Laziness is a good thing

I get correspondence all the time asking me for a cure for laziness. That’s like asking me for a cure for beauty. Or a cure for wealth. If someone is lucky enough to be blessed with the gift of laziness, he or she should definitely enjoy it and exploit it. It is a quality to be coddled, nurtured, and developed. If correctly utilized, laziness is a one way ticket to great success.

In my world view, there are two kinds of laziness – both Heaven-sent. The first kind of laziness is pure, simple, and wholesome. It is the exalted impulse to avoid work. Clearly, avoiding work is a laudable goal in its own right. With this basic form of laziness, shirking all work is its own glorious reward. Nothing more needs to be accomplished. Hammocks and shade trees were designed by God for just this lofty purpose.

The second kind elevates basic laziness to an even higher level, if you can believe such a thing could be possible. With this type of laziness, work is still avoided at all costs. However, by skillfully avoiding work, even to the ultimate degree of doing nothing at all, one still accomplishes everything he or she wants. Now this is the supreme form of laziness. Doing nothing yet accomplishing everything. 

Those proficient in this sophisticated form of laziness are responsible for most advances in society. These are the people who know that when something needs to be accomplished, there is always a way that not only involves much less work but is also cheaper, safer, faster, more fun, more lucrative, and more effective. And these heroically lazy folks find that way. 

It is crucial to understand this next point: You will rarely find those magical lazy ways if you are hard at work. These super-charged lazy ways are only revealed to those who take the time to rejoice in laziness.

Sadly, some work-indoctrinated readers will refuse to see any validity in this concept. They will frantically wave their hands while ranting about the necessity of hard work and how vital it is to suffer in order to achieve anything. They will incessantly use the phrase “bust your butt” and they may even invoke images of garbage men and single mom waitresses to prove how important hard work, joylessness, and sacrifice are for the advancement of mankind. Yet, upon further review, in nearly every case, these staunch defenders of hard work will have negligible success to point to as a result of their own toil.

Alas, I know I will not be able to convince these folks that they are betting on the wrong horse. But someone has to stand up and speak the truth and hopefully some people will hear it. So here goes:

• Laziness is great. Hard work is a fraud.
• Laziness is incandescently fabulous. Hard work is unnecessary, counter-productive, a waste of time, unhealthy, unpleasant, boring, mind-numbing, anti-evolutionary, ignorant, uncreative, inefficient, and ineffective among many other traits too hideous to mention.
• Laziness opens the door to great success. The only thing that hard work is good for is perpetuating poverty.

If you want to be successful, you have to find a way to accomplish more by doing less. Start by buying a hammock. Then use it to locate your competitive edge.