Foolish Adventure

• Tweet

• Tweet

Foolish Philosophies:  Blast Through Obstacles To The Life You Desire

Welcome to Part 2 of The Tao of Cultivated Laziness.  If you haven’t read Part 1, you can check it now and then come back.

There are just a few things you need to become successfully lazy and not doing things is one of them.

“I like the word “indolence.” It makes my laziness seem classy.”  ~Bern Williams

How do you not do things?  It isn’t as easy as it looks.  It takes real balance to lounge about in a hammock while sipping a drink out of a coconut shell and not poking yourself in the eye with the little umbrella.  Seriously.

The first thing to do in not doing things is to not bring the old Productivity Propaganda into your business and your life.  The main reason is the fallacy of doing a lot things (work) will equal more money, freedom, fulfillment or whatever goal you have set for yourself.

More Hours Doesn’t Equal More Money

Here is a truth most have not realized: there is NO direct causation between how many hours you work and how much money you make.  We live in a time that allows anyone with creativity and ambition to create products that people love and buy so that you can earn an income even when not engage in “work” activities.

Obviously, if you choose to not take advantage of this you can continue to get paid for your labor or time on the clock and always have your income limited by the number of hours in the day.

I like using Izzy as an example because he has a business that is ready for optimization and I think it’s fun to pick on him.

IzzyVideo.com, as I’ve said in a couple of shows, could be making more money without dramatically increasing the number of hours that Izzy has to work.  With just a couple more hours per week or by allocating time from other less effective work tasks, Izzy could reach a larger market and tap deeper into his current level of prospects.

“Efficiency is intelligent laziness.”  ~David Dunham

The results won’t be based on those couple extra hours.  His results will be determined by the quality of the products he offers and optimizing his marketing tactics.  A small change in a headline or rephrasing the offer could double or triple the sales of a product.  It takes the same amount of time to write a great headline or offer as it does to write a bad one.

That’s why I harp on being lazy.  Too many people are hung up on trying to get shit done that they overlook being effective.  While you’re busy filing papers or going to networking meetings or dinking around with the size of your logo on your website, you could have tapped into traffic of a content partner and doubled your traffic to your site and gotten a commensurate increase in sales.

Being Effective Equals Achieving Your Dreams

By giving up your cultural conditioning about what success is (I say it isn’t materialism, but happiness) and how a business is supposed to function such as having an office, business cards and filing cabinets, you can open up huge blocks of time to have a life.

You might actually have trouble with this since you have been programmed by your culture to behave in unfulfilling ways.  I know I felt, and sometimes still do feel, guilty when I’m not working.  Getting that productivity propaganda out of your head can be difficult.  For me, I just remind myself that the work I am doing is chosen by me, which means I can unchoose to do the work or choose when I do the work.

This also includes your leisure activities, social clubs and your kids’ extracurricular activities.  None of these things MUST be done for you or your family to be happy and content.  At anytime you can stop.  You might find that by not rushing off to a dozen activities that your family is happier being able to spend the time together.

Actionable Non-Action

To put laziness into action (I know, I’m much too clever for my own good), here are a few non-action items.

1. Say no

Productivity Propagandists will tell you to say no to things that aren’t work priorities.  I mostly agree, but I’ll add that you should say no to work priorities if they interfere with your life priorities.  Too many people will miss their children’s important events, but wouldn’t ever skip a work meeting.  Really?

What this says is that work is more important than your children.  It isn’t.  Your job and probably your business won’t be around 5 years from now, but you’ll be left wondering why your kids don’t really want to be around you.

Say no to other people’s priorities if they don’t line up with yours.  Customers, clients and co-workers (mostly co-workers) will take your time.  They will want you to fix some inconsequential problem so they don’t have to fire a neuron to figure out how to fix it themselves.

Say no to wrapping your identity up in a work blanket.  People work a lot because society says they are important if they are busy working and even more important if they have a prestigious job.  If you ever hear yourself say, “I’m president and CEO of blah blah industries” especially if it’s your own company, give yourself a swift kick in the pants.  This is you trying to feel valuable by strutting some external measure instead of knowing that you are valuable just because of you.

2. Have no more than 3 goals (1 is better)

Leo Babauta of ZenHabits.net has had a big impact in my recent philosophies on laziness.  He teaches how having fewer goals actually leads to accomplishing more in your life with less stress in less time.  There is a ton to say on this topic so the best place to learn more is here.

3. Let small bad things happen

Nearly all of us do things because we think that if we don’t the sky will fall.  It won’t.  Your business will survive if you wait till tomorrow to respond to your email.  Your customers won’t hate you if you take a couple of weeks off to be human.

We all have huge egos.  We act as if the world depends on every action we do.  It doesn’t.  When you’re dead, the world will continue as if you never existed.  Especially when it comes to work.  That presentation or report that just had to done before Monday’s staff meeting that you worked on the entire weekend won’t matter five years later.  I would bet it won’t matter less than a week later.  But you’ll never get that weekend back.

What would really happen if you were late on the presentation or got just enough of it done so it could be presented and it wasn’t perfect?  Maybe some disapproving looks and a bit of chastising for preferring your life over the company’s priorities.  Maybe even a lost client.

Life doesn’t have to happen to you.  When you learn the skills to make a living on your own, you don’t have to worry about getting or keeping that single client (if that client is such a pain that you have to give up a chunk of your life, you don’t want them as a client anyways) or getting chastised by some dink in a suit who has power over your income.

The first time you stop taking crap from a customer and fire him, you’ll feel awesome.  Because at that moment you’ll know beyond any doubt that your life is your own and you don’t have to be abused or do work that doesn’t fulfill you.

Getting comfortable with people being upset with you because you didn’t immediately return their email or phone call is a valuable life skill.  Your time is yours.  Other people do not have a right to your time (life).  They may act all entitled and indignant, but just explain that your life takes priority over their email.  If they can’t accept that, then you remove them from your life.

I learned about letting small bad things happen from Tim Ferriss.  You can read the original article I read on Tim’s Four Hour Workweek blog.

Now you need to say “yes” to the things that you find fulfilling and let great things happen.

Enjoy your Foolish Laziness,

~ t

[edit: Here is a great article with similar ideas that I found compelling: Enjoying Life in the Slow Lane published today, 9-23-10.]

If you found this Foolish Philosophy series valuable, please share with the Facebook, Twitter or Email buttons below. Thanks for helping spread the word.