9 Lazy Yet Graceful Performance and Productivity Tips
July 25, 2007 by David Zinger
Filed under Business
Here is a snippet from the New Scientist:
If you want a robot to move more gracefully make it as lazy as possible. So says Oussama Khatib of Stanford University in California, who is looking ahead to a future in which humans interact more closely with robots, and where we will expect them to move more like us. By modelling how people move, Khatib found that we naturally minimise the energy used by our muscles. “Humans are sort of lazy,” he says. That is why we sip coffee with our arm at a 30 to 45-degree angle to our bodies, not with our elbow higher up or tight against our torso.
Khatib wants robots to move more like us and we appear more graceful when we are lazy. Scientists are working at making robots lazy but have we achieved our own maximum laziness?
Lazy does not mean you languish. How can you leverage your laziness into graceful productivity?
10 9 Lazy Performance Tips:
- Don’t bound out of bed when the alarm clock goes, rather take 10 to 30 minutes to lay in bed and get some more sleep and slowly drift into the new day.
- Take the same route to work every day so that you don’t have to be bothered with minor decisions.
- Dump or delegate any tasks that can be trashed or given away.
- Get lazy with emails – check them only once a day.
- Don’t compose long winded emails when a quick “yes” or “no” will do.
- Leave early for appointments so that you can have a lazy drive to your destination and a chance to read a magazine or meditate for a few moments while you wait for your appointment.
- Achieve lazy calmness: When things are getting to you ask yourself if it really worth the emotional effort to get upset and complain.
- Enjoy some lazy crazy days of summer in the next 6 weeks: Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer,Those days of soda and pretzels and beer…(sung by Nat King Cole)
- Make a lazy list – stop at 9 items, you don’t always have to be a perfect 10!
Stop your robotic Crazybusy rush by engaging in graceful laziness. If it works for robots, it can work for you too.
David Zinger is planning to be a lazy blogger for the next 3 weeks while he enjoys some of the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.
Interesting ideas. This requires some in depth thought and analysis. In response to the first ite…..zzzzzzzzzzzzz.
(I’m a big advocate of #7 by the way. Nice article.)
Yes
Following principle #5
Love it! I almost wrote a post like this today. I still may. I’m really getting into slowing down this summer, although slowing down for me is still not slow enough! But I’m working on it!
Lazy and graceful post would be to cut and paste. I am starting to gear down for a few weeks myself but I am not graceful yet even if I feel a bit lazy.
allow me to pick this thing apart:
item 1: when i do it, i feel like crap sometimes; i viscerally feel that i’m wasting my time.
item 2: not a very good advice for security reasons.
item 5: it might be construed as rude. i dislike it when i get a unnecessary “ok” text message at my phone; it’s distracting as hell.
i whole-heartedly agree with items 3, 4, 6, 8, and 7 ftw.
Alfonso,
I appreciate the attention you gave to the ideas. I know if I go more than 30 minutes in bed I am in trouble but less seems to work for me. Of course, others bound out of bed while some never get out. A very interesting point about security and the same route, I never thought of it from that perspective. I would not want to be rude but I also know sometimes I get such a long winded email that I am not sure what the person is saying or wants.
Once again, thanks for the close attention to this.
David