuffed with more and more merchandise, I have realized that having more stuff is hard. I have to ensure that I cycle my clothes, make enough room for them, tirelessly pack and unpack while switching apartments, and constantly fill donation bags with unused clothes I spent a fortune on.
Having fewer items reduces the mental load needed to manage stuff.
Since my brother has fewer items, he doesn’t have the mental load needed to manage extra stuff.
Maybe he is the smarter one of us. He saves himself money and also gets the best of his brother’s apparel eventually, often barely used.
Everything you own passively rents space in your head and needs to be accounted for.
Lazy people may not be open to going into stores to try stuff or want to deal with the hassle of returning stuff that they buy online and dislike. They live light and free.
They Solve A Problem Once
I think of myself as a lazy engineer.
When I started my career in tech, I was assigned to an R&D project. Things went wrong often. The problem is that when they did, no one knew the root cause. So all 20 people working on it were pulled into meetings at odd hours. We eventually would identify the issue and assign to the right expert the responsibility of fixing the bug.
I hated doing this. Because it meant longer work hours and interruptions to my laze-on-the-couch time.
I reached a point where I couldn’t take it anymore. So after 4 weekends of hard work and little sleep, I developed a solution to identify who should solve problems as they occurred. The interruptions to my personal time stopped soon after. I could roll in my bed and not be disturbed by work.
There is value in finding better ways of doing something. Once you have proven that it works, automate the process and free up your mind and your time to do other things.
A lazy but effective person understands that if you do something correctly the first time, you won’t have to come back and relive the misery of doing it again.
They Set Boundaries
One of my senior co-workers has a masterful way of protecting her time and energy. I think it’s her laziness at work here.
Anytime her manager tries to suddenly move up deadlines that would make others break a sweat (that just translates to working extra hours for a few weeks) — she would firmly say no. “I already have 5 tasks to delivery by so-and-so.”
Realistically, those five tasks are most likely child’s play for someone with her level of expertise.
Yet in the process, she effectively saves herself from putting in a sizeable number of extra hours every quarter.
From my own experience with deadlines being advanced, I can say that, generally, deliverables that were hurriedly completed by some bespectacled employee who couldn’t say no will take about the same time to get inducted formally as it would have previously.
But there is a catch here. People aiming to climb the ranks will likely be expected to put in more than 40 hours a week to collaborate with others and drive key items to completion.
But in an environment where many other departments and coworkers interact with you, it is important to remember the difference between being a great team player and doing someone else’s job for them.
The Don’t Care Too Much
A lazy person can be a cool cucumber under high pressure.
A day before a recent corporate event for 1500 people, our emcee fell ill. After several hours of reaching out to people and pulling favors, we found a replacement.
The fellow seemed to have the mindset and personality to pull it off well, but at that time, little did I know that he was missing a few other important attributes.
As the event began, it became obvious that he had put in almost no effort to prepare well, mixed up the order of the events, and seemed to be headed for a poor performance.
But during the event, some unexpected things happened. A part of the sound system caught fire and one of the performers tripped and needed more time to get themselves together.
The organizers became anxious but the emcee stayed calm. He was actively thinking and keeping the audience engaged.
The best managers and leaders I’ve interacted with did a fantastic job at staying calm and composed under pressure, even when they had every reason to be worried.
They didn’t act mindlessly during periods of adrenaline highs.
At the end of the performance, I noticed many of the organizers and even audience members pat the emcee on the back for doing a good job.
Even though I wasn’t fully appreciative of the quality of his content, I learned a valuable lesson by observing him at his best.
Thanks to Louise Foerster
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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