Lazy’s good

And we need to become smart about it

When I clip my nails, I always start with my left hand. According to some, it means that I tend to choose the easiest path, and only do the hard part when there’s no other choice left. Put bluntly, it means I’m lazy. And honestly, the first time I heard that little snippet of wisdom, it didn’t really surprise me. I think I am. But it didn’t make me feel bad either, because in my professional life, I have found that being lazy makes you smarter, and more attuned to what could be improved, than the resilient hard worker.

Before I try to convince you, however, that a lazy employee is a good employee, let me give one example — literally — closer to home. Washing the dishes is as boring and unfulfilling an experience as you could ever live. Not necessarily unpleasant per se, as it can be a moment of mental rest, day-dreaming or even meditation. Not one you would stretch on purpose, though. So I, the lazy dishwasher, never start with the easy pieces, such as the plates and bowls. I will rather start with the stuff that stands in the way, the weirdly shaped blender parts, or baking instruments. They’re going to be a pain whatever I do. But once they’re out of the way, the rest is easier. I’ve made the overall boring, slightly unpleasant experience of washing the dishes a tiny bit nicer. Because I’m lazy, I did the only thing that makes sense in this situation : I strived for efficiency.

Work doesn’t HAVE to be boring

So yeah, that’s my point. Lazy people, especially in a work environment filled with boring, unpleasant, repetitive tasks, will try and make things easier, faster, or even more fun if somehow feasible. Which is not to say that hard workers can’t think of ways to improve efficiency, but they tend to only do it when the workload becomes absolutely untenable and they are slapped in the face with the absurdity of the systems in place.

Because you see, we live in a society where laziness is more than frowned upon. In a company, “hard” work in the form of long hours is more visibly quantifiable than efficiency and will often be better rewarded. The hard workers take pride in their resilience, and if you complain that the way of doing things is unnecessarily stupefying or time-consuming, chances are you will be met with a look of condescending disapproval. Someone had that same exact job before you, and THEY didn’t complain. I know this because I’ve lived it more than once.

But maybe my predecessor didn’t have those new tools at their disposal. Maybe they never bothered to wonder if other tools existed. Maybe they never thought about their job at all. Because hard-working and committed aren’t the same thing.

Laziness is worth harnessing

The problem with the “hard worker” frame of mind is that sometimes, the lazy employee will need time to work on a better solution. Which means that their employer or manager needs to recognize that things can be improved and are worth improving and that the time spent improving them is not wasted. But in a mid-sized office environment, the “hard worker” mentality tends to force itself on the individuals, because of the perceived notion that this is the default mentality in the group. Add to this premise the fact that, more often than not, the manager will actually owe, or attribute, his position, to his “hard worker” status, and you have a recipe for inaction. Nobody wins from this, certainly not the company as a whole.

This theory directly derives from my own experience, but I’m willing to bet that it wasn’t an isolated situation. I actually had the chance to move quickly enough to a decision-making position, so I never really had to fight for consent, but even then, I was made to understand by colleagues that I was really just being lazy, that it WAS supposed to be stupefying… Until it wasn’t and I was glad I’d done something about it. Maybe the most frustrating thing in retrospect is that I’m actually only good at working. If I’m not spending my time on a project, I don’t know what to do with myself, so I end up back at my laptop every night, and every week-end, because I can’t focus on anything else… But still, if I say that a company’s way of doing thing is a waste of energy, I come out as unindustrious.

So please, if you recognize someone like this around you, be merciful. Just because you feel that work should be a pain doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement. Contrarily to popular belief, there’s really no spiritual reward for that sort of productivist masochism, and the fact that it is such an entrenched attitude is depressing in its own right.