Despite how it might seem, laziness and productivity are not opposites. The truth is, lazy people can be very productivity, it’s just a matter of looking at laziness and productivity as related concepts. By embracing some of the motivations to be lazy, it’s possible to turn that into a great tool for productivity. The power of embracing your laziness:
When you are lazy, it’s usually from a desire to not spend time or energy on something, usually something that you do not want to do. There are so many other, more interesting things that you could be doing with your life, so of course you don’t want to spend time on work. You want to spend your time on those other things, and that is a good motivation. The key is directing it properly.
The issue is that most people take motivation and use it as an excuse to put off doing something, or to avoid doing it at all. For some things, that might work, but for something that you absolutely have to do, such as work for your job that results in you getting paid actual money, not doing them is not an option and only causes more stress. Instead, direct your laziness towards asking this question: “What is the least amount of work I can put in and still get a good result?”
Equating this with laziness is not meant to encourage you to do a bad job or not put the proper work into it. You still want a good result, so cutting corners or ignoring important parts that you really should do are bad ideas that will only make things worse. Instead of cutting corners, there are things you might do or normally do that are not necessary, so try and find these things. Remove steps that you don’t need to do, but always keep in mind the end result that you need to get; anything that compromises that should be avoided, but cut out anything else.
Though it sounds strange being compared to laziness, that is actually what productivity is about at its core: You need to produce X amount of whatever for a job or project, and what matters is that X amount of it gets out there. It really doesn’t matter what the process is that gets it out there, only that it is done and reaches a certain standard. Focus on making the rest of that process the simplest thing that you can do, especially by embracing your desire to spend as little time on it as possible so you have more time for the other things in your life. Really, all productivity comes out of being lazy about work, we just don’t really want to talk about it that way.
