The dictionary defines “lazy” as: unwilling to work or use energy.

I wouldn’t consider myself lazy. Most of us consider ourselves hard-working people. But, upon deep introspection, I find there to be some things that I just don’t feel like doing.

Case in point. I was assembling a set of bunk beds for my children. Part of this assembly requires fastening a large number of boards together with screws. There were approximately 40 screws that needed to be “screwed in”.

I had a screwdriver in my immediate reach, so I started using it. Each drive took roughly 30 seconds. Around 8 screws in, my hand started getting tired.

Then, I had this realization, if I would take 60 seconds to go downstairs and get my “powered screwdriver”, wouldn’t I more than save that in the long run? But, I didn’t feel like it. I was in the groove of getting the bed built and I didn’t want to waste time.

Reason prevailed, thankfully. I trudged down the steps and fetched my battery-powered drill. My finger squeezed the trigger and happiness overtook me: “this is still charged up!” My greatest concern for this extra effort was alleviated.

Once I made use of the marvellous wonder of a DeWalt Impact Driver, I got the rest of those screws finished out in less than 25% of the time using my hand-powered screwdriver.

That was a win.

“Am I too lazy to become lazier?”

I have to admit that in some cases, the answer is “yes”. The word “lazier” fits better in the vernacular of the sentence than to the point I wish to make. We could substitute “lazier” for “more efficient”. 

We are busy. We have lots to do. We have great demands on our time (many are self-inflicted). We have to run from one meeting to the next. We have to take our children from one event to another.

The result is that the urgent is regularly completed. The important is relegated to tomorrow (which never happens). We stay with using the hand-powered screwdriver instead of getting the battery-powered, automatic screwdriver. This is because the 60 seconds it takes to get the power drill is too long. We are inefficient because we can’t afford the time to become more efficient.

Or can we? Maybe I can collectively step on some toes here (mine included).

When was the last time you learned a new keyboard shortcut? For almost everyone, using the mouse to navigate to the Edit menu, then clicking Copy is inefficient. Cmd + C is efficient.

If you are a merchant, when was the last time you reached out to your customers?

If you are in a more technical position, when was the last time you automated part of your work with Zapier or Integromat (this is not a sponsored post)?

If you are a developer, and you wondered how or why the framework you are using does something a certain way, have you looked at the documentation about that? For example, Laravel’s collection is massively powerful. Are you aware of all the methods available to your disposal, or do you keep coming back to the same map, each and reduce methods?

When was the last time you reached out to the people that worked for you to show them you appreciated their hard work?

My friends, instead of using that hand-powered screwdriver, let’s take the extra time to fetch the battery-powered drill—and save ourselves a lot of time in the long run.