Telling someone to work harder is as helpful as a basketball coach telling someone to become taller.
Sure, taller people are better at basketball. People who work hard accomplish more. But you can't force it. We're all born with a propensity to work that can't be changed after early childhood. Forcing yourself to work harder by drinking more coffee, taking stimulants, and being higher energy – these short-sighted tactics lead to insomnia, drug addiction, and burnout.
The myth of changeable propensity to work persists because it's in the interest of business owners to have their employees on afterburners, replaced when they burn out. It's not for your benefit!
Is something different possible?
Here is my suggestion for people with the following traits:
- Lazy, but not extremely lazy. You're happy to put in one or two hours of focused work each day, but that's around your limit.
- Fairly intelligent. It sucks to say this but if you're lazy AND dumb, I don't think you'll have very good life outcomes.[1]
- Organized. If you're disorganized and you're also lazy, it's going to be tough, man. You need to be pretty organized if you want to be effective.
- Independent-minded. You're able to do things that make sense even if they go against the grain. If you're a crowd follower at heart, this will be hard and you might want to stick with the coffee/stimulant thing.
Turn work into play
People say, if you love your job, you never have to work a day in your life. This is wrong, because even the best jobs involve large amounts of scut work. Instead, figure out what you like, and why you like it. Then look for jobs with the same mechanism.
I love turn-based strategy video games. The main characteristic of turn-based games is that I have as much time as I want to think about the situation before I make my move. I work in finance, so should I be a day trader making quick decisions, or an investment analyst spending weeks on a solid company valuation?[2] The investment analyst job is very fun because I enjoy the luxury of having time to research and think, whereas the day trader job would be stressful and unprofitable.
Rare traits
Think about what personality traits you have that few others have. For example, I don't feel bad when I buy a stock and it drops a lot. This is a rare trait, because most people have an emotional aversion to losing money. Therefore, I can succeed by choosing careers that value this trait.
Rare traits are different from rare skills. Rare skills are those that are undersupplied in the market because it's difficult to develop the skills, either because of the large amount of hard work required, or a high requirement for innate talent. But if you're lazy, it is difficult to force yourself to grind for rare skills, and if you had innate talent you would already be using it. So I don't recommend aiming to get rare skills.
High agency
Another way to be a successful lazy person is to be really "high agency". This essay is a great explanation of high agency. The key idea is that when you have a goal in mind, nothing can stop you from achieving it.
In my experience, the feeling is not that you are moving mountains to achieve your goal. Instead, it's a feeling of inevitability, that obviously you will reach your goal, just as you have many times before. Externally, it looks as if you are a hard worker, grinding away at the problem and constantly working on it. But interally, it feels as natural and effortless as drinking water when you're thirsty.
The question remains, how do you become high agency? Luckily I don’t have to write about it, because you can just read it here.
Pareto principle
The pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes. Simple – identify the 20% of causes and work only on those, and you'll be 4x as efficient as the average person!
It's not a joke, you really can do this. The requirement is independent thinking. Regular people don't do this because convention says you have to do 10 useless tasks because that's the way it's always been done. But as a lazy person, your brain is always thinking of stupid things, like "why don't they make hexagonal pizzas?" Just put these useless thoughts towards thinking of how to cutting out unnecessary work, and you'll become highly effective.