The Laziness Advantage
The hidden rewards of slothing around
Hello beautiful readers 👋
Here’s your weekly injection of Steroids For Your Brain 🧠
The Laziness Advantage
"I always choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it."
- Bill Gates (allegedly…)
If you’ve ever felt busyless - you know, when you’ve had a busy day, but don’t feel like you’ve actually done anything - more effort, more productivity probably isn’t your answer.
In a world where everyone is trying to do everything all at once…
Your advantage might just be your laziness.
👉 The full article: The Laziness Advantage
Something To Make You Think 🤔
Whose bullsh*t are you doing?
One of the problems with being “productive” is you end up taking a lot on.
And as people notice your reliable productivity, they start giving you more bullsh*t to do.
Because you’re so productive, you get it all done. And perhaps don’t even think much of it because it’s easy for you. Because you’re so productive.
But what’s actually happening (perhaps) is you’re implicitly teaching others to shirk their work, to burden you with things they should be dealing with themselves, or doing things you don’t actually want to do.
For example, at one of my companies, owing to a lack of technical talent, I started doing all the website, API, app stuff. Although I can technically do this, it’s not what I’m best at, nor what I enjoy doing most.
But because I could do it, I did. And as commendable as that might sound, it was actually very bad for the company because we didn’t look into hiring a CTO till much later. I temporarily bandaged a deeper problem (not having a technical Co-Founder) which hamstrung the company longer-term.
Same at home. My girlfriend will often clean up crumbs and bits of mess here and there for me, evaporating my responsibility. I have kindly asked her to stop! It’s my bullsh*t, not hers, so I should be doing it.
So, whose bullsh*t are you doing? Are you covering for someone else? Let people take responsibility for their actions, and feel their consequences. You’re not a babysitter!
Hit reply with your answer! 👇
Extremely Interesting Fact 🤓
The word nice derives from the Latin nescius, meaning "ignorant" or "unaware."
Over time, the word evolved to mean something closer to pleasant and agreeable, but nice still holds its roots in many contexts.
“The nice guy” is usually the chap with not much about him. Unaware, ignorant, compliant, not willing to speak up for himself.
This is very different to the “kind guy” or the “brave guy” or the “generous guy”, who actively do good things, vs simply avoiding upsetting people.
There’s no harm in being nice, except when it’s borne out of weakness or fear of what might happen if you stop being so.
Ask Me For Advice 👋
As always, would love to hear any feedback you have for the newsletter so far - content ideas, things you like/dislike etc.
Andrew ✌️
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