Don't Do a Whole Lot

There’s this crazy notion in our hard work corporate culture that  the more you do, the more accomplished you’ll be. 

Create more, do more, make more, be more. (and buy more too! Murica!)

We’re bombarded with messages to do as much as you can (and purchase as much as you can too)  in order to climb the heights of success.

“More is always better”....or so we’re told.

Make no mistake. These types of messages are purposefully designed to keep you as a diligent little corporate slave and spend-happy consumer. They are not, by any means, actual wisdom to follow. 

Unfortunately, they’re pretty consistent with this “GET MORE” propaganda. You get used to the idea that the more you put in, the more you get out, so you wind up emptying your wallet and exhausting your energy, in hopes to *some day* attain fame and prosperity.

If you have MORE of a bigger house, if you have MORE of a nicer car, if you have MORE of a beautiful face, then and only then will you have MORE friends, MORE success, MORE...happiness.


But true happiness and success doesn’t come from a perpetual loop of getting more, rather it comes from having and doing “just enough” and feeling fine. As a matter of fact, happiness is nothing but a fleeting feeling, a temporary mood, a limited time emotion. Attempting to always feel happy will set yourself up for mission impossible.

What you want to aim for instead is “satisfaction”. Satisfaction is feeling relaxed and at ease. It’s believing that what you have and what you do is “just enough” to be worthy and have a meaningful life, and it’s actually pretty easy to obtain.

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Look, if you follow this work hard and consume more mantra, you’ll never be happy, no matter what. You’ll always want a better car, a better job, a better... life.  There’s always something *more* you’re trying to do in order to earn your happiness.The grass is always greener on the other side. And happiness seems always just “one more” step away from where you’re at.

You’ll always be thinking “I’ll be happy once I...(blank)”. Then once you get to that point, there’s always *something else* you think will make you happy. And once you get that something else, well then there’s another thing you want to get. It’s a redundant pattern that leaves you feeling exhausted with your work and disappointed in yourself.You never *quite* get there.

Rather than chase after the impossible and wear yourself thin in doing so, it’s best to lay back in your laziness and take satisfactions as they come, as you focus on *very little* to make yourself feel satisfied with “just enough”.

See, you’ve been brainwashed to believe that success requires you to do *many* great things, achieve many great accomplishments, and you need many great talents to get there.

But that couldn’t be further from the truth. On the contrary, you only need to do one thing. Make your life as simple as can be.

Do less with more focus.

Every single successful person has done this. Every single rich and famous actor, actress, singer, musician, and entrepreneur alike has chosen not to “work hard” towards a multitude of things, but to find one thing they like to do and stick to it.

They embraced their laziness by doing what they wanted, rather than taking the traditional “work your ass off doing something you hate for the rest of your life” approach.They found a way to truly attain freedom and with it, satisfaction.

For Jim Carey, it was comedy, to make people laugh. For Bill Gates, it was connecting people through computers. For Jimmy Page, it was shredding guitar. 

No matter what famous celebrity you choose, it all comes down to a person that chose *one thing* and nothing more. All these people kept their life simple, in regards with how they spent their time, and look at where they went. You too must aim to simplify your life, embrace your laziness.

Even the likes of successful people with “many” talents, like Dwayne the Rock Johnson as a good example, who can sing, dance, act, and even wrestle, live a rather simple life. The truth is, he has one talent: inspiring others.

I mean if you’re going to go as far as dissecting one single person and each of their talents, you might as well go as far as to break down any famous guitarist. S/he knows how to strum chords, play scales, bend strings, slide up and down the fret board. Each part of “playing guitar” is technically a separate talent. But no, that’s just a level of complexity that doesn’t need to be considered. At the end of the day, the dude knows how to play guitar. There’s no need to complicate things.
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f you eat pizza, you don’t run through the details of picking it up from the plate, putting it in your mouth, chewing it, digesting it, etc.

You just eat the damn pizza. The details all come naturally, without even thinking about. You don’t consciously think about each and every step to make that process happen. You just...let it happen. Simple.

The same principle applies to well, pretty much anything you want to achieve in life. Whether it’s eating cheesy, saucey goodness or becoming a world renowned musician, all you ever want to accomplish, all you ever want to do comes down to just One Thing.

You can analyze and break it down into segments all you want but all that is just fluff. Life is not that complicated, or at the very least, doesn’t need to be.

We’re lead to believe that being a “one-tracked” mind is greedy and selfish. That’s all to keep us from doing all we’re capable of. It’s a shaming tactic used to make us think that there’s always something “more” to consider. Look, doing what you want and living in satisfaction means you’re being greedy and selfish, then so be it.

Embrace the one-track mind, the Lazy Mind. It’s frankly the only way you can achieve greatness. You need to decide what you’re One Thing is and stick to it.

McDonald’s goal is to serve burgers. And how many burgers do they serve every year? 

Just one. One thing. One product.

Want a Happy Meal? Well, we’ll throw a toy in it! 
Want a Big Mac? Well we’ll mix ketchup, mayo, and relish together, call it a “secret sauce”, throw it on a sesame seed bun with some lettuce and BOOM! Big Mac!

No matter what you order at McDonald’s, you’re ordering, essentially, the same thing regardless of what you choose on the menu.

It’s a matter of simply…”repackaging”. It’s the illusion of choice and variety. So too must you re-package yourself with the single thing you’ve got going for yourself. Create the illusion that there’s a lot going on,  instead of actually try hard to do a whole lotta shit. One thing. Keep it simple. Keep it lazy.

I’ll use myself as an example (as selfish and greedy as that might be). Certainly, as you may already know I host the ProcrastiN8r Podcast. I put together an episode each week, writing the show prep, recording my voice, editing it in Adobe by adding a little EQ and sound effects.

What you may not know is I also freelance audio production and voice work. As well, I’m a professional DJ for weddings, graduations, bar mitzvahs, and the like. Sounds complicated and ridiculous when you break it down like that. But the end of the day, my one thing is “Entertainment”.
Of course, I know haters will be like “That’s not *really* lazy. You’re doing all this stuff. Writing the blog, producing a podcast, heck, even running a mobile DJ company.”

The thing is, it doesn’t feel like work to me at all. I feel lazy in doing it. I get as much satisfaction from audio quote on quote work” as I do sittin’ my ass on the couch.

The same may not be applied to you, and that’s fair. One man’s laziness is another man’s work. Remember that.

Laziness is not so much about avoiding doing anything, but instead doing that one thing that doesn’t feel like work and you find enjoyable. To me, Entertainment, doesn’t feel like work. I’m not saying that’ll be the same for you, but just my personal taste.

Abide by your laziness and do your own thing.

Hell, construction, ya know hauling ass and building shit, to some, would perfectly fit the definition of “laziness”. Laziness is a personal preference, not a set in stone principle. It’s flexible.

Someone might even find lying on the couch to NOT be lazy. As crazy as that sounds. But if it’s something that feels like  a burden, then it’s not.

Anything that brings a burden is work. Anything that brings relaxation is laziness. That’s really it.

Your goal is to find your Laziness. Find your One Thing.

Finding Your “One Thing”

In the movie City Slickers, Jack Palance's character, Curly,  gives some advice saying that the meaning of life is just "One thing. You stick to that and everything else don't mean shit."

You have to ask yourself: *What actually fucking matters to me?*

Seriously take a look at how you spend your time when you have no obligation, or better yet, pay attention to what you do to PROCRASTINATE *while* you have obligations to fulfill.

The way you spend your time in procrastination can tell you where your passions lie. It can tell you what’s important and what the “less” is that you need to focus more on.

But passion. I hate that word. It’s like you need a rigorous amount of emotion and desire towards something. Nah, bro.

Nothing about that is lazy. And truthfully, not many people are that passionate about *anything*. You don’t have to be either. You don’t have to find your passion. You just have to find what you simply...like.

Like it. Like what you’re doing. Like just one thing that matters to you.

Now I can’t tell you what that is. I can certainly guide you there, but to tell you, “you must do this” or “you must not do that” makes me no better than these corporate slave owners or preaching priests shouting at you what you “should” do and how to live your life.

No, I’m not here to tell you how to live your life or what to do to achieve success. Not only am I too lazy to figure it out and try and write it all down for you, I just...can’t.

I mean, that’s really for you to decide. 

Do one thing and one thing really well. What that one thing is up to you. You don’t need to complicate things.

Look into the way you spend your time in procrastination to understand what that one thing is. 
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​Are you playing video games? You could become a live streamer, a professional level tournament player, a game reviewer, a beta tester, or heck, even a programmer.

Are you watching movies? You could create your own youTube channel, write blogs reviewing films.

You get the gist. Ask not “How do I stop wasting my time doing this thing?” and instead ask “How do I make this thing not a waste of time.”

Re-package your laziness into something fruitful (which is kind of what I did with this whole blog here)

Productivity, in my opinion, is not so much spending time doing things worthwhile, but instead turning those “pointless” procrastination activities into well, something worthwhile.

You can do that by doing just One Thing.

Any sort of “more” in what you’re doing is really just a matter of...decoration. It’s the re-packaging. 

You can always “throw a toy in it” to make that one thing a *little bit different*, but when all is said and told, you’re not really doing much other than that one thing to begin with.

Keep in mind that leaders are often successful people. And leaders are not the ones “doing a whole lot”. They practice the Law of Least Effort and get other people to do the work for them. They do just one thing and keep focused on it.

Focus on what you do, not what needs to be done. Put in “just enough” effort towards a single thing that actually matters to you and you’ll get there...eventually.

Take it easy,

N8