5 Habits of Lazy Performers

Since time immemorial, laziness has been seen as a negative attribute that stirs lethargy and inactive behaviour. Such people are ascribed as passive spectators of life and are commonly termed as “couch potato”. However, when looked from a different perspective, laziness is not necessarily a bad thing. Infact, laziness has triggered a number of inventions that has taken place in order to cut the amount of work required to complete a task.

Though it might be awkward to notice the truth behind this observation, reading the following can help you find whether laziness is a vice or a virtue.

Engenders efficiency or incompetence

Bill Gates remarked, “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” A lazy person would always search for easy ways to accomplish things by focussing on essentials and eliminating the unnecessary steps involved, thereby achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted efforts. However, laziness is also one of the chief reasons that can attribute to your doom. Karl Marx lived in abject poverty, occasionally wrote articles, books etc, but never worked a day in his life. Infact, he resisted the whole idea of working and found all sorts of reasons to not work. His lazy attitude made him incapable of providing for his kids who went hungry and had to live in filthy conditions. This implies that laziness can be both a virtue and a vice. It can either result in efficiency or in incompetence.

Thinking out of the box

Lazy people tend to adopt a relaxed attitude which gives them time to think clearly and creatively. They come up with innovative ideas in order to lead a comfortable life without having to toil hard. Thanks to their laziness, neither is their mind cluttered with all sorts of thoughts nor are they stressed like hardworking people. This helps them think out of the box and build a life that requires great efficiency and less effort. Steve Jobs is one such example who besides being lazy and arrogant during his college days turned out to be a dedicated leader with great managerial skills and out of the box thinking that paved way for the success of Apple. Nevertheless, a lazy person might also be too lazy to even think, let alone divergent thinking. He/she may find another excuse to binge on unproductive things instead of focusing on anything fruitful.

Either shapes or sabotage managerial skills

Delegating tasks to others is one of the most common attributes of lazy people. They usually hire other people to do their work and are genius at getting things done. This helps them enjoy being lazy and ponder over constructive ideas for their enterprise. Moreover, they manage well and ensure that the tasks are completed in time. However, delegating work to others brings out the laziness to the forefront and at times leads to poor management. These lazy managers throw all their responsibility to others and take a back seat. Moreover, there is also a tendency that these managers might under-delegate, thereby failing to achieve their goals on time.

Prefers smart work over hard work

Lazy people believe in smart work and not hard work, wherein they tend to produce more results with fewer efforts. They avoid multi-tasking and focus on accomplishing one goal at a time. They are more inclined towards using the pressure of the looming deadline to speed up the working process. Apart from this, they try to figure out smart and effective methods to carry out their tasks. One of the smartest things they do is saying “no” to people. They are too lazy to say yes and thus their answer is always no which spare them with time to finish their tasks. On the other hand, completely shrugging off hard work can have unforeseen pitfalls and instead of paving way for success, it can become the reason for your collapse.

Technologically advanced or disabled

Lazy people automate as far as possible in order to evade any kind of work that comes their way. Many famous people are known throughout the world because of their lazy attitude that helped them create masterpieces. They developed technological tools in order to reduce their work and get over with it. Professor John Atanasoff said, “I was too lazy to calculate and so I invented the computer.” He along with Clifford Berry built the world’s first electronic-digital computer in late 1930’s in order to reduce his workload. Laziness thus drives innovations that improve productivity as lazy people always try to find better ways of doing things. Per contra it is imperative to note that these technological inventions are by and large responsible for making humans dependent on them and shrug off work that can be done manually, thereby turning into couch potatoes.

Though it cannot be gainsaid that hard work ushers in stellar results, it is also worth noting that there have been striking examples of lazy people who seem to float effortlessly to the top. However, being lazy doesn’t quite square with those who are bereft of the above mentioned attributes and are oblivious to finding the best way to accomplish their goals.