Laziness Does Not Exist

by Devon Price

in office jobs, people are capable of being productive for only about three hours

But after periods of hard work and focus, people need time for rest. The employee laziness that so many managers fret about patently does not exist. Those distracted, idle-seeming employees are already doing all they can.

average student cannot pay attention for more than an hour or so without a break.

on task for more than twenty minutes at a time, and the more distractions (such as e-mail, ambient noise, and instant messages) they have to deal with, the shorter their attention span is.

It’s important that we make time for idle chitchat, dawdling at the water-cooler, and daydreaming at our workstations—particularly if we want to engage in high-quality work. The more we overextend ourselves, the worse our work gets.

Tired people also think in more biased ways, focusing on negatives49 and making more unfair judgments.50

they were losing touch with their patients, their coworkers, and even themselves.

I felt like I was being emotionally vampirized by these people, that their stories were sucking the energy out of me and leaving a bitter, cranky husk behind. Empathy requires a great deal of energy,

started experiencing a profound loss of identity, with no sense of purpose.

These overworked employees were also more likely to suffer from anxiety and to use substances to cope, because drugs were more readily available to them than time off.

found small ways to “stick it” to their employers, whether by stealing office supplies or fudging their time sheets.

Workplaces where the goals were vague and projects were never completed tended to have more burned-out workers.

The MBI describes burnout as consisting of three things: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization (loss of identity), and a lost sense of personal accomplishment.

This time around, when I felt burnout nipping at my heels, I was able to be proactive and set boundaries to protect myself from it.

Burning out is like going from seeing the world in color to seeing it only in black and white. When we burn out, we stop being able to feel our emotions as intensely, and may even experience pain and hunger less strongly, making it even harder to remember to be kind to ourselves. In addition, burned-out people also have a reduced ability to recognize emotions in other people, which means that they can’t connect as readily with their family and friends.59

Burned-out people don’t sleep as well, which means they’re likely more irritable and more prone to getting sick.63

Chronic burnout can even cause a person to lose brain volume.

burnout is not just a labor issue, it’s a public health issue. Overwork strips many of us of our health, our cognitive capacity, and even our passion for life.

We all overextend ourselves sometimes, and that choice, when freely made, is not inherently destructive.

Wild Mind Collective, an organization that provides stressed and burned-out academics with a digital space to talk about issues

“Look at how people at work talk about coffee,” she said to me at lunch a few years ago. “Everyone talks constantly about how much they need coffee or want more coffee; some workplaces provide their employees with as much free coffee as they want. It’s a stimulant that makes us work more, and it causes so many people to have terrible anxiety. And yet most people don’t even question why they need to consume so much of it. Instead we romanticize it.”

was I really setting my life up in a healthy way? Was I creating expectations for myself that were sustainable? Was I so afraid of laziness that I couldn’t let my body just be?

When am I most in my element? What doesn’t bring me alive? What feels dreadful? What do I find inexhaustibly fascinating? When have I been most happy? Who are the people I want to work with?

What do I need to be physically well?

it takes a lot of self-knowledge and confidence to be able to say no to things.

Advocate for Your Autonomy Focus on Quality, Not Hours Spent at Work Break the Work-Life Interference Loop

One of the greatest predictors of both job satisfaction and employee motivation is how much freedom a person has.

The more freedom employees are given, the more satisfied they are, and the better his business performs.

more productive,” he says, “it’s basically against their human nature. It squashes and pushes down their motivation.”

overjustification effect.”70 Basically, if you take a job that a person naturally likes doing and then start

tying that pleasant activity to rewards or punishment, such as their level of pay or whether they get reprimanded, you’ll actually ...

we don’t have to push and pressure ourselves to overcome our “lazy” side. Our motivation will come naturally,

Share the Science on Autonomy and Motivation

Ask for Flex Time and Remote Work Options

Take On Responsibilities That Excite You

I’ve found time and time again that many people are afraid to even consider leaving a job that’s hurting them, because they fear that doing so is “giving up” or being “lazy.”

The Laziness Lie says that virtuous, worthwhile people spend long hours at their jobs, toiling away no matter how drained they feel.

Instead of tying your value as a person to the number of hours you spend at work, focus on the results.

What’s something I accomplished this month that I’m really proud of? How have my skills grown in the past year? Have I found more effective ways of doing old tasks? Have I improved processes at my workplace or made things run more smoothly? How have I supported other people in doing their jobs more effectively?

Sometimes, doing a job well means letting other responsibilities drop, at least for a little while.

autonomy—and trusting them to get important things done at the pace that feels naturally sustainable and right.

Because the Laziness Lie has so deeply permeated the workplace, sometimes the only way to break out of the hamster wheel of work-life interference is to leave the wheel entirely.

Often we need a big wake-up call to realize that we do actually have the skills and drive needed to succeed somewhere that’s less punishing.

The Laziness Lie has taught us that work is the altar at which we must worship. It’s scary to step away from constantly churning out productivity—particularly when we believe that our worth is determined by how much we do and what we accomplish.

The Lie also implies that our intuition cannot be trusted; our cravings for rest must be ignored, our urges for

pleasure, tenderness, and love must be written off as signs of weakness.

A lot of queer people still feel an immense pressure to be the “best little person in the world.” We accumulate achievements and accomplishments in the hopes that they will help us earn back the respect and love we lost by choosing to live openly as ourselves.

tempted by the Laziness Lie to strive endlessly for accomplishments and rewards. Our culture teaches us that if we achieve greatness, we may finally deserve to feel safe and at ease.

Being an overachiever can provide you with a buffer when things get rough.

Constantly having to put on a performance of being diligent, motivated, and well behaved can leave people feeling like their lives are inauthentic and don’t reflect who they truly are.