Laziness is something we all drop into now and then. But, unlike many American pastimes, we don’t really focus enough on it. It can be perfected.
Today, a few points that may improve your “Lazing Skills.”
Laziness ISN’T Lazy
In fact, laziness is very closely aligned with a much different concept: Efficiency. Let’s take a “use-case” and you’ll see what I mean.
Let’s look at a typical cleaning task around the shop here at the ranch and you’ll see what I mean.
Outside my office door is a 60-inch long workbench that is a kind of “catch-all” space. Originally, this was to be a space that would be used for shipping (since I sell a thing, or two, on eBay now and then) as well as a charging-station for our light-weight yard equipment. Often, though, the bench will be used for unpacking small boxes from Amazon, as well.
Problem: Since I walk by it, it tends to collect everything. There’s an ultrasonic cleaner on it, along with two fresh (in the box) laser printer cartridges, a battery charger, two rolls of tape that failed to fly themselves back onto the shipping tape shelf, a roll of wire for an antenna project, a can of bug spray, plus a……well, you get the idea, right?
The Trap: All of us have a myriad of such minor cleaning projects around the house. There’s always at least one “drop-stuff-here” place, too. What usually happens is one of two things:
A) While doing the project (reintroducing ORDER to the bench in this case) you get interrupted and so things get completed ASAP. Instead? You can take that phone call or whatever the intrusion was. Things get dropped in situ.
B) The other thing that nails us on a regular basis is mission creep. All I want to do is clean off the bench top so I can see wood again. But, often as not, that expands and suddenly I’m putting up new shelves, moving the bench and cleaning under it, or refinishing the top, or…. If you’re the least bit prone to ADHD, this is a killer…trust me.
Eventually, I will sneak up on the problem, but before doing so, there’s a checklist of systematic ways to leverage my time.
- Is there a way to re-scale the task?
- Can this project be compressed?
- Can it be batched?
- Can the task be made “modular?“
All useful strategies worth a mention:
Re-scaling the task means only doing the absolute minimum. For my bench, this would mean getting the big stuff out of the way and calling it good. Next scaling level would be to complete to actually clean…From there, the upscale would be to vacuum the top and under the bench, too. Crazy is putting up new shelves and putting ceramic tile on the benchtop.
Compressing the task involves considering ways to make the job go faster. Since the office needs to be vacuumed one of these days, maybe the end of the bench cleaning becomes part of that. After all, the big shop-vac will be out. OR, I could time-compress. Stopwatches are miracle workers. Figuring out the fastest possible ways to get this task done and make it a race against time….
Batching is a form of compressing tasks. The battery charger lives in a different part of the shop, so is there anything else I can “dual-purpose” over there? And say! Three of those boxes are heading for the same upper storage shelf inside the office…so we can nail those at the same time….
Modularizing simply means putting the boxes away this morning (as they occupy the largest space, then do the battery charger tomorrow, left-out tools the day after. Since each of these fits with walking by, it should be simple to do many small modules (steps)…
Laziness Gets More Done
I ran into my own stupidity head-on last weekend while out working in the yard….in fact, twice in the same project. Illustrates many things…
Understand that the big trees between the house and the office/shop are always dropping small branches on the pea gravel…so every so-often, they get picked up. I roll the electric chipper out, plug it in, turn it on and start collecting branches and tossing them in. I would walk back and forth to the chipper almost countless times. Then I got LAZY.
Out comes the wheel barrow…I was gleeful at the prospect of batching the task into two parts: collecting (into the wheel barrow) and then mulching (shredding). What’s more, since there’s a low retaining wall and Elaine had raked some of the yard debris to the wall, I could simply walk along the low side of the retaining wall…and toss things in. No bending…bonus time!
Great, right?
Well, no.
Out comes Elaine (who’s a marvelous supervisor) just as I’m about to run the overflowing wheel barrow to the chipper.
“Why are you going to chip that stuff, we don’t need mulch right now. Why not just throw it in the tractor bucket and dump it on the burn pile?”
Boy, did I feel stupid. Men are especially prone to this kind of hole in their thinking. I had jumped right to the power tool instead of thinking first about the objective and laziness….
“Great idea, dear…thanks!”
I had failed to step back – before engaging the task – and look at how to best SCALE to hit the fastest (therefore most time-efficient) outcome.
“You know George, your time’s more valuable than feeding a chipper…” I had missed that myself and I’d previously thought I was a pretty smart cookie.
Alas,Elaine was (as usual) right. A broad smile spread across my face… The chipper was going back inside and I hadn’t run the power out, yet. The tractor was 15-feet away and a dump of the wheel barrow into the front-end loader bucket and it was off to the burn pile. Then, as long as the tractor was running, I decided to bush-hog about 4-acres so when the burn ban comes off (due to seasonal lack of rain) that will have been done. Better (and more relaxing) use of my time. The tractor has a “cruise control.”
It was then I recognized – after nearly 70-years of Life – that I tend to wrongly mechanize things. I was powering OK, but not necessarily with the right/fastest/bestest tool available!
Silly discussion? Not really…
Procrastination gets all of us at one time, or another. If you’re lucky, a spouse, friend, co-worker, or role-model will come along and will teach you the “better way.” Deep down, procrastination is the little voice saying “Gee, we don’t want to spend time and effort on THAT, do we?” Shorten the effort, trim the time, and sell your “little voice” on the usefulness of the outcome/benefit…
Since then, I’ve sworn to be lazier…and it’s starting to pay off.
This weekend, after running into some issues on my electronics bench with hand-cobbled small circuit boards (for the Light Crown project), I’ve decided the lazy way to get them done better is to take the hour or so to download the free PCB Layout software from www.pad2pad.com. I can order a bunch of small boards and just stuff and solder, instead of spending a lot of time using Vectorboard…great stuff for one-offs, but to make up some unite for relatives and friends? Nope…the time solution is to stuff boards and that will increase reliability and drop production time to nearly nothing.
And that’s the point. Since, as one of my late mentors schooled me long ago, “Life’s only 29,000 days long and you burn one every morning…” the only way to get more out of life is to be studiously lazy.
Which we now see is really RUTHLESSLY EFFICIENT.
A few readers have asked “How is it you get so much done???”
The answer is that I work extremely hard at being as lazy as possible while still getting to the outcome I’m after.
Do with it, what you will…when you get around to it, of course.
Write when you get rich,
George@ure.net
Your article on Laziness reminds me of a story from my childhood.
My father was an invalid from a waterfront accident as a stevedore. So, I did much of the work while he supervised.
When moving a dozen 2X4’s if I carried one at a time I was lazy. If I tried to carry four I was lazy. Two at a time was most efficient.
Women have a funny way of seeing to the heart of most issues including work. Drives my husband nuts. At least you have learned to listen and appreciate her inputs. 2 heads are better than one.
I have a great book on procrastination, which I plan to start reading …. soon.
Seriously, why is self-defeating behavior so appealing? Reminds me of a great quote …a fool who is persistent in his folly will become wise (blake?). Not sure the quote is correct for the majority though, because blaming others for our folly is much more popular.
George, your impressiveness shows in this piece. You chuckle at your own errors and credit others for their contributions, e.g. Elaine …very wise indeed.
Too many people are content finding fault in others and grumbling about all the injustices. That strategy has been an epic failure for all of recorded history. Guess they haven’t been persistent enough.
Here I was trying to attach the New phrase, “Simplify, Minimalist.” to my actions when all along I was plain and simple just Lazy. Well, I do feel better now! Thanks.
Last week I bought a 3D Digital pedometer on ebay for $11. I don’t need to sync it to an app. Just stick it in my pocket. It works great. My Doctor said, that on the days you do not go to the gym, you are probably not as active as you think you are, & you should get a pedometer & count your steps. She was right. I was in the low active, but It doesn’t count steps while you are riding a bike with the grandkids. Since it is so hot & humid in NC, it is not a long ride before I need some gatorade.
If total daily steps are:
under 5,000 per day – categorized as having a sedentary lifestyle
between 5,000 & 7,499 per day- categorized as “lowactive”
between 7,500 & 9,999 – categorizedas “some what active”
12,500 or more – categorized as “highly active”
…Reminds me of a Reader’s Digest essay I read, probably 50 years ago, entitled: “The Laziest Man in the World.”
It was a brief bio and accomplishments list, for Benjamin Franklin…
Can you handle going down this Sundays Rabbit Hole .
Will this rabbit hole change your belief system.
END OF RELIGION by Peter Kling.
https://youtu.be/Xze3BtHa6mc
May all beings be lovingly fulfilled .
May all beings be financially fulfilled .
May all beings be readily fulfilled.
SO BE IT
I’m too lazy to do it tomorrow so I’m doing it today. lol
Okay people just so fry your brain how old are you and where were you when President Kennedy died it’s called the Mandela effect
All I know George, lazy is one thing you are not !! But I can sell you a Bemer device if you need some extra natural power.
George, I sent you an email quite some time ago and it said, George you would schedule a gang rape. You haven’t changed a bit!
My father always said that to find the easiest and fastest way to do something you should ask the laziest man to do it.
LOL! I’ve been castigated for saying “Slower is faster”, yet it is often true. I’ll pass on the stopwatch though – waste of time.
As a lawyer, son of a lawyer, brother of a lawyer, grandson of a rancher and Serious, successful salesman, who travelled till it killed him at 47, but also homesteader of three plus decades, here are some things i notice:
“Procrastinator” is a synonym for “attorney”.
Inaction is, more often than not better than action, during disputes.
The World’s biggest problem is that it is dominated by early risers.
Taoists get better results than most.