Self-help business books – the kind that tell you how to be a better salesperson, manager, leader or visionary – typically give advice about things like perseverance, commitment, building relationships and trust, climbing your personal success ladder, battling negativity and, in sum, working hard to succeed. Whew! Just reading the metaphors for getting ahead can leave you exhausted and short of breath. But, most of us figure that success won’t come from ignoring the reports that are due by 8 a.m. in favor of spending all morning trying to keep Odus from falling off the moon.
Maybe playing Candy Crush all day isn’t the best recipe for job success, but developing your inner laziness just might be. It’s the advice that professional coaches Jeff Goldberg and Steve Bookbinder give in “Leveraging Your Laziness: How to Do What You Love All the Time.” Regular readers of this column know that one of the things I love doing is imagining the taste of an ice cold margarita on a beach in Belize. Can I really leverage that into a successful career?
According to Goldberg and Bookbinder, imagining your ideal life is the beginning of making it happen. What most people call “lazy,” the authors call “living life as it was meant to be lived.” And believe me, I was meant to live on that beach. But as lazy as you might want to be, achieving such a life means spending time and thought on figuring out how to bring it about. “Laziness,” according to the authors “is avoiding things you suck at doing or don’t want to do.” Your task is to figure out what you really like doing and finding ways to do it more often. Even laziness comes at a price.
The authors’ 16-point plan (with some points awfully similar to others) provides readers with concise, inspirational advice that actually isn’t all that wacky. Consider why most of us are unhappy. In our jobs and our lives, we spend inordinate amounts of time on tasks we really hate and too little time on the things that truly make us happy. We allow toxic people to take over – the kind of people who seem “programmed” according to Goldberg and Bookbinder to “sabotage themselves and virtually every relationship they enter into.” We spend too much time in our “Suck Zone,” with people who are too willing to confirm that we truly do suck.
Inspirational quotes throughout the book are well chosen. I liked reading – according to Agatha Christie – that necessity is not the mother of invention. Instead it “arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.” In other words, the reason we invent innovative things is because we want to accommodate our own laziness. How else to explain electric can openers? But, the authors have a point. Humans put great effort into being miserable. We believe innovation requires hard work instead of the pleasure of reflection.
What we need is a reality check that can help us identify those things that push us away from what we love doing. Despite the evident enthusiasm the authors have for being lazy, the advice they give, however, has more to do with honest reflection and making a commitment to changing the sucky things in one’s life, rather than giving up your day job (and moving to Belize).
In fact, it shouldn’t be that difficult to recognize the sticking points in your life. Most of us can identify the “toxic goons” who take up too much time, the daily work tasks that sap our energy, and which people (including our bosses) we could really do without. In case you need an extra push, Goldberg and Bookbinder provide questions and exercises, with space for your answers and a helpful “Don’t wimp out,” reminder at the end of each chapter. And while most of us do realize the things we need to change, taking the time to write them down can be a positive source of motivation.
With no disrespect to the authors, what I really liked about this book is that it’s only 67 pages long—barely enough reading to get a good suntan while lying on the beach with time left over for idle reflection. FBN
Written by Constance Devereaux
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