How you can turn one of the “seven deadly sins” into an ally for a better life.
By Thomas Rutledge Ph.D.
Historical evidence suggests that laziness—commonly defined as a “disinclination to activity despite having the ability to act”—is an enduring part of human nature. This is true despite warnings about laziness from sources as ancient as the Bible to promises of wealth and prosperity from eliminating laziness in modern self-help books.
Although laziness appears to have been with us from our earliest ancestors, this “disinclination to activity” is not limited to humans. Instead, from larger mammals such as homo sapiens all the way down the animal kingdom to tiny insects, some organisms behave more lazily than their peers. We are still searching for the first person without at least occasional signs of laziness. Even high achieving people—competitive athletes and 80-hour-a-week working CEOs—for example, report that they experience desires to be lazy even if they rarely act on the desire.
Neuroscience research backs this up. Summarized in Dr. Daniel Kahneman’s masterful book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, cognitive research indicates that the visible lazy behavior we see on the outside is mirrored by lazy thinking on the inside. Depressingly, even our brains are lazy. Our brains, in fact, invisibly strive to minimize cognitive effort throughout the day using subconscious heuristics, biases, and mental short-cuts despite the problems, mistakes, and conflicts often caused by lazy thinking.
Is Laziness All Bad?
This probably sounds grim. On one hand, laziness appears to be “built in” to the human condition. In the language of technology, laziness is hardware, not software. Neither our minds nor our muscles are exempt. Worse, not the promise of riches or threats of eternal damnation have so far proven capable of dislodging laziness from our nature.
With so many human failings attributed to laziness, it is no wonder that there is a booming “anti-laziness” market of remedies in the form of self-help products and time management programs. Given the absence of evidence that any of these laziness remedies offer a long-term solution, it may be tempting to save our money and accept our lazy natures as inevitable.
But what if we’ve been misled about laziness? What if the solution is not to get rid of our lazy disposition and instead learn how to befriend it for our benefit?
How Marketers Take Advantage of Laziness
Many businesses have succeeded by partnering with our lazy dispositions. Instead of seeking to conquer laziness, many of the world’s leading innovators learned to cooperate with laziness.
Steve Jobs, for example, knew that people could carry separate phones, cameras, and laptops, for example, while appreciating that many people would prefer an all-in-one “smartphone” that did the job of all three with less effort. Jeff Bezos knew that people could travel to malls and bookstores to shop while predicting that many people would prefer to shop more quickly and easily through a website like Amazon. Mark Zuckerberg knew that people could walk, drive, and fly to visit friends and family while believing that many people would prefer to connect with others using an online platform that minimized their time and effort.
Pizza delivery companies, Netflix, online dating websites, Zoom, and many, many other businesses all recognized that just because people could do things the hard way doesn’t mean that they would not prefer to do things an easier way. Cooperating with the human tendency towards laziness is arguably the most successful business strategy of all time.
The counterargument is obvious. The above innovators and products profit at our expense. They take advantage of our lazy natures to seduce us into fast food, sedentary lifestyles, imprudent purchases, and arguments on social media. As companies like these become even more skillful at marketing their products for our lazy brains, these trends are likely to get worse. This is the dark side of laziness on full display. What other side is there?
How Laziness Can Help You
Laziness—absent the guild and judgment—refers to our basic desire to meet our needs and obtain our wants without time or effort. This is the Law of Least Effort, the Staple’s Easy Button, and the desire for immediate gratification. Although this side of ourselves can easily be exploited by others, it can also be directed for our personal benefit.
If the only path to health and happiness is through hard work, discipline, and sacrifice, most of us will never enjoy these rewards for long. Any review of research looking at the long-term adherence to diets, exercise programs, or substance abuse recovery proves this point. As long as our lifestyles are set up such that making unhealthy choices is faster and easier than making healthy choices, the former will prevail over the latter. This defines one of our most important tasks in life: to identify strategies that cater to our lazy human nature, making it simple as possible to make the decisions that promote physical and mental well-being.
Consider nutrition. At present, the mad genius of the fast food industry is to maximize convenience and minimize the costs of purchasing their products. No Surgeon General report about the dangers of fast food will ever be enough to counter our general disposition to convenience. Instead, we need to adapt fast food industry strategies to help us consume more nutritious foods. On a national level, this might mean replacing (for example) current government food subsidies for products like corn with subsidies for green vegetables or organic produce to make them more affordable.
More importantly, however, on an individual level, we can make immediate changes towards “lazy nutrition” by purchasing frozen vegetables (cheaper and longer-lasting than fresh vegetables), buying pre-packaged salads instead of telling ourselves we’ll make our own, and replacing bags of processed food snacks with bags of pre-cleaned carrots, broccoli, and other vegetables and fruits.
For those who prefer fresher or more expensive versions of their vegetables and fruits, keep it up. However, for the majority who lack the time and energy or who simply prefer convenience, there is minimal loss in quality in adopting these “lazy” options. In the home, position your power foods on the counters, top shelves, and in front of other food options. Our food decisions are usually made rapidly, making us prone to convenience cues. Make the best foods in your home, therefore, also the most convenient foods.
We can similarly adopt lazy strategies to improving our fitness and physical activity levels. Without realizing it, many people have created time and energy barriers that make it more effortful than necessary to exercise. Having to travel to a gym or needing access to a specific facility, for instance, is a glaring example that requires more effort than many people consistently have at their disposal. Some people are motivated enough to push through time and energy barriers to exercise but this level of drive is hard to maintain. When the only option for exercise takes a lot of time, effort, or both, most people won’t keep it up.
On the other hand, even if we prefer an in-person class or gym, we can turn laziness into our ally by having backup options at home or for virtual participation when life gets in the way. Ask yourself: what is the most convenient way for me to exercise? What is a type of physical activity that is so easy I could do it even on a day when I was stressed out, had little time, or feeling tired?
Set easy exercise standards (e.g., walking for 15-minutes as a minimum goal instead of 30-60 minutes, even though you always have the freedom to go longer) instead of setting hard standards. Hard standards for exercise sometimes cause us to skip workouts because we’re too tired or busy to meet them. Even in the home, keep exercise equipment in easy reach. Our lazy nature is such that we will often skip a workout just because the short walk to the garage required to retrieve our shoes or equipment feels like too much in the moment. Our lazy brains work in subtle ways that can undermine our goals. Become relentless in looking for ways to eliminate obstacles and make healthy choices automatic.
Criticizing ourselves for laziness doesn’t work. A more productive approach is to change our perspective and adopt strategies that minimize the time and effort for healthy living. If Fortune 500 companies can cater to our lazy natures for their benefit, imagine the rewards we can reap by implementing the same techniques for ourselves.
Originally published at Psychology Today