In his latest letter to shareholders Jeff Bezos spoke about the essential DNA that drives the growth of Amazon. Key amongst them is the power of wandering. That was in my mind and led me to the wonder about the power of laziness with relation to work. The counter view to what we call laziness could be getting more done in a given timeframe, reducing low value work from your schedule or simply prioritizing life over work.
Who better to look at for inspiration than Tim Ferriss, author of the The 4-Hour Workweek: . “Being perpetually busy is akin to being sloppy with your time and is ultimately a form of laziness”, said Tim in an interview to CNBC – “It’s very easy to confuse activity with productivity,…If you don’t feel like you have time, you don’t have priorities,” he says.
Dan Martell hails the benefits of being lazy.
“Being lazy forces you to : 1. Be ruthless in abandoning low value-tasks, 2. Surround yourself with the support you need and 3. Carefully examine where and how you spend every minute in your business. In short, laziness is the precursor to leverage.”
Is checking your mail and putting efforts to “zero in mail box” a worthwhile pursuit? That one you need to answer yourself.
Matthew Ackerson wrote in Business Insider, The 7 benefits to being a lazy Entrepreneur :
- You’ll cut deals and delegate to get things done.
- You’ll work “on” rather than “in” the business and focus more on the numbers.
- You’ll sleep more, have more time for leisure and exercise and have more time to read.
Dana Brownlee wrote in a piece for The Entrepreneur Magazine – “The “lazy entrepreneur” philosophy is about getting the biggest bang for each hour so that you can work as little as possible.” Building processes and using technologies available to reduce your time inputs is key to getting more done with less time. Delegating is also key.
Dan Martell actually boils it down to a 3 step framework :
- Establish your effective hourly rate – your total current income divided by the total number of hours you work per annum.
- Log all the work you do to establish what are the low value tasks that you spend your time on.
- Outtask (not outsource) – find someone for each low value task and delegate those – whether it is checking your routine mail or your invoicing. Not necessarily find a full time outsourced employee.
In the end you need to focus on productivity, tasks that generate revenue or output (like publishable pages if you are an author, for instance) and free up the rest of your time for being happy. So how lazy are you?
Links to the articles mentioned above. All great reads. Total time required will be less than 30 mins. Great use of your time, I can vouch.
Tim Ferriss – https://cnb.cx/2AYcT8b
Dan Martell – https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/25/tim-ferriss-being-perpetually-busy-is-a-kind-of-laziness.html
Matthew Ackerson – https://www.businessinsider.com/7-benefits-to-being-a-lazy-entrepreneur-2012-4?IR=T
