Being Lazy is my Superpower
The Amplified Impact Podcast
January 4th, 2023
Let’s talk about why being ‘lazy’ might not be such a bad thing after all.
I used to beat myself up for not fitting the ‘hustle culture,’ but now I’ve discovered the power of my ‘lazy’ streak.
As we step into 2024, let’s not stress over those ‘big’ resolutions.
Instead, I’ll share my approach to keeping things simple and achieving what truly matters.
It’s not about doing more…it’s about doing better.
I hope my ‘lazy’ epiphany helps you redefine any labels you’ve slapped on yourself.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“Because when I’m lazy, it gives me the space I need for daydreaming, for boredom, for thinking creatively. And that’s one of the most important, valuable skills out there.”
– Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
You. I am a pretty lazy person. And for many, many years, I took that, I would tell myself that about myself, and I thought it was a negative thing. I am lazy whenever I’m not moving towards my goals or doing something that’s productive or making me money or whatever it is, I would get. I would get kind of bummed because I was like, I’m lazy and I don’t want to do that stuff. I know I should be doing that stuff, but I just don’t have the same kind of drive and motivation that you see on social media with all these other entrepreneurs and gurus who are grinding around the clock. And I felt bad about myself. But it’s been in recent years that I started to realize that being lazy is not a bad thing.
And in some ways it was actually a strength. Because when I’m lazy, it gives me the space I need for daydreaming, for boredom, for thinking creatively. And that’s one of the most important, valuable skills out there. I don’t think that’s something that you can’t over optimize for creativity. You need to allow space for it. It’s a messy process. So you have to be kind of not lazy per se, but you have to be willing to not do anything for extended periods of time, which can then make you, from the outside, you feel lazy, because you’re like, I didn’t do anything. I didn’t accomplish anything.
I spent 2 hours, but I have nothing to show for it. Except for this one idea. Well, that one idea could be the thing that changes everything, but even more so than this. What I came to realize is that my laziness, if directed towards the right things, yeah, it can be very, very powerful. But here’s the other side of it. Is that because I’m lazy, sometimes it means I have to learn how to get more done in less time so that I can go on being lazy. Like Parkinson’s law says, the amount of work expands to fill the time allotted, which means if I’m giving myself an hour to accomplish a task, it’s going to take the full hour. If I give myself five minutes, it’s only going to take five minutes.
And as a lazy person, I tend to give myself a lot of time to do things, and then it kind of fills up that time not so great. However, I figured out how I can get things done in less time and then allow myself to have the time to be lazy, and that’s through systems and processes. Bill Gates, he said something many years ago, back when he was still the CEO of Microsoft. He said, I would rather a lazy a player than a hardworking b player, because the a player figures out how to get the thing done in less time. And when I heard that, I was like, oh, man, that is me to the t. That is how I live my life. I figured out how to get things done in less time so that I can go on being lazy, not so I can put more things onto the plate. And I used to feel bad about that.
I used to feel bad that I’d get things done fast and then I wouldn’t add more to the plate. And these days I’ve recognized, oh, that’s not important. As long as I’m moving the really truly valuable, high leverage activities forward, I don’t need to do more and more and more. And that’s why last year, 2023, was the year of doing less but better. It was the primary focus of my year, and as a consequence, my satisfaction and my pleasure, my mental angst was all in a much better place overall. And so I share this with you, because you’re at the beginning of the year and you’re probably thinking about what 2024 has in store for you, and you’re setting all these big, ambitious goals and New Year’s resolutions, and that’s what we all do, right? And then we go a couple of weeks, we fall out of our routines, our habits, and then we start to question ourselves and we think, oh, I’m lazy. I’ll never change. I’ll never make meaningful impact on my goals.
And I can’t even follow through for more than three weeks before I fall off the bandwagon. Don’t stress. Don’t stress. You might be lazy like me, and that’s okay. But one of the things that I’ve done that has helped me be lazy and kind of own that is one setting the bar for success very low for myself on a day to day basis. Because it’s not about how much you get done, it’s about what you get done. And when you just say, I’m going to get the fewest number of things done, it then forces you to ask yourself, okay, of those few number of things that I could get done, what are the most important ones? And when you ask that question, you filter everything through that lens. You focus on the actually high value, high leverage, high importance things, and as a consequence, you might get less done, but you got the better things done.
And so you actually end up moving towards your goals even faster. I don’t know if any of this resonates with you if you’re lazy or if you consider yourself a hustler. But I think so much of life is just about, like, success in life is really a reflection of the words that we use when we think about ourselves or how we describe ourselves. And we can change the connotation, change the meaning of those things just based off of our desire for what we want it to mean. So when I used to call myself lazy, I was saying it in a derogatory, negative way. These days, when I call myself lazy, I actually say that as, like, a badge of honor. I’m lazy, and I will still move towards my goals faster than most people. That’s kind of cool, right? And so whatever your hang up is, whatever your thing, maybe you’re not lazy.
Maybe you have other things. Figure out how you can reframe that, whatever the negative version of your internal dialogue. Because we’re all our own harshest critics. That’s okay. Society says that’s okay. You’re allowed to hate yourself, but society says you’re not allowed to be your own best cheerleader. Right? Like, that’s no good. Now, you’re an ego.
You’re full of ego, and you’re a narcissist. But I don’t subscribe to that. So whatever that thing is in your life that you look at right now as like, oh, that’s the thing that I wish I wasn’t. Ask yourself, what would it look like if you were to reframe that and think about it as a strength? What would that look like? Sometimes it’s just a matter of twisting our words. It’s a game of semantics, but it can have a massive impact, and it has on my life. At least now I don’t feel bad about being lazy. So hopefully this brings you guys some value. If not, if this was a weird one, I apologize.
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