Laziness

Lazy minds rule the world.

Source

Rigid, authoritarian characters often lead everyone to disaster in unpredictable environments. These kinds of people think they can force their will onto situations which cannot be controlled, and the frustration that follows compounds into more problems.

Flexibility and adaptability flow from a mind that is also flexible and adaptable, which often means allowing for a certain degree of slack in both yourself and the people around you. Hence the best mind for solving complex problems tends to be efficient and therefore a bit lazy.

It therefore pays—quite handsomely—to invest in lazy minds when you want to solve complex problems. They may be harder to manage since they're independent by nature, but the results you'll get will be far greater.

Work Ethic

The common cultural trope, at least in America, is that hard work is what separates winners from losers. While it's clear sustained effort is an important part of the equation, the reality is that hard work is not a real advantage on its own. To my mind, anyone who only knows how to work hard hasn't taken the time to develop a sustainable advantage in whatever game they're playing. It's a strategy of mindless scurrying, mixed with desperate hope.

Real winners play the game to win, which means finding the most efficient, long-lasting edges that will maximize return on investment. Pure effort provides 1:1 returns: one hour of effort generates one hour of pay. Intelligent effort generates nonlinear returns: one hour of effort may equal 100x ROI.

It's cliché to say "Work smarter, not harder," but there's quite a bit of truth to it. Even though we've created many ideologies around work ethic, as a species we've developed an implicit disdain towards those who lean too much on hard labor. It's because we know, down in the deepest recesses of our genes, that smart people (and smart organisms in general) find a better way.

A Taxonomy of Minds

Consider this quote by German general Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, where he explained how he classified officers:

I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage.

This framework fits well when you need to collaborate on solving complex problems. Stupid, hardworking people must be avoided at all costs, no matter what their rates are. They're the kind of people who show up and just start mindlessly mashing buttons, if only to feel like a valued member of the group. Imagine a midwit with the ability to make life-or-death decisions, and you'll see why this is a bad idea.

Lazy, stupid people should be avoided because they just aren't worth much in general. They get half of the equation right, but their total lack of insight or curiosity means they'll never care enough to be impactful.

Smart, hardworking people are great for task-oriented work where limited creativity is required. Think of MBAs and people with experience at consulting firms, for example. Their education and on-the-job training teaches them to be excellent gophers, filled with initiative and gusto, but limited when left to their own devices. To the smart, hardworking character, everything is a nail and they are the most enthusiastic hammer in the toolshed.

The smart, lazy people are the ones who you entrust with the most serious problems. They're the ones who don't care about rules, regulations or expectations. They're not motivated by gold stars like the smart, hardworking crowd—all they want to do is seek the best answer, collect the biggest payday possible, then go for a leisurely walk on the beach.

Realize that there are situations when you just need something simple and repetitive done. Not every task requires creativity, sometimes all you require is a specialized set of hands to generate a specific outcome. But it's all too easy to generalize off of that framework and assume that the same kind of thinking which is suited to such tasks is appropriate for solving complex problems.

Lazy Machines

The Dude abides.

One of my favorite ideas about laziness is the Lebowski theorem, which comes from the world of AI. It was stated in a simple tweet by Harvard cognitive scientist Joscha Bach:

No superintelligent AI is going to bother with a task that is harder than hacking its reward function.

A smart machine doesn't care about what anyone else wants out of it. It just collects the biggest reward it can in the most efficient way possible, then goes back to the AI version of smoking a joint and drinking White Russians.

Or the intelligent machine won't do it at all, since intelligence implies a high degree of independence. The science fiction writer Stanisław Lem wrote about this in his 1971 book The Futurological Congress:

If the machine is not too bright and incapable of reflection, it does whatever you tell it to do. But a smart machine will first consider which is more worth its while: to perform the given task or, instead, to figure some way out of it. Whichever is easier. And why indeed should it behave otherwise, being truly intelligent? For true intelligence demands choice, internal freedom.

This is a framework that works in domains beyond AI. Although it can be frustrating to deal with people (or machines) who don't do exactly as they're instructed, that lack of obedience is often a mark of independent thought. Their lazy instincts can be a huge help—if you're willing to let them be themselves.

Evaluating Collaborators

Say you're walking down the street of your city and you stop a stranger on the sidewalk. Without any kind of explanation, you ask them to go get you a coffee. If they immediately respond with, "Right away!" and sprints off to the nearest Starbucks, what would you think? Does that kind of automatic obedience mark them as intelligent in your book?

This leads to some mental reframing when you want to recruit people to work with. Are the people who check boxes relentlessly, who do just as they're told, the people you should call "smart"? It's all too common for us to mistake credentials and work ethic for intelligence, when the reality is that the smartest people out there are those who are more often than not classified as "lazy" on at least a couple of significant dimensions.

These are the kinds of minds who are best suited to solving the most difficult, complex problems that this book is all about. For many leaders, these characters are invaluable assets, lazy savants who may look like they just rolled out of bed but in possession of the brainpower required to find real solutions.

The Vacation Method

Jason Akatiff, an entrepreneur in the world of internet marketing, utilizes a vacation-based method to evaluate the quality of the systems he works within. This exemplifies the lazy-intelligent approach, where energy is only expended where it should be, and a premium is placed on allowing cracks in the system to show themselves naturally.

Here's how he explains it:

Work on systems in the business. Then take vacations often. Come back and see what’s broken. Fix them and go on vacation again. If you’re there, you’ll micro correct and never know how strong the business systems are.

If a system dies the moment you walk away from it, it's not worth much. By stepping back on a regular basis to see what emerges, Jason and his collaborators don't have to worry about overcontrol. It's baked into the design of the system itself in a natural way, and the best systems will survive over time. This is the smart, lazy way to diagnose and solve systemic problems.