Feel tired from all the "hard work" you're doing? Do things in the hardest way possible and you'll soon realize how easy things actually are.

​You may feel like you're working hard and that the exertion you do is physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting. You may feel fatigued from the amount of "intense labor" you have to do in your job or taking care of your kids or home.

Well, unless you’re working in a coal mine or on a construction site, the amount of work required nowadays, especially at a typical desk job, is really not a lot.


And unless you're churning your own butter and washing your clothes by hand, household chores are quite simple.  You can heat up dinner, wash clothes & dishes, by shouting at your damn walls for god's sake now.


Things seem “hard” because we’re so used to the technology we have that makes our lives easier.

Heck, even as a construction worker, it’s much easier now to use an electric jackhammer than a hammer and chisel or a powerdrill than a Phillps screwdriver.

See, we live in a world so full of  all these gadgets and apps that automate and streamline our life that we’ve sort of taken them for granted.

We literally have some of the coolest shit, and there hasn’t been a civilization in all of history that had the capability to be so...lazy. I mean we're just a few steps away from living Wall-e style with our butts glued to our chairs and our faces glued to our screens. If that's the ultimate future, the Charizard, then we as a society are Charmeleon right now. Just a few more levels and we're ready to evolve




We can talk to a speaker in our house to turn off our lights. We can press a button form our phone to start up and heat up/cool down our car. We can order pizza from our TV

And that’s just the daily life at home. In the work life, we have software that can automate sales and communication, touch screens that let customers order with the click of a button, chat bots that can answer customers’ questions,

Yet despite how lazy we can be in our lives, we tend to ignore how helpful this technology is and tell ourselves how hard we’re working and how stressful it is.

We have to instead embrace the Lazy Mindset and not be so overwhelmed by the little amount of work that we actually do.

One bit of practical advice in order to reach our goal of thinking like a PROcrastinator, is to actually do something in the hardest way possible.

I know this may sound crazy and sort of counter intuitive, but trust me, when you make things hard for yourself, on purpose, you’ll soon see just how easy you actually have it.

The famous song Big Yellow Taxi says “you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone.”

Well, what we’re going to do is learn form that principle by taking away a technology you currently use and doing things the hard way.

You’ll soon realize you didn’t know how much laziness you already had in your life until it’s gone.

I’ll give you an example of how I did this.

I remember during a radio internship, I had to literally cut/splice pieces together on an old reel to reel tape machine.

Normally when I edit audio, I have a software as a tool to visualize everything and keep track of progress, as well as have an undo button and a save button, both which can be a lifesaver

None of these features apply when editing with reel to reel, but I learned so much doing it, like how to EQ and multi-track using only my ears and not my eyes and how to take my time to do things. You have to be patient with reel to reel and not rush through it, because if you cut wrong, you can't ctrl+z to fix it. Really helped me fine tune things and learn how to edit deliberately, rather than always using trial and error.

When you do things the “hard way”, or the old fashioned way by hand, it makes you appreciate the technology and tools we have today that make various tasks and chores so much easier compared to the old fashioned way of doing things. It also allows you to do work more deliberately rather than just running through the motions of getting it done, without concentration or focus.

Make a recipe from complete scratch; don’t use any pre-made ingredients; heck, churn the butter, grow the spices, build a fire. Visit a new place without using GPS or looking up directions online; use an old map and compass to route your trip instead. Sew your own outfit, craft your own shoes. Create your own soap and get the water from a nearby well or river.




When I was in Boy Scouts, I actually did a lot of these things “the hard way”. Many of the merit badges required demonstrating skills without the use of modern technology. It took a lot of time, patience, effort, and competence.

Plus, the camping trips were about survival, not comfort. We didn’t have a stove or a refrigerator or a heater or an air conditioner. We had a sleeping bag and matches.

Some of the badges were very challenging, but ultimately I grew a better appreciation for the modern conveniences we have in our advanced civilization.

I also felt more thankful for the contemporary comforts I had at home when I wasn’t out in the woods.

Don’t get me wrong; I love camping. But going on these trips made me realize just how lazy the average day is for someone in present day compared to the average day of our ancestors. The days of our ancestors were full of hard work and grind. Today -- not so much.

When you take the time to do things “the hard way”, you’ll realize that the amount of effort it takes to do things in your modern daily routine is quite low and easy.

What you define as “hard work” is really a fraction of what our ancestors would put under the same definition.

If you want to be a Lazy mastermind, a PROcrastinator, you have to have deep insight and understanding in how lazy you are already being.

You have to realize you are already using the inventions and systems of Lazy Masterminds. You’ve grown to take them for granted and “feel” like you’re working hard because you want more leisure.
When you do things the hard way, you realize you realize you’re not working within the constraints of a hardworking system, but rather within an easy one full of automation and leisure. Life isn’t as hard as you thought.

Your goal is not to put yourself through sweat, blood, tears, and labor in order to achieve the best results possible within the current system.

Your goal, rather is to create even more leisure, to make things easier , to upgrade the system and allow more laziness to happen, while simultaneously exceeding the results made possible in the original system.

Laziness is evolution. It is in your human nature to create more leisure for yourself (and others) -- to minimize effort and maximize results.




Intelligence and creative thinking and problem-solving skills are the evolutionary strengths of human beings.

We’re not built to be strong physical workers. So many other animals have evolved for that sort of thing.

We’re built to be thinkers. And above that, we even build systems, essentially AI, to think for us, so we’re built to be procrastinators.

Like it or not, we’ve evolved that way.

Your goal is not to work hard within the system you are given, but to create a new system that provides even more leisure than the original system allowed.

When you do things the hard way, you’ll soon have an “ah ha!” moment, an epiphany, where you’ll see that the hardest thing about your work is how hard you stress out about it and convince yourself it’s more difficult than it actually is.

Make things easy for yourself and do things the hard way first.

-N8