Laziness Does Not Exist

by Devon Price

By slowing down and cutting back, we can figure out which demands in our lives we can afford to let go of. When we stop seeing laziness as the enemy, we can begin to feel good about that act of letting go.

Though the Laziness Lie would love for us to believe otherwise, idleness can help us to be insightful creators and problem-solvers. But the value of laziness also goes so much deeper than that. When we give our lives space for slowness, relaxation, and doing “nothing,” we can begin to heal some of our greatest wounds and to create lives for ourselves that are nourishing rather than exhausting.

Expressive writing seems to work because it gives us the opportunity to locate and listen to the vulnerable side of ourselves that we spend all day silencing.

Expressive writing is a great way to connect with our emotions and enjoy the healing benefits of laziness. Another popular and effective method is meditation. Just as research has highlighted the benefits of expressive writing, science indicates that meditation improves blood pressure,42 immune system functioning,43 and mental health as well.44

“I prioritize the important things and invest my time and interests in what matters to me,” Annette says. “And that’s what the psychological literature says a person should do. So, you know, I could be working on some deadline I’m worried about that is ultimately arbitrary, or I could be doing what I want to be doing, which is talking to you.”

Henry Ford famously found that when he cut his employees’ hours from forty-eight per week to forty, productivity actually increased.

Researchers consistently find that in office jobs, people are capable of being productive for only about three hours per day, on average.

When we talk about idle time as being a “waste,” it implies that people are capable of working nonstop for a full eight hours, if only they had more willpower. But after periods of hard work and focus, people need time for rest.

Education researchers have known for many decades that the average student cannot pay attention for more than an hour or so without a break.

data from participants who had been sitting in an fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) brain scanner for an hour or more. He described to me how their attention levels curved up and down many times per minute, with tons of experiment time “lost” to distraction, daydreaming, and mental fatigue. These participants had been instructed to pay close attention throughout the entire experiment, but even then, their attention naturally flitted about from moment to moment. It turns out that even when we think we’re focusing on something quite intently, our attention is jumping around a bit, even on the millisecond level. Jay told me that these peaks and valleys were pretty much inevitable no matter what the researchers did to keep participants engaged. Rather than dismissing those study participants as horribly “lazy,” researchers simply knew the data had to be cleaned and filtered.

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?

The Laziness Lie thrives on making us believe we have no options. By making us feel insecure and like we’re never doing enough, it convinces us that we don’t deserve to find another job or to leave an organization that mistreats its employees.

The Laziness Lie tries to tell us that we must earn our right to be loved, or to even have a place in society, by putting our noses to the grindstone and doing a ton of hard work.

you’re marginalized, you can’t just be good, you have to be the best. But that striving for excellence comes with a hefty emotional toll. 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.

The more we adopt an accomplishment-based mindset, the more we come to catalogue, measure, and judge every single thing we do. Unfortunately, the digital age has done a lot to facilitate this obsession. Today, we can easily monitor how much exercise we get, how many likes our Instagram posts receive, how many books we’ve read this year, and how our “performance” compares to that of our friends. Every enjoyable use of our free time, whether it be cooking, crafting, or travel, can be documented, shared, and assessed relative to other people.

Mental Habits That “Dampen” Happiness Suppression Hiding or repressing positive feelings due to shyness, modesty, or fear. Distraction Ignoring the joy of the moment and concerning yourself with other things. Faultfinding Disregarding the positive side of an experience and focusing on what’s lacking or could be better. Negative Mental Time Travel Anticipating negative events that could happen in the future or reminiscing about painful experiences in the past.

Life ought to be about so much more than being productive and impressing other people. Chasing obsessively after goals and forever trying to earn social approval will never bring us satisfaction.

Mental Habits That Help Us Savor Happiness Behavioral Displays Showing happiness in our behavior: smiling, singing, jumping for joy, flapping our hands excitedly, etc. Being Present Living in the present moment, focusing on the experience as it’s happening; pushing distractions away and being mindful. Capitalizing Communicating about a positive experience with other people; celebrating an event; sharing good news with other people; getting other people excited. Positive Mental Time Travel Reflecting on happy memories or reminding people of a pleasant shared past; planning and anticipating desired future events.

Make Time for Awe Another way to curb an achievement obsession is to consciously find time to experience awe. Awe occurs when we encounter something completely new or deeply inspiring, such as a sparkling, blue sea, a rich, green forest, or an amazing vocal performance at a concert.20 Awe reminds us of the universe’s largeness and our own smallness, in a way that feels exhilarating and soothing rather than threatening.

Awe is a much deeper and more restorative form of self-care because it has a spiritual component.22 Even if you aren’t religious at all, you can feel a sense of greater purpose, a connection with nature, or a deep bond with all of humanity by seeking out moments of awe and wonder.23

Digital tools have made life much easier, but they’ve also left us with an endless array of accounts to maintain and notifications to worry about. Social media apps have created intense pressure to mine every life experience for achievement points—turning joy into clout. Nearly every activity in our lives has become something to document, measure, and broadcast our success in, despite the fact that a mountain of evidence suggests such obsessive recording and sharing can impair or erode our mental health.

Focus on Process—Not Product

we have to treat self-improvement and growth as pleasurable, gradual processes, not goals that we will ever complete.

Ninety percent of the information currently available on the Internet was added in the past two years.6 The volume of unique information the average person encounters in a day is approximately five times what the average person encountered in 1986.

The Laziness Lie encourages very binary thinking. People are either hardworking no matter their circumstances, or they’re hopelessly lazy.

The world is huge, and everywhere we turn, some horrific injustice is occurring. We can’t engage with all of it, and we don’t need to feel guilty or “lazy” for refusing to try.

Consume Less Information, More Meaningfully

Practice Active Reading Active reading is the exact opposite of the frantic doomscrolling so many of us do online. Instead of trying to take in as much information as quickly as you can, you work to slowly and intentionally break down small passages.

Have a (Real-Time) Conversation

Get Comfortable with Not Knowing

Focus on What You Can Control

Often, we’re left feeling that we have no right to boundaries at all.

When a person has grown up prioritizing the needs of other people, they often mistakenly believe that it’s selfish to have any needs of their own.

stop worrying that saying no makes us lazy.

lot of people seek out situations that feed into that need they have to feel useful to other people.”

in order for parents to maintain their own mental health and sense of identity, they must make time to pursue hobbies and social activities that have nothing to do with their kids.20 This can benefit the children in a direct way: when parents choose to detach a bit from their parenting role, they give their children the freedom to entertain themselves and find their own passions.

Determine Whether You Should Help, and How Much

Questions to Ask before Trying to “Save” Someone: Can they solve this on their own? Do they want help? Do they want my help? Am I the right person to provide help right now? Can I direct them to seek help from a professional or a close loved one? What are my motives for helping? What will helping cost me?

Do you believe that if you take care of enough people, Danny mused, eventually someone will notice and finally decide to take care of you?

Kathy Labriola recommends that people ask themselves why they want to help people in need, and what they expect to get out of helping. “We all have a mix of healthy and unhealthy motives for doing things,” she says, “and that’s okay. But you do want to get a sense of what the ratio is there.”

Instead of: Try This:23 Offering solutions to a person’s problems Ask them how they will solve it: “What do you plan to do?” Trying to make a person’s bad feelings go away Let the person express their feelings without trying to change them. Letting a person vent, cry, or rant for hours without resolution Listen supportively, but suggest a distraction or a break when the person gets “stuck” fixating on the problem. Listening while a person spirals into greater and greater anxiety, sadness, or rage Interrupt them when they start to repeat themselves or escalate. “Let’s focus on the present situation right now.” Trying to guess what the person wants Make them clarify expectations: “What would you like me to do?” Providing more support than you’re comfortable with Identify other sources of support: “Who else can help with this?” Taking responsibility for the person’s situation Deflect responsibility: “I’m flattered that you care what I think, but you’re the expert on what’s best for you.”

In our deeply victim-blaming, Laziness-Lie-loving culture, marginalized people are often told that they must solve the problem of their own oppression.

In the mainstream, workaholic workplace, nothing is more threatening than “distracting” nonconformity. The very concept of what counts as “professional” behavior is rooted in the desire for social control.

Fat people are expected to contort their bodies or starve themselves in order to fit into a world built for the thin. Disabled people are discouraged from asking for accommodations because it might make them seem “weak” or “lazy.”

To set ourselves free, we have to refuse to meet the expectations that harm us. Deciding not to conform to these unreasonable restrictions may get us branded as “lazy,” but in truth it’s some of the hardest, most virtuous work around.

Our culture views bodies as tools that exist to be used and objects that exist to win the approval of others.

Despite all of this evidence, many of us keep trying to battle fatness, because we’ve been taught to see fat as a sign of inexcusable “laziness.” “Fat” and “lazy” are two terms that often go together. Both are used to pass moral judgment on a person and to express disgust at who they are and how they live. Just as the Laziness Lie punishes economic victims for their own misfortune—You could succeed if you would just work harder—it also punishes the victims of fat hate and body negativity by saying all they need to do is eat less and exercise more.

Remember That Your Body Is Not an Object—It’s You

you can focus on what your body can do, rather than what it looks like.23 Exercise can become a process of celebrating what your body is capable of, or of enjoying the pleasure a good run or a tough weight lifting session can give, rather than a form of punishment.24 Being gentle with your body is also important. Listening to your body for signs of pain, discomfort, and hunger can help you feel more attuned to your needs and less apt to punish yourself with overexertion. Most of all, you have to work to abandon the fear that being idle or gaining weight is a sign that you’re “lazy.”

study of Facebook users found that encountering glamorous or aspirational images was associated with a drop in users’ self-esteem.