Be lazy to be productive
Have always admired lazy people. How can they be lazy when there is so much to be done?I used to ask myself.For me, action and activity were important ingredients of life. So i have this sneaking admiration for people who are able to laze around for hours and days at a stretch.
I have also believed that lazy people are usually the ones who come out with breakthrough ideas. Let me explain. Normal people go ahead and do a job which requires to be done. That's it ; period. But lazy people would not do something requiring to be done; like our friend in the book "three men in a boat", they like to look at work, and look at people who are working. All the time they are thinking how not to do it and if necessary how to do it with the least effort and energy from their side. So many a time they spend 10 times the normal time required to complete a job,thinking how it is not necessary to do it in the first place.All this thought process does bring out some idea which will be out of the box and which will give a simplistic way of doing it in future.So the extra time they spend in not doing it is actually a productive input for future efficiencies in that work process.
This theory of mine is based on personal experience and hence distilled wisdom!
I read an article recently wherein the secretary department of biotechnology while addressing research scholars in life sciences had this advice.Be lazy to be productive. I sat up and read the entire piece and re read the same once more.He says that productive minds are lazy minds. It means in today's knowledge world, productivity is in the mind and a cluttered and busy and stressed out mind does not spew forth ideas.Knowledge workers should ideally be not clocking in x+10 hours of work a day(x normal working hours).They then become blue collar workers and that is not what they started out to be in the first place.
Yes, I can visualise yoga being a in thing in today's corporate world. Regular breathing exercises,physical exercises in the form of asanas and periods of extended "not doing anything" are what the doctor ordered for calm mind which will enable fertile ideas to germinate.
Knowledge era and work timings to match that.I like it.
posted by vasukumar @ 8:50 PM
2 Comments:
wow! does sound nice.
i doubt if that will catch on here though. the concept of face-time (i.e. the time that your boss Sees you working) is terribly important. it is the same mother-in-law:dil logic. the boss thinks that he clocked in xyz number of hours a day so how can his subordinates have an easier time?
it takes either a remarkably enlightened person or one who has been trained abroad to see the merit of this argument
There is also a mother syndrome being practised by managers. They say, i suffered, so let my daughter not suffer.So they are not peering down their subordinates all the time(in fact they are busy doing this only)and allow them freedom to do their job in the best way they think;and only concentrate on outcomes.I have witnessed people being relaxed and creative in such an environment.
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