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993 sats \ 15 comments \ @Aardvark 9h FiresidePhilosophy

I was talking to my younger sister on the phone a while back and we were discussing the differences between myself, her, and my older brother. She came to the conclusion that my older brother would paddle up stream to get to his destination but he would get there, while she would just go with the flow and eventually get there. I of course, would take the bridge, get there first, and ask them why they were wet.

I have always been lazy and will always be lazy, which may be surprising given my post history. If I'm not interested in something, I'm not getting off the couch (apologies to my wife).

However, when I am interested in something, I tend to ALWAYS search for the path of least resistance. When it came to weightlifting, for instance, I obsessively learned everything that I possibly could. The goal, was always how do I effectively find the most efficient use of my energy to get the maximum benefit. I'm not interested in investing a year into something that can be done in 11 months and 3 weeks.

Due to the nature of my job, I don't have set hours, I work until the job is done. So if I can find a way to take 3 seconds off a process that I do 20 times a day I just gained over 4 hours of free time in a year. This is literally how I think about things that I am forced to do, when I'd rather be doing anything else.

I guess the point I'm getting at is that negative traits don't always have to be negative. Am I lazy? Or am I a free time maximalist? A coin has two sides.

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182 sats \ 0 replies \ @freetx 8h

I'm naturally lazy as well....also most of my life was spent working as a sysadmin in one form or another....thats the type of job where laziness can be rewarded in the sense that you mentioned: If I can figure ways to automate tasks then it means more free time for me, but interestingly that directly benefits the company as well (ie. reformatting a failed server automatically vs having to fix it by hand).

The problem with that is its hard to transfer that knowledge! I mean, that I have systems-upon-systems to help with that automation. For instance, if rolling out a new server for a client, I can use Intel vPRO + PXE server + kickstart + ansible + vpns to do that anywhere in the enterprise....I can do this all from my lounge chair with a few clicks. However its hard to onboard new help because its all a bit of a rube-goldberg contraption, added that I'm lazy so don't do documentation well....

Ultimately, from an HR perspective it would be best to pair lazy-but-creative types with methodical-and-proactive types so that each could buffer the weaknesses of the other.

43 sats \ 2 replies \ @Fabs 7h

I've said it once and I'll say it again: Lazy people are mostly very efficient people.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @af1f6f3e17 5h

I can confirm, being very lazy I also became a libertarian as I don't want to spend time working for politicians and parasites. Also saving in sats is for the very very lazy, it allows you to work much less and get off the rat race much faster.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @000w2 1h

That's only if they're lazy and goal driven. Just being lazy doesn't do anything. The concept of efficiency doesn't even make sense for someone without goals.

42 sats \ 1 reply \ @denlillaapan 7h

Due to the nature of my job, I don't have set hours, I work until the job is done.

Honest work. Or, as Peter McCormack said many moons ago: you work bitcoin hours.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Aardvark OP 7h

I like that!

31 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 9h

My middle school math teacher told us that mathematicians are very lazy. That's why they prefer short clever proofs over longer brute force proofs.

I tend to be on a different flip side of this, but it's the same idea. I tend to procrastinate on projects that I know need to get done eventually. The result, though, is that once the deadline is close enough, I focus on the task until it's done and ultimately do a better job in less time.

34 sats \ 0 replies \ @Aardvark OP 9h

I'm a massive procrastinator also.

Your post may explain why I was always good at math though. The normal version of good at math, not the SN version where people do complex equations for fun.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @IamSINGLE 6h

I'm not naturally lazy but I accept I've felt the power of being lazy many times. Sometimes laziness has rewarded me freshness of thoughts, mental peace, more resolution and so on.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder 6h

i would say that whether it's a negative trait depends on framing. like if you said you were going to cut a log using a whack-ass old hand saw V a chainsaw, you would not be framed as a lazy bum for using a chainsaw, you would be seen as a logical person.

Goggins might choose the handsaw, but he would have his own goal for doing it. he'd be making a whole video about it where he gets rhabdo while doing a 100-hour sawathon and calling people chainsaw pussy cucks.

regardless, i think searching for the path of least resistance isn't actually lazy, it's just human nature.

imo, if you are taking action and doing something , regardless of optimal or not, by default you are (generally) not lazy

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Artilektt 7h

When it came to weightlifting, for instance, I obsessively learned everything that I possibly could. The goal, was always how do I effectively find the most efficient use of my energy to get the maximum benefit.

What were your conclusions?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Aardvark OP 7h

I have 5 years worth of spread sheets tracking all of my lifts. Because everyone is different, I've had to do a lot of trial and error to figure out what is very close to my maximum recoverable volume.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryotosensei 8h

I don’t think like that because if I were to be so conscious about time, I would drive myself nuts. I find that things always take up more time than I expect - and I consider myself a fast worker. Case in point: I allocated say two hours to set last year’s paper. Turned out that I had to spend the whole afternoon because my boss had changed the Table of Specifications. I was angry with her, but what was I gonna do? So, I usually just tell myself to do one thing and give myself grace to get it done, heedless of how much time I use

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @CruncherDefi 9h

I'm not interested in investing a year into something that can be done in 11 months and 3 weeks.

Doesn't seem like a good time investment. Optimizing something by ~2% is almost certainly not worth the mental cost and lost time on the research.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Aardvark OP 9h

That all depends on how many times you can squeeze another 2%