Laziness

I don’t know about you, but I’m lazy. Why do more than you have to? Right? Who actually wants to do more work for themselves anyway? Not me. Or anyone else I know. Laziness must be part of human nature.

Human nature. That conjures up thoughts all on its own. What is it? If everything that is created or shaped without mans influence is nature, then everything created or shaped by man would be human nature. Right? Like a building. A car. A boat. Bridges. Coca-Cola. Whatever. Wrong! It’s not that simple. Good thing I’m not writing about that. Oh, crunch, abrupt gear change. Let’s get back on topic.

Laziness. I think there are roughly three main types of laziness and the rest are just variations of the themes.

You have the basic denial laziness. Just pretend whatever repellant thing you have to do does not exist and then you don’t have to do it. Ignore it completely. It will probably go away later anyway. Kids are the best at this and seem to reach their apex during the teenage years. Look at most of their bedrooms as an example. Typically they look like an urban war zone. "Why do I need to pick up my clothes when the laundry fairy comes once a week and does it for me?" "And then puts them away." Or chores. "What trash? The can’s not full." "The yard doesn’t need mowing today." We all do it, we just get better at hiding or justifying it as we get older.

Then you have your basic time wasting laziness. The laziness that seemed like a good idea at the time but went horribly pear shaped upon application. A simple example of this is the vacuum cleaner and the piece of string scenario. You know the one. Admit it, you’ve done it too. There you are vacuuming the floor and happen upon a piece of string. Of course you expect to vacuum it up. But the string is caught in the fibers of the carpet and the vacuum just will not suck it up. So what do you do? You bend over, pick up the string... And drop it on the floor again. This will somehow allow the string to now be successfully vacuumed up. Except it doesn’t. Since you don’t want to have to walk over to the trash right now and throw the string away, or carry it around with you until later... You try again. Eventually, after about fifty two tries, the vacuum sucks up the string. And then leaves it stuck to the carpet about two feet later. Occasionally the string is successfully vacuumed up. Usually though, after giving up in frustration, you end up picking it up and throwing it away. A more complex version of this is the "Find the keys" game. You were to lazy to put them where they belonged in the first place and then spent waaaayyyyy more time later trying to find them. And then you have to put everything back that you tore apart looking for them. Or end up losing more things and wasting even more time looking for them. I wonder how much shorter our lives would be if the time wasted out of laziness were deducted off the end? Would we change our ways, or just accept that we only live until, oh, say about fifty on average? I hope we don’t find out.

I saved my favorite type of laziness for last. The kind that brings true rewards. The kind I strive for. While sitting on my butt. Watching TV. With a pile of dirty dishes languishing in the sink.

Of course most people do not consider it laziness at all. When you come up with a new way to decrease your labor and still do the same job, people call it efficiency. When someone invents a new machine to make their job easier, people call them innovative. Companies hire consultants and pay them big money to help them figure out ways to do more for less. It is all driven by laziness at the labor level. We don’t want to work any harder. We want it to be easier. We want it to take less time. We give kudos to those who help us beat the system.

And then we go and find new things to take up our time. And waste it. Like vacuuming string.