You're a Predator – You're Supposed to be Lazy

I’ve read a few posts recently (here and here) encouraging people to work to be lazy.

Some people seem to love being busy on repetitive tasks. This has always baffled me. Why do something more than once if you can automate it?

Ask me to do any tasks and my first question (normally only to myself) is ‘why?’ I want to know why because I want to link it to a reward.

These two needs (to automate and to see the reward) are deeply engrained within our predatory conscience.

Wildebeest start the day grazing, they spend the rest of the morning grazing, in the afternoon they do the same, and for evening relaxation they do a spot more grazing.

Lions start the day lazing around expending as little energy as possible waiting around for the food to come to them. If the food doesn’t come to them they form a plan to go and get some food. They could chase the first beast that they come across, but they normally don’t. They could repeat the task over and over again until they manage to catch something, but they don’t. They use their brains.

Eagles spend more time sat in trees than flying. They normally only fly to get food. They remember the good places to get food and visit those places more frequently.

For both the lion and the eagle the reward is directly linked to the effort. A wildebeest, however, follows the routine.

The lions use the wildebeest to do the repetitive task of converting grass into food. The wildebeest automates the task for the lion, all they have to do is catch the wildebeest which I am sure requires less effort than grazing all day, and is certainly more interesting.

I would much rather be a lion or an eagle than a wildebeest. I am a predator, I only want to expend effort when it is linked to a reward and that requires me to use my brain. If getting the reward requires something to be repeated I’d rather something else did it for me, I’ll make the most of their efforts.

The modern IT infrastructure has given us the ability to automate all sorts of repetitive tasks, but many of us haven’t used these capabilities to their full potential. It’s time to become more lazy and to get all of those repetitive tasks automated.

I believe that the next wave of IT will radically change the way that businesses work and reconnect many of us directly with the rewards. This reconnection with the rewards will directly influence the amount of repetitive tasks that we do because we will only do the ones that contribute to the reward. But we still need to go out and hunt the reward down. For those of us sat in corporate land hunting sounds scary, and that is the saddest part of all.

Anyone joining me on a hunting expedition?