Life Lessons | Perspective
The Lost Art of Laziness
A lesson I learned from an incredibly inspiring story I found on the internet.
One day I was engaging in a frivolously diversionary activity — clearly, not wasting time — when I came crossed an incredibly inspiring story on Reddit, labeled as, “The World’s Laziest Man.”
The story tells about a guy who was assigned as the Operations Officer (OPS) on a US military ship. Here’s my paraphrased version of the story:
One fine morning in the officer’s lounge, the sun was blazing in one porthole of the ship, putting a big bright circle of light on this guy’s barely conscious face — he was the definition of not a morning person.
Holding his bagel, the guy squinted and chewed. After a split second, he stopped chewing, slowly picked up the phone, and dialed the bridge. In his I’m-still-totally-asleep voice, he said, “heeeey. It’s OPS. Could you… shift our barpat… yeah, one six five. Thanks.” And he put the phone down. Then he just sat there. Squinting. Waiting.
And then, ever so slowly, the big blazing spot of sun has slid off his face and onto the wall behind him. After a moment, it finally cleared his face, and he blinked slowly a few times.
What did he do?
He literally just redirected thousands of tons of steel and hundreds of people so that he could get the sun out of his eyes while he ate his bagel.
By ordering the bridge to adjust the ship’s back-and-forth patrol by about 15 degrees, he changed his course just enough to reposition the sun off of his face.
Whether the story was true — there is a very “human quality” about it, something that makes us instantly relate to our inevitable sense of laziness, or you may say: our personal quarantine routine.
Just think of a time when you have been too lazy to move, besides now, of course.
There are just too many times we indulged in extremely illogical laziness. We aren’t alone in this. The “lazy” product has some thriving examples — I still don’t understand some people actually use the self-stirring mug, toothpaste dispenser, or automatic spaghetti fork (yes, they exist). All of this is a completely pointless device that perpetuates laziness.
Anyhow, no matter how ridiculous all of these lazy inventions, laziness is not solely a preoccupation as much of the world might have us believe.
Just like the Reddit story above, lazy people are always trying to make life easier. They don’t waste time on unnecessary things and get to the point. Lazy employees will always find ways to automate and optimize all repetitive processes in their work. For them, nothing is more annoying than regular, monotonous work.
Laziness is a lost art. And I don’t mean laziness in the sense of filling each moment with mindless distraction. But proper idleness when we choose to do nothing.
In a world of constant distraction, we rarely take proper care of our mental needs and rejuvenate our minds from bewilderment. Instead, we spend our free time switching between new distractions — from checking email, reading the news, browsing Twitter, scrolling Instagram, and so on — activities that actually, more often than not, make us even more tired.
The best productivity tactics are those that, for every minute we invest in, allow us to achieve more work much more efficiently. Being tactically lazy is one way of doing it.
Chances are you need to be lazy more often. Chances are you need to stop being so busy and start allowing yourself to do nothing.
Whether it’s giving your brain a break, exploring useful ideas, or planning future plans, sometimes the best way to make things happen is to do nothing at all.