Embrace your Lazy

Growing up I was constantly called lazy. Lazy because I wouldn’t haul firewood. Lazy because I wouldn’t clean my bedroom. Lazy because I struggled to finish homework, or my chores. Honestly, it was a name I was called so often by so many different people that I started to think of it like a nickname.

Lazy

It became a part of my identity. At first it hurt, because there was a definite negative connotation to the word lazy.

It wasn’t until I was 13 that we realized at least part of what people called lazy in me was really attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

That was great, I wasn’t lazy anymore, I was disabled, right? I had an excuse. I could get away with not doing anything because I had a label, and that meant I could ignore everything.

Not really

I never really cared about my ADHD diagnosis. The day I went for the test was the same day that the Twin Towers fell, and if there’s anything that can put something into perspective, it’s a national tragedy.

As far as I was concerned, I was being fed pills that made my brain stop working. See, even though for all those years people had been calling me lazy, and even though I had started to even call myself lazy, I still knew deep inside that I wasn’t.

Lazy was what I used because I wasn’t sure how to tell people that what they were trying to get me to do was just dreadfully, frightfully, boring.

Embrace your Lazy

My entire life I have been busy doing things. During that period of my life that I was being called lazy multiple times a day, nobody ever asked me what I was doing with my time. And frankly, even if they had, I don’t know that I would have been able to articulate to them what it was.

It was during this period of my life that I became who I am today.

When I would forgo doing my homework because it made no sense to me that I would have to do the same things during the night that I did during the day, I was instead focused on teaching myself how to program computers.

When I would take hours upon hours to stack wood that should have easily been stacked in 30 minutes, I wasn’t just shirking my duties. I would spend the time practicing singing along with the radio, ad-libbing lyrics, and practicing my writing skills.

People Learn Differently

I grew up in a part of the world that has always been, and will likely always be, heavily focused on physical labor. The problem is, even though my size would seem to indicate otherwise, I’m not built for physical labor.

My entire development was focused on my intellect. That’s not to say I’m the smartest guy in the world, by any stretch of the imagination. Just that I have no aptitude for the normal activities for guys that look like me in my area.

We all learn differently.

I learned computers, my baby brother learned physical labor. And he is damn good at it.

So is he lazy because he doesn’t know how to program computers? Would anybody ever dare say that about him?

No. Because he’s a physical laborer.

It’s a mindset change

This isn’t about what way of learning or living is better. We need each and every one of us. Without laborers we wouldn’t have homes, roads, the vast majority of the things we love. They deserve our respect, and I don’t want to slight them in the least.

But just as we need laborers, we’ve always needed non-laborers. If this was the 1500s, I wouldn’t be a computer developer. I’d be a merchant. I’d be a banker. Anything that allowed me to use my brain instead of my body to make money.

Lessons I learned as a lazy child

Who knows. Maybe if I’d had a father that was an accountant I would think differently today. But the fact is, my father worked his entire life breaking his back day in and day out. I watched him spend 12 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, working on engines, to barely have enough food to feed our relatively small family.

I watched him go to work for companies that he would break his back for just as he did for himself, only for them to turn around and let him go without any warning. He always struggled to get ahead, and he always tried to teach me the lesson that the only way to get ahead was to work harder.

But I watched him work harder.

I watched how he worked harder than anybody else I knew, and still struggled. That is a lesson I will take with me forever.

I’ve learned more things since becoming an adult…

Don’t work Harder, Work Smarter

This has been discussed in a number of different ways, and it’s something that I figured out as a kid that has been reconfirmed to me over the years by various authors.

Tim Ferris tells us in The 4-Hour Workweek that we should “Never automate something that can be eliminated, and never delegate something that can be automated or streamlined.”

Which basically means if you’re doing dumb things, they’re dumb no matter how easy they are for you to do. If you really want to get ahead, you need to be smarter about what you’re actually doing.

In the case of my father, if he’d been smarter about his shop, he would have eliminated the whole part of the job where he had to chase people down to get money for the equipment he had already returned to them.

That could have been accomplished any number of ways, but had it been accomplished he would have saved himself a ton of headache.

Working Smarter isn’t enough. You need others to work hard for you

The “eat the rich” crowd is so close to the bullseye when they complain about how the rich are only rich by exploiting the labor of poor people. They’re so close.

You get ahead in life by creating something, and working with others to see it to fruition. Nothing great happens alone. Even if you think it does.

Let’s look at a commonly argued “single person” project: Stardew Valley. This game was created by a single person, who created the story, the art, the music, the code, all of it. So obviously he worked smarter, alone, and that was enough, right?

No. Because he didn’t do it alone.

What did I just do? I mentioned him. I’m doing unpaid labor for him, because I love that game enough that I felt the urge to mention it here.

A large number of rich people got as rich as they are by exploitation. I will never argue that point. But you don’t have to exploit people to get ahead.

But it’s easier, and unregulated, so that’s the route a large number of people take.

My suggestion is to be different.

Be better.

And to do that…

It’s always better to pay people more than they’re worth, if they are worth keeping at all

This one is going to turn off the hardcore profit seekers, but hear me out. One thing that we consistently undervalue when we pay people “what they’re worth” is the opportunity cost of sticking with us.

What I’m saying is that we’re not really paying people what they’re worth at all. We’re paying people what they’re worth producing the thing that we ask them to produce.

What I’m also saying is that we should be paying them what they would be worth to our competitor if they were to leave us.

If you do that math, our competitor only has to pay them a minor premium to get them to move. People aren’t loyal, and we shouldn’t expect them to be. People are driven by their own needs and desires.

We should price our people high enough that no competitor would be willing to match their salary. But only if they are worth keeping. But why? Because only great workers are worth keeping, and scale can only be found with great workers. Also:

Profit can be found in scale, but you can’t scale with profit alone

Let’s say you hire a worker on for $50,000 per year. That worker turns out to be a great worker, and they’re making you $150,000 a year in revenue. That workers is worth three times what you’re paying them.

What happens if you hire 3 of them?

6? 9? 100?

Let’s say the average salary for that position is $50,000/year. You’re doing okay, you’re paying industry average. Nobody would say you’re exploiting people. But the problem with average is, there’s always something on the higher end they could find.

But if that employee is worth $150,000 per year to you, what happens if you pay them $100,000? You’ve doubled their salary, you’re likely paying more than any other company in your industry.

And you’re also still profitable.

Not only is that employee unlikely to ever leave, they’re only going to get better at what they do. They’re also likely to have friends that are equally as good at their jobs. And what happens when your friend constantly tells you how happy they are with their job?

You want to know more, right?

What does any of this have to do with being lazy?

Let me give you an example. My wife is a farm girl. Born and raised on a farm. She was solidly in the laborer mindset when we met, and I love her for it.

Do you know what she called me the first time I suggested hiring a cleaning service? She had just gone back to work after being a stay at home mom. I was working all the time. Neither of us had much time to put towards cleaning, and it always seemed to fall on her.

Immediately I hear you saying “Stop being lazy, and do your part. It’s your house, too.”

And that’s exactly what she said.

And you’re both right about one thing: It is me being lazy. But I no longer consider this a bad thing. I can afford to hire a cleaning service. I have friends that do that type of work, and love it.

Why shouldn’t I hire someone that enjoys what they do, for a price they deem fair, to do a task that neither my wife nor I enjoy doing, nor have time for?

Because it seems so uppity

I take my car to a mechanic because the mechanic knows how to fix my car. Could I do it myself? Yea, probably. I’m smart enough to figure it out, and I could always lean on my father to teach me.

I hire freelance writers to write articles for my websites. Then I spend my time writing articles for my websites. Am I wasting my money? No, because I only have so much time, and I want a lot more articles than I can produce on my own.

If you can afford to do something with money, you can save yourself time. It isn’t uppity, it’s stress relief. In fact, I am willing to bet you spend more on recreation in the course of a year, than it would cost you to hire a cleaning service to come through your house twice a year.

The rest of the year you can put in the minimum amount of effort to maintain.

It’s no worse than buying a dishwasher so you don’t have to hand wash your dishes anymore.

It’s no worse than buying a tractor so you don’t have to shovel dirt by hand.

Embrace your laziness, and you’ll be amazed what you can accomplish.