Why It's Important to Be Lazy

Many people will tell you “don’t be lazy.”

They’ll tell you lazy people never get anything done and never amount to anything.

Well, they’re wrong.

Lazy people are actually some of the most efficient and successful people and you should aim to be lazy.

Every invention ever, since the wheel, has made man kind more lazy.

Think about, if we didn’t have modern vehicles, you’d be walking everywhere you want to go. No bus, no train. No driving in your car. You’d have to get those feet moving and travel miles. That’s a lot of time and effort that you don’t want to deal with. It’s easier and not to mention more time efficient  to sit down and press your foot on a pedal or hop on bus for a few minutes as opposed to walking around for hours.


Likewise, if we didn’t have cell phones, if you wanted to get in touch in with somebody, you’d either have to show up at their door or write them a handprinted letter. You’d have to gather some papyrus, a feather, ink, and a small bottles, sit down by the candle light, and scrawl out your message. That’s more effort than seems worth it. No thanks, I’ll just go to the concert myself.

I mean we can even fastforward a few centuries to the point where we have regular telephones, you know, landlines. But for those, you had to be at yours or some one else’s home or carry around change in your pocket so you could use a PayPhone. Carrying extra weight of metal in your jeans is uncomfortable and not everybody is going to let you in their home to use their phone, especially when you had to pay per minute.

Now you can just press a few buttons and boom, in a few seconds the person on the other end gets your message. And the best part is, you can do this from anywhere (well, as long as there’s cell service anyway).

Hell, you don’t even have to type it out anymore. Just talk to Siri Google Now.

Okay you could argue that the speech recognition is not perfect and often hilarious, but that’s besides the point.

The point is this: what do we trade off for laziness? Efficency and convenience.


I remember back in the eighth grade, I had a very strict math teacher.

Anyway, I remember doing the math, taking the tests, and literally getting all or most of the answers right on every single test, but I still got bad grades.

Why did I get bad grades when I was solving the answers?

No, she didn’t accuse me of cheating.

She accused me of being “L-A-Z-Y. “Literally she would say that, spelling out each letter.

See, I had found a creative way to solve the math problems, using a quicker and more efficient method -- a lazy method. She wanted me to solve the math problems using her way, the way she taught. She wanted me to write out step by step each math problem in her elaborate fashion.

I went to Catholic school, by the way, which is basically child prison.  I feared the punishment of not following her instruction and decided from then on to solve all my math problems her way, which was honestly the long and hard way.

It’s a shame I had done that, because I lost my motivation in math class. I could probably be a real math wiz, but I just didn’t practice math in the way I did when I was figuring out cool and creative ways to solve things. I liked math when I could find a lazy solution, that is find the answer in the least amount of steps possible. I believe I found other ways to express my creativity though that I actually enjoy more than math,


In his essay, A Mathmatician’s Lament, Paul Lockhart, compares the current mathematics education system to having an artist learn the different colors, brushes, and patterns before ever being able to paint and when they finally are able to paint, they paint by number rather than actually expressing themselves.


Oh and it’s only gotten worse. Have you seen “New Math”?



I only want to think as hard as I have to. I don’t want to solve unnecessary complex puzzles. Does that mean I won’t solve complex puzzles? No, it means I won’t solve it if it doesn’t seem efficient in my goal.

I don’t want to jump through a ring of fire, lift a hundred pound dumbell, and throw it through a concrete wall, just to activate a switch that’ll open a drawer and allow me to change my underwear. You get the gist.

Plus, if I’m forced to think a certain way, that limits my creative thinking, imagination, and expression.

Thatsaid, the successful online money maker is lazy. It is certainly more convenient and efficient to make money at home doing tasks/maintenence for a total of about an hour each day than to commute to a place of work and do a full 8 hour shift.

Oh and not to mention you can eat, drink, and piss whenever you want to. You’re your own boss.

Now there is a fine line between being lazy and being unmotivated, but we’ll get into the details of that in future on this blog.

For now, just be lazy and do it later.

-N8