To make laziness work for you, put some effort into it

If laziness is written into our genes, why not embrace it?

a post by Neel Burton published by AEON [republished by the Big Think blog]


Photo by Sabri Tuczu/Unsplash

We are being lazy if there's something that we ought to do but are reluctant to do because of the effort involved.

We do it badly, or do something less strenuous or less boring, or just remain idle. In other words, we are being lazy if our motivation to spare ourselves effort trumps our motivation to do the right or best or expected thing – assuming, of course, we know what that is.

In the Christian tradition, laziness, or sloth, is one of the seven deadly sins because it undermines society and God's plan and invites the other sins. The Bible inveighs against slothfulness, for example, in Ecclesiastes:

By much slothfulness the building decayeth; and through idleness of the hands the house droppeth through. A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things.

Today, laziness is so closely connected with poverty and failure that a poor person is often presumed lazy, no matter how hard he or she actually works.

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and if anyone is thinking that I picked this item because of the cat you would be wrong! The Big Think post does not have that cat it has a leopard and the images from Big Think do not copy.

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The Case for Downtime

a post by Therese J. Borchard for the World of Psychology blog



I’m scared of downtime. That’s right, relaxation is downright uncomfortable for me. Part of me craves it like every other human being. Yet as soon as it is here, I twitch. I pace the house. I don’t know what to do with my hands and my legs — even more importantly, my brain. Sometimes the quiet space is too intolerable so I fill it with mindless activities like scouring Facebook or checking how many Twitter followers I have.

My busyness is, at times, a defense mechanism whereby I can prove that I matter and deserve a place among the human race. My brain somehow associates productivity with intelligence, worthiness, and popularity. To-do lists decrease the risk of my annihilation. The more responsibilities, the more emails to return, the stronger the reassurance that I will survive as a middle-aged woman living in Annapolis, Maryland.

Sound crazy? I’m not alone.

Tim Kreider calls it the “busy trap.” In his New York Times piece, he writes, “Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.”

But it comes at a cost.

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