What if laziness can be productive? Could it be that we have been wrong to assume that being lazy is just being unproductive and weak? Let’s delve into the subject of laziness and find out.
Defining laziness. In order to be as objective as possible and to get the most out of the subject, we should start by defining the main object, laziness. The Oxford Dictionary gives such a definition, “[Laziness is] the fact of being unwilling to work or be active” or “lack of care in doing something”, used as a form of “disapproval”. At this level, it seems correct to view laziness as something purely negative. All in all, dictionaries only give us the most popular or generally accepted way of seeing and defining things. In case of laziness it is basically an accusation of being unwilling to work or being active.
Redefining laziness. Unfortunately, popular and correct are sometimes two different things. Laziness without context is much more neutral than it might seem at first glance. In what cases are we unwilling to work or be active? In cases when we are forced to do something, while we think of the work as something useless. Is it bad or is it good? It depends.
Paperwork, bureaucracy, bad internet connection, talking to uninteresting people. Sounds extremely boring. We probably feel lazy doing these things. But is it bad? I would say it is productive. In this case, it could make you cut out useless conversations, fix your internet problems and maybe change jobs or even learn programming to write a script that would do your paperwork instead of you. All so you can save your energy or invest it in something useful or fun, something generally rewarding. I think it would be unfair to blame someone for feeling lazy because something in their life takes a lot of time and makes no sense. But it would be fair to blame them for being lazy if they chose to ignore the problem instead of fixing it.
The catch is in the way our brains work. Our brains evolved under very inhumane conditions. We had to survive, that was the main objective. Modern comfort confuses our brains. Sometimes it can be very hard for it to make sense in doing really important things, things that will only bear fruit in the distant future, when you can do something that is immediately rewarding. Our brains understand why we want to eat tasty food, or sleep, or have sex, and they will understand why we want to run away from a wolf or a tiger. But what about becoming a millionaire? Or winning a big tournament? Or even reading a book? Maybe even reading this essay to the end? Where is the reward? Our ancient brains have a hard time seeing these very distant possibilities and what may lie beneath them. If everything is fine now, if you are warm and full and there is no immediate danger, why bother doing anything? Better to rest, save some energy.
That is the problem with laziness. Sometimes our brains can mark something as useless and make us feel lazy when we are actually doing very important things for our future. In this case, if we succumb to laziness, if we choose immediate pleasures over fulfilling our potential and having the brightest future, we can be fairly accused of laziness.
So we found out that laziness is quite “grey”. It is neither good nor bad in a vacuum. What I mean by redefining laziness is simply to take away the immediate accusation that comes with it by definition.
You can both suffer and benefit from laziness, depending on the situation.
Making laziness work for you. Now we know the situations in which we have to fight laziness, but this fight is quite hard. We may know that it is wrong to rest now, that there are important things to do, something to change our lives for the better, but sometimes it is just too hard to get up and do what needs to be done. But this thing is curable, though not immediately.
Willpower is the only thing that helps here. And it has to be trained, trained like a muscle. Anything you don’t want to do, but know it would be nice to do, will work. It can be as simple as cleaning your room or doing the dishes. The important thing is to be consistent. You need to do something unpleasant every day. It is better to start with small things in the beginning, so that later you can force yourself to do big things, even if they are gruelling. Putting fifty kilos on your biceps when you can only curl ten sounds absurd, right? The best outcome in such a situation would be to fail without traumatising yourself. The same goes for will. If you find it difficult to work for twenty minutes without interruption today, it would be strange to decide to work for six consecutive hours tomorrow. But it is much more logical to work consistently for fifty minutes or even an hour by the end of the week. Add ten minutes of extra time each day and you will feel fine. You will not burn out too quickly and you will be able to continue the next day.
Remember that rest is part of the work process, as my philosophy teacher says. It is impossible to work at maximum efficiency all the time, you need to take a break every now and then. But again, this rest has to be controlled, calculated. Then you will see your willpower, and therefore your efficiency, grow. And in time, you will be able to achieve your greatest dreams.
By the way, physical training is probably the best way to increase willpower, along with general health, and even make your brain work better thanks to increased blood flow and metabolism. If you’re serious about training, whether it’s bodybuilding, martial arts or weightlifting, every training session will involve some painful things that you don’t really like to do, you’ll also have to go to the gym every few days, this will also have a positive effect on your willpower. You will probably have to improve your diet, which will make you even more conscientious and disciplined. So if you want to become strong-willed, disciplined and healthy, you will most probably love the gym.
In this way, laziness will only be your advisor, never your commander. It will be your decision whether to listen to it because you are really doing something useless, or to ignore it because it is simply too primitive to understand your goals.
Willpower and rationality are the tools to achieve your dreams and make laziness work for you, not against you.
In conclusion, laziness is seen as a bad thing by default, but in reality it can be both productive and unproductive, depending on the situation. It can both show you that you are doing something useless, which is productive, and prevent you from achieving your goals in life, which is unproductive. To stop it from commanding you, you have to train your willpower. In this way, the feeling of laziness will only advise you and you will be the one to decide whether to listen to it or not.
So make sure you’re not overlooking anything good in something before you call it bad.
