Laziness is a Virtue

 

I'm lazy. It's true. Very lazy, in fact.

It's not all bad news though. Laziness has its virtues. Sometimes, laziness motivates a person to solve problems.

"what?" you say, "How does that follow?" Well my fine motivated readers (all 2 or 3 of you), I'll explain.

Some people, like myself, dislike doing lots of work. But they don't mind thinking. Thinking isn't hard work. For people like me, it is the height of leisure, to be able to simply sit back and contemplate life, the universe, and everything. And anything we can do to facilitate such internal activity is viewed very positively.

For example, I'm going through the task of learning new types of coding related to web development. That involves a shit load of reading. Why? Because I want to do as little work as possible to update my site. I'm going to be building a set of shelves and a workshop in my garage once it warms up a bit. Why? Because I loathe the idea of wasting time sorting through bins of tools and parts when I need to get something done or fixed. When something breaks, I don't want to spend a half an hour searching, I just want to grab the required stuff and get the shit done.
 
I'm going to be doing landscaping involving stone walls, stone pathways, a garden, and other things. Why? Because I hate mowing, and the more lawn I replace with aesthetically pleasing stone the less time I'll have to waste mowing.

Oddly enough, my laziness inspires me to get things done. I'm reminded of a character from a Heinlein book called Time Enough for Love who shares these traits. He was in the Navy, and through a firm desire to avoid physical labor, winds up with an illustrious military career, comes up with interesting mental arithmatic tricks to avoid hazing, and invents an airplane autopilot device. Now, I certainly don't think I'll ever be that productive, but I understand perfectly the...uh...well...motivation.

The way I see it, there's a difference between laziness and apathy. A lazy person will try to come up with ways to make their lives easier, and understands that a little work now prevents a lot of recurring and/or difficult work later. An apathetic person rarely tries to come up with solutions, and avoids all manner of effort, mental or physical. I suspect that a lot of the great advances in this world were created by lazy men and women, seeking an easier way to do something that they detested. In fact, I bet laziness is the single greatest motivator for invention the human race has ever possessed.

This is all just bullshit speculation on my part, of course, but I found it interesting and figured I'd share my thoughts.