No.4 - Laziness and man’s perspective

How does a business person relate to laziness? I thought all business minded people are hardworking robots who have no room in their lives for lazing around?

Let me begin by telling you that there is nothing wrong with laziness in and of itself. Rather, working hard without direction is no different than a cow. A cow works hard in the field all day (harder than humans) but ends up in the slaughterhouse.

Human beings are naturally lazy. If we can avoid doing something we would naturally avoid doing it. We are all creatures that are motivated by one thing or another. We are also creatures of habit, clinging on the familiarity around us.

You see, when I say that there is nothing wrong with laziness in and of itself, it is true in the case of human beings or else machinery such as the fax machine, automobiles and gas stoves would not be invented. We would still be using carrier pigeons, walking through deserts and making fire just like Neanderthals.

We have to constantly innovate, be creative and apply our ideas to new things.

On the contrary, it is the lazy person who prefers to do old fashion hard work. I am making a sweeping statement if I say that most employees are paid to do what they are told to do and nothing more. Unfortunately, this seems to be the case with people. They only do what they are told and if they are told to think for themselves, it is often met with much resistance.

The reason why the majority of employees work this way is because sometimes, hard work seems easier to do because the irony of the matter is that they have to think of alternatives to hard work (which requires thinking) is just difficult! They just don’t like to think for themselves. They rather work like a horse so they can avoid thinking of other alternatives. This is just sad, as it is contrary to human nature (which is supposed to be bubbling with ingenuity and spontaneous creativity, are reduced to the primal, animal instinct – to do what nature tells them to do or what they are told to do).

Yes it is true that thinking for yourself, requires hard work. In order to start a business, you have to think of ways to raise capital, market a product, find customers and think of ways to get things done cheaper, faster and better. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to think. But you must never clutter yourself in such a way that you wind up doing mundane and routine driven tasks day after day until you forget completely about marketing and expansion.

Imagine if you can start a business, a system, where it requires little attention, little customer support, and most important of all, automation in such a way that you only have to think of how to set it up at the early stages, work hard to get it up, but it can generate a residual, unstoppable income. After everything is all set up, you can be as lazy as you want. Think about it…..

Mason Cha , Principal Advisor of EPTS Advisory