Today is day 2 of a 10-day challenge I am participating in.
The challenge is simple enough: focus on ONE thing (something that will be a major mover in my business or life) for 10 days straight.
My focus is on creating content for my website. Specifically, a new post every day, and a promotional email of some kind to my list.
I am aiming to accomplish my tasks for these next 10 days in the most efficient way possible. Which means…
I intend to be entirely lazy about it.
Most people do not have the same opinion about laziness as I do.
When it comes to efficiency, laziness might be more valuable than hard–workingness.
Laziness is the impulse to do in one step which most people believe requires many steps.
Laziness is the voice that says “Is there a way I could do this in 5 minutes instead of an hour?”
Laziness is true mind over matter – when done correctly.
You see, laziness is seen outwardly as sloth, lounging around, lack of activity. But I argue that there are plenty of truly productive lazy people who are probably lounging around their houses right now.
Wait, ‘productive lazy’ people? Isn’t that an oxymoron?
At first glance, it seems that way.
But there’s one thing people aren’t seeing about the productive lazy person:
Their thoughts.
The thoughts of a lazy person might blow the average ‘hard worker’ away.
While hard workers are busy working hard — under the impression that hard work is the cure-all fix for every scenario in life — they have a tendency to overlook the simple improvements they could be making.
I’m not against hard work. In fact, it is essential.
But it’s also essential to consistently (and drastically) improve your abilities. And ironically that impulse – for me, at least – is driven by utter laziness.
So what is the ‘good’ kind of laziness?
Think about the 80/20 principle for a moment.
This principle states that 80 percent of our success actually comes from just 20 percent of our activity.
This is true almost across the board with everything.
20% of your business activities will produce 80% of your income.
20% of your eating habits will be responsible for 80% of your health and weight outcomes.
This means that, in theory, there are a plethora of activities (up to 80%) you are doing every day that could either be drastically improved upon without much extra effort (or maybe even with less effort) — and in fact, there are likely activities that you could even stop doing entirely without much negative consequence whatsoever (possibly even a positive outcome).
This is the type of laziness that we could all benefit from.
It is NOT mental laziness.
Quite the opposite.
It is merely physical laziness.
It takes considerable thought and mental effort to take account of what activities you’re engaging in every day that could be actually holding you back from accomplishing everything you hope to.
It not only requires thought, but something that seems to be in even lower supply than usual nowadays: awareness.
Improving your situation begins with awareness — being conscious about your activities.
Very active people often have to hit a wall before they come to this awareness.
It is a mental wall they finally become exhausted from running up against over and over.
That mental wall is the unwillingness to embrace ‘laziness’.
So many of us are indoctrinated into thinking that laziness is bad or wrong, and definitely not to be encouraged. But this opinion about ‘laziness’ is a bit of a red herring that causes much more damage than it fixes.
Yes, outright laziness is not to be praised.
But the idea that things could always be improved, made more effective and efficient, and with less effort, is the general theme of all technological progress and breakthroughs in human history.
To achieve more than you can now, you will either have to make more efficient systems or input much more energy.
Because we all have finite amounts of physical energy allotted to us, we would do ourselves a favor to focus on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of our activities, before committing to doubling or tripling our efforts.
The truth is… you have to work really hard at being lazy!
It’s not something most people are used to doing. But it is entirely worth your while.
By getting the hang of being lazy, you might just be able to multiply the effects of your efforts (ie. your successes) by orders of magnitude.
Unfortunately, there is no “one quick and easy magic pill” solution for this.
But what I’ve found DOES help is learning (and re-learning) the basic fundamentals of your craft.
It’s in the fundamentals where the biggest levers for improvement are found. (Where the biggest sources of laziness are waiting to be discovered.)
There’s almost no waste when it comes to studying the fundamentals.
Claude Hopkins, in My Life In Advertising, states that (paraphrasing) a man cannot be expected to master much more than the basics of any craft in one lifetime, thus he is always served by diving ever deeper into the fundamentals.
Speaking of Claude Hopkins…
His work contains some of the most fundamental information regarding salesmanship and direct-response advertising there is, and to this day he is still regarded as the hallowed father of modern advertising.
Over the coming days (or weeks – we’ll see) I’ll be putting out a concise breakdown of some of Hopkins’ most important lessons and influential advertising ideas.
This is the type of basic information that beginners need to know – and that experts never tire of reviewing.
It is the fundamental fodder of all great advertising achievements in the last 100 years.
To be one of the first to know when this Claude Hopkins deep-dive is ready – and to be sure you get the best possible price for this training – sign up below right now.