What Mastering Laziness Taught Me About Productivity

Read this if you are struggling with 

1. Being productive
2. Getting past overwhelm
3. Avoiding burnout and other forms of suffering 
4. Getting things done and not forgetting anything (Peace of Mind always) 
5. How to convert time into meaningful experiences and good income 

The contrarian path: the path less traveled. 
You may have noticed that you have struggled for a while with these issues. 

I think you may need a different and saner approach - contrarian but possibly way more effective. 

The Power of LAZY
I enjoy being lazy in a specific and very artistic way; I want to spend as much time as possible doing my favorite things which includes daydreaming.  Daydreaming stimulates the brain for me and enables me to come up with fresh new ideas and strategies for my clients to have greater productivity (ie. more time for themselves to do what they love to do), better marketing, better leadership and more. 

More than anything else, daydreaming gives me extreme pleasure. 

The end of suffering?
This does not mean that I am not hardworking when I need to be.  But rarely do I have to suffer. 

Being lazy partly taught me the stark difference between hard work (necessary short term suffering), hardly working at all,  and suffering unnecessarily.

Three forms of operating:
So you could say in an oversimplified and lazy way, that there are three forms of operating: :

1. Hard work (necessary short term suffering for long term joy) 
2. Hardly working or no work at all 
3. Suffering unnecessarily with work you really may not or should not or don’t have to be doing

Managing all three brings a flow to your life and work ie.

1. Knowing when to work hard (preferably for a short time)
2. Knowing when to not work at all (they call this rest and recreation) 
3. Knowing and avoiding unnecessary work (suffering) 

Real Productivity:
Having taught myself to be lazy (my beloved and late mother offered me a prize for laziness one year during my teens), I discovered that real productivity was to be found only in the first two:

1. Short term hard work
2. Rest and recreation (what is the point of productivity if you cannot benefit in a wonderful way?)

The pathway:
So to be really productive, one had to get rid of number three  (unnecessary work) or minimize it as much as possible and increase number 2 and minimize number 1 but make sure that number 1 gave as much in terms of results and joy on the back end as possible. 

As I mastered laziness (and thus productivity), I discovered that number 2 (rest and recreation) was easy as long as I could manage making number 1 (short term hard work) more efficient (i.e. yielding more relevant results especially in the long term with less time spent on it.) 

The advantage of laziness plus two degrees:
As I mastered laziness, I saw the sense of having gotten two degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.  Both these tremendous skills along with my ability to lead and mentor, enabled me to

1. Design and Create systems that work efficiently the way I needed them to work to produce the results I wanted  And
2. Manage these systems efficiently and effectively with other systems or with well trained labor. 
3. Analyze and Focus on what is critical or important to get first, second, third etc. 
4. And to do all of this with the minimum of fuss, unnecessary technology and stress. 

More about the end of suffering:
As I mastered laziness, I saw a part of me was addicted to hard work for unnecessary suffering.  In fact, as I got my PhD in Laziness, I determined that the one thing most human beings including myself found hard to give up was their suffering. This resulted in most people doing unnecessary work and unnecessarily suffering. 

So how could I break free and become absolutely lazy and master breakthrough levels of productivity?

1. COMMIT TO YOUR SANITY: Declare that you are determined and willing to do the short term work to become utterly lazy and highly productive as soon as possible. 
2. COMMIT TO BEING EFFICIENT (in your style): Make your necessary suffering for hard work as short and painless as possible and so efficient that it produces the greatest return.  
3. COMMIT TO MAXIMIZING REST & RECREATION: Carve out plenty of time in your day to rest and have recreation.  You don’t have to fly to Bali for three months to have rest and recreation. You can have it everyday if you want. 
4. COMMIT TO REDUCING IF NOT ERADICATING SUFFERING (unnecessary and necessary)

How do you do this?

RE: number 1 (SANITY) above:
All great things start with a declaration - a declaration that you are committed to changing if not transforming your relationship with laziness and productivity. 

Stand up right now. Hold your right hand up and repeat after me “I (state your name) do hereby declare and promise that I dedicate my life to maximizing laziness and productivity together.” 

Some of you may think that I am only saying this tongue in cheek.
No.. I am absolutely serious. Get off that couch and do the declaration. Please. 

All good things can start with a declaration (e.g. Kennedy promised to put a man on the moon.)

Re: number 2 (EFFICIENT) above:

1. CLARIFY: Identify all the things that you need to work hard for - make sure you are clear what results and rewards you will get and if the hard work in the time you do it, is worth the rewards and results. 
2. DESIGN & MANAGE: Create a system and structure to manage this hard work OR to delegate it effectively and efficiently.  This requires two things:
   1. Designing a smart system and structure to manage this effectively and efficiently
   2. Managing this smart system and structure frequently enough to make sure 
      1. Nothing is forgotten that is important and crucial
      2. That you have an easy to follow dashboard to quickly manage this hard work
      3. Putting as much of this designed work into systems and delegated to others

RE: Number 3 (REST & RECREATION) above:
Commit to creating as much blank unscheduled time on your calendar as possible. Build this up slowly if you need to e.g. start with four hours of free time and build up to 20 or even 30 hours. 

E.g. You want to put as much free time in between your appointments. 

This will start training you to be lazy, productive and efficient at the same time. 

RE: Number 4 (ERADICATING SUFFERING) above: 
This is the trickiest one to do and the most critical. You must decide which things you are not going to do because the truth is

1. You will probably never do this
2. You can probably do it later (mostly because you are probably not going to do it now anyway, despite how much you think you should.) 

I can help you do number 1 through 4 above. 
I invite you to schedule yourself with me for a free discovery session: https://calendly.com/sunilbhaskaran/the-joyful-calendar-workflows-discovery-session-one-on-one-with-sunil-bhaskaran  

The Complimentary Joyful Calendar and Workflows Discovery Session: 
In this session, I will work hard and efficiently to listen to what you need and when and  then outline how we can work on number 1 through 4 above to give you a breakthrough in laziness and high productivity. 

In most cases, this end of suffering can be achieved in about 3 months. 

Schedule here: https://calendly.com/sunilbhaskaran/the-joyful-calendar-workflows-discovery-session-one-on-one-with-sunil-bhaskaran  

See you soon,

Sunil Bhaskaran   

Founder of the Global Small Business School