Lazy or Efficient?

Are you the kind of person that likes to just chill out and relax whenever possible? Are you someone that puts in as little effort as possible whenever possible? Do you come up with reasons not to do more than you absolutely have to? Chances are that if this describes you, a great many people think that you are lazy.

But, they might not be right. Lazy people share character traits with a certain other group that many people hold in somewhat high regard. Who you ask? Efficient people. Laziness and efficiency are both characterized by a great desire to put in little effort.  The difference is the efficient person finds ways to put in as little effort as possible to get the maximum results and the lazy person just tries to avoid work altogether.

Why does the efficient person do this? Generally, so that they can spend more time relaxing or doing whatever else it is that they want to do. The less time you spend doing what you have to do, the more time there is for what you want to do.

How many people really want to mow their lawn, wash their car, paint their house or make repairs on their car or home? Not many I'd wager.  But is it laziness or efficiency that leads them to pay someone else to do it for them? In some cases that is really a tough call. If you do not know how to do a task that needs to be done or if you are really bad at it, paying someone else to do it is more efficient. If you know how to do it but have a busy schedule and  honestly do not have the time, paying someone else to do it is more efficient. If you are just avoiding the task with no real reason for it, you are probably being lazy.

But here's the thing. Without you playing twenty questions with me, you do not know my motivations and reasons for what I choose to do or not do. You can not fairly judge whether another person is being lazy or not about a specific thing. What seems lazy in one instance seems efficient in another instance. What happens is, you filter things into different categories based on how much work you do or would put into a given situation. The tendency is to call other people lazy for putting in very little effort in areas where we work hard and calling them efficient when those very same people get good results.

Think about it. You want as much of your time as possible to be free and without obligation don't you? You want to be able to get up when you want to and do what you want to when you want to without "needing" to do anything right?(lazy) And when you do have obligations to fulfill you want to be able to just flex a little and get a lot of payoff for your efforts right?(efficient)

I think that calling some people lazy and other people efficient is stupid. I think everyone is lazy and everyone is efficient. And some people are just better at each than others.