Your entire life you have been told that “hard work is the only key to success”, or “there is no substitute to hard work”, or maybe “never hope for it more than you work for it.” These thoughts are true to some extent but it’s really hard to work hard, especially when you love being lazy. You dream of being successful even when practicing a supreme form of laziness? Guess what? That can come true.
“Practice not-doing and everything will fall into place.” – Lao Tzu
In today’s fast-paced, information-rich and technology-filled world, we never give ourselves time to take a break – doing nothing. We always push ourselves to always be doing something. This constant nagging makes us unfailingly check our e-mails at regular time intervals. But is this obsessive grip on your phones and constant updates on the social network good for us? Or can we justify passing a lazy day just by binge-watching?
According to a research, there exists some mysterious and interesting brain network that is really important for our health and is only active when we are being a couch potato. It is known as the Default Mode Network or DMN. DMN is activated only when our brains take a break from work and other conscious activities. DMN acts as the source of daydreams, imagining the future when you will be super rich and living a lavish life, or replaying that awkward conversation you had with your colleague yesterday.
So how does DMN help in making you successful? The research states that this network restores our motivation, attention, influences our sense of self and morals, enhances creativity and establishes long-term memories. The study also found that more activity is detected in DMN after learning a new skill or gathering new information.
Bill Gates once said that he would hire a lazy person for a difficult work because he would come up with a simpler and easier way to do it. Laziness will make you wait till the last moment and when the deadline arrives, it forces you to come up with an easier (and more innovative) alternative which can be implemented to accomplish the task.
Procrastinating often works, because sometimes it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese while the first mouse gets trapped due to the urge of getting it first. And then there are times when you do a lot of unnecessary work when you start early, that’s just waste of time, energy, and resources.
Laziness is the root cause of all the inventions – we drive the car because we don’t want to walk, we use the dishwasher because obviously we hate doing the dishes.
So you want to be an innovator and want to create things that matter, procrastinating is great, let the laziness flow through you.