Poll: Are You Lazy?

[Peony]

Tail end of baby boom. Not lazy, but procrastination can be a problem. I kind of have to achieve a certain level of anxiety before I start cranking up to peak potential. Maybe that's why I came to personal finance rather late, but have embraced mustachianism almost like a religion.

[rubybeth]

I often say that I am lazy, but my actions belie that statement, so I voted "Gen Y, not lazy." I am big into the Cult of Done, and when given an assignment or noticing that something needs doing, I just do it. It is the opposite of perfectionism and procrastination and an attitude has served me well for more than 10 years.

When I first started college, I told myself bullshit things like "I do my best work under pressure" but then discovered that I preferred the feeling of getting my work done before everyone else. It felt awesome to sit in a class of people who were all freaking out about the paper or project, while I sat there thinking "It's already done, I have a week to proofread and edit, but I could turn it in just as it is" so then I'd have time to do what I wanted to do. Getting things done and out of the way frees me up to do what I want and think about what I want (be "lazy" and relax by reading, watching movies, going on walks, going to the gym, etc.).

[Peony]

Agreed, rubybeth, there's nothing like the feeling that things are under control. I learned time management by having kids -- I'd better get my tasks done NOW, 'cause chances are good that something will come up to prevent their getting done later. However, now that the kids are way more independent, I find the old tendencies are not as thoroughly vanquished as I had thought ...

[plantingourpennies]

Don't worry fellow lazy people, we are in good company-

http://libcom.org/files/Bertrand%20Russell%20-%20In%20Praise%20of%20Idleness.pdf

Best,
Mr. PoP

[dorkus619]

Gen Y and I think I'm lazy.
I used to be very not lazy. I put 100% effort into whatever I was doing and was constantly going going going. I was always getting stuff done. I never sat down to relax. The.dishes.must.get.done.now.This.house.is.a.mess. I was stressed. My relationship suffered because I didn't spend time with my SO.

Now I think I'm lazy. Other people don't think so. I am not good at self-managing. I procrastinate too much. Now I try to spend time with loved ones and enjoy life more. I don't sweat the small stuff. I just want to spend my time doing what makes me happy or benefits me and my loved ones. I want to do things I believe in. I don't lke working. I sit at my desk 40hr/wk but I'm not motivated and my manager doesn't manage me so I just sit here. I feel like I'm wasting their money... :/ which makes me feel guilty and lazy. I am very good at researching, making lists, weighing pros & cons, making great goals and planning how to reach them. But my follow through is where I fail. If I do start a med-long term goal I lose momentum quickly. Usually when I look at my to-do list I just would rather crawl up in bed and read or sleep.

Sometimes I wonder if my laziness is due to 8 hours of blah to start my day.
Or maybe my diet.
Or maybe I actually suffer from depression?

Not really sure.

Maybe I'm not lazy (I don't sit and watch TV or do "nothing" often). Maybe I'm just uninterested / unproductive (in the eyes of society)

[dragoncar]

Given the number of scientists and engineers here, I'm pretty sure lost of us are lazy like this:



http://xkcd.com/1205/

[brewer12345]

Depends on your time frame.  Over the last 20 years, no way would you call me lazy.  Over the last 6 months?  You might call me lazy.  I've got short timer's disease and I am admittedly coasting to the finish line.  Sue me.  The amount of crazy hours and stress over the last 20 years more than makes up for a bit of coasting.

Gen X, for the record.

[AlmostIndependent]

Depends on your time frame.  Over the last 20 years, no way would you call me lazy.  Over the last 6 months?  You might call me lazy.  I've got short timer's disease and I am admittedly coasting to the finish line.  Sue me.  The amount of crazy hours and stress over the last 20 years more than makes up for a bit of coasting.

Gen X, for the record.

Theres no shame in a little coasting. I say good for you; enjoy the ride to the finish line.

[Deimyts]

Now I think I'm lazy. Other people don't think so. I am not good at self-managing. I procrastinate too much. Now I try to spend time with loved ones and enjoy life more. I don't sweat the small stuff. I just want to spend my time doing what makes me happy or benefits me and my loved ones. I want to do things I believe in. I don't lke working. I sit at my desk 40hr/wk but I'm not motivated and my manager doesn't manage me so I just sit here. I feel like I'm wasting their money... :/ which makes me feel guilty and lazy. I am very good at researching, making lists, weighing pros & cons, making great goals and planning how to reach them. But my follow through is where I fail. If I do start a med-long term goal I lose momentum quickly. Usually when I look at my to-do list I just would rather crawl up in bed and read or sleep.

Sometimes I wonder if my laziness is due to 8 hours of blah to start my day.
Or maybe my diet.
Or maybe I actually suffer from depression?

Are you me?

I know everything I ought to do, have a billion lists, and panic every time I think about not having done the things yet. Dozens of half finished projects, interest lost somewhere along the way. But when I think about the effort required to finish them, I shrink back and do something easier.

The last job I had was an utter nightmare, and nearly convinced my hypochondriac self I was bipolar. I'd be energetic when I was stuck at work and couldn't do anything that interested me, despite having nothing to do, and too tired when I got home to do the things that excited me during the day. Made me feel lazy as hell, even though with the commute I was doing 11-12 hours a day. Now that I have a more interesting and rewarding job, I'm a lot more psychologically balanced - although I still feel lazy for not working all the hours available to me, despite desperately needing the money. I'm not sure what the end goal of that would be, though - Literally spending every waking moment on that project? And yet I think I'll feel lazy to some degree until I do that, just because the possibility is there. Even though to do so would likely decrease the quality of work and cost my client money.

I procrastinate too much even now. Once I get into a groove, I can work hard, but then I distract myself before I can even get started. And feeling lazy, and guilty for being lazy, just makes everything worse - makes you want to hide and hope it all goes away. The benefit of whatever you're doing gets separated from the action of doing it, and so you're just slogging through powered by guilt and despair. It kinda sucks.

On the other hand, biking everywhere in a car-centric city isn't lazy. constant striving for self-improvement isn't lazy. I feel like my perspective might be a little warped. It's a weird and touchy question for me.

Gen Y, for what it's worth.

[fallstoclimb]

I'm a millenial.  I for sure would tell you I'm lazy.  My husband and my boss would both disagree.  I'm pretty sure if I could just focus and buckle down at work I would be an unstoppable powerhouse, but even in a job I like it's rare that the planets align so that I can really work *hard* for 8 hours.  BUT, I usually work smart, and I'm clearly exceeding expectations, so make of that what you will. 

[secondcor521]

I was gonna vote, but

[ioseftavi]

I would say I'm lazy, but paradoxically very motivated to do very un-lazy things in pursuit of the freedom to be as lazy as I want.

Thanks for putting what I wanted into words, Eva.  I put "gen Y and not lazy", but Eva's statement is more accurate.  I will get up at 6AM and bike to work for a relatively few years in order to be able to sleep till 11AM for a larger portion of my life.  Ditto bringing my lunch and the million other little labor-intensive trade-offs.

[livetogive]

Gen Y.  I can't sit still for very long without finding something to do.  Likewise when I see someone do something lazy, cut a corner, etc. I sort of irrationally label them a dirt bag.

I blame more than a decade in the military.

[Imma]

I have to say I feel much more like a millenial than a Gen Y even though I'm 26. Probably just the fact that I grew up immersed in tech.

It's funny, I'm 27 and I don't feel millennial at all. I feel like the last generation of kids raised in an era before the internet, terrorists and pedophiles existed in the public consciousness. For me, technology didn't really become a part of my life until I was well into highschool.

[PhilB]

I would say I'm lazy, but paradoxically very motivated to do very un-lazy things in pursuit of the freedom to be as lazy as I want.

+1
I am so lazy I have been known to work straight through for 40 hours or more to build an automated process I can do at the push of a button rather than have to keep wasting time doing it manually.  Somehow my bosses don't understand that laziness is my primary driver for this and get the idea that I'm a hard worker.

[WhiteTrashCash]

I am late Generation X and I am very much not lazy. In fact, I would say I work harder than probably about 95% of people because I have goals that I want to reach and I know that hard work is the only way I will get to them. Even when I eventually FIRE, it won't be so I can lay around watching YouTube videos. I want to do other things that are meaningful to me but not productive monetarily.

[radram]

I was gonna vote, but

I was going to do this same bit.... but just didn't get around to it in time:)

Are 3 similar jokes too many? Maybe I'll start a poll to find out :)

[Bracken_Joy]

I have to say I feel much more like a millenial than a Gen Y even though I'm 26. Probably just the fact that I grew up immersed in tech.

Isn't Gen Y = Millenial?

[arebelspy]

I have to say I feel much more like a millenial than a Gen Y even though I'm 26. Probably just the fact that I grew up immersed in tech.

Isn't Gen Y = Millenial?

Yes. There was a distinction around 12 years ago, but they have come to be synonymous within the last decade.

This was discussed a few years ago, on page one of this thread.

Then a spammer bumped this thread; post was deleted, but not before someone replied, and now this thread is apparently going again. :P

[Bracken_Joy]

I have to say I feel much more like a millenial than a Gen Y even though I'm 26. Probably just the fact that I grew up immersed in tech.

Isn't Gen Y = Millenial?

Yes. There was a distinction around 12 years ago, but they have come to be synonymous within the last decade.

This was discussed a few years ago, on page one of this thread.

Then a spammer bumped this thread; post was deleted, but not before someone replied, and now this thread is apparently going again. :P

Oooooh that makes so much sense. I always wonder how posts get necro'd! When it's a specific question that I could see someone googling, that's one thing. But something like this, I was confused. I was wondering if Imma googled "Lazy Mustachians" or something =D

[FIRE Artist]

I am often physically lazy, but rarely mentally.  I am the kind of person who would write their entire term paper in her mind over the course of a week, and then finally  sit down and commit it all to paper te night before it is due.  Why waste effort, paper and ink on rough drafts?

[koshtra]

I identified as "lazy" out of habit, but I'm not surprised to see that the number of people who self-identify as "lazy" drops as time goes by.

I used to beat myself up about it a lot -- I was one of those kids who was routinely pulled aside by the school counselor and told I wasn't working up to my abilities -- but as time went on I realized that, well, of course society has a vested interest in me working hard on things that don't actually matter to me, but I don't have to internalize that. When I'm interested, when I care, I work really hard.

On the other hand, I used to procrastinate a lot more than I do now. Recognizing, as MMM says, that I'm doing my future self a kindness, seems to come more easily than it used to, and I think my "oomph" -- will power, self-regulation, whatever you like to call it -- is stronger than it was when I was younger. The "I don't want to bother with it right now!" voice is feebler and easier to override.

A lot of that -- most of it, maybe all of it -- is that I like my life now. I've lost that teenage petulance about having been landed in a life I didn't design. I did design this life, it's mine, I own it.

[driftwood]

Terribly lazy...if you count doing things efficiently enough or purposely design your actions to reduce workload at a future date. 

I never throw trash on the floor or set it on a table or anything else in the house...I take it directly to the trash can to avoid picking it up a second time. I've parked the recycle bin right outside the door so that I don't have to even take an inside recycle can outside to dump in the recycle bin.

I wash dishes immediately, before the food dries on them, so that I don't have to spend more time later scrubbing off dried food. I often leave common dishes in the drainer... and then use them for the next meal. If I can, I like to avoid moving dishes to a cabinet, then back out, then to a cabinet, then back out.

I avoid fights... that's a lot of work, when you can do nothing and decrease your risk of bodily injury.  In fact, if we could promote enough laziness, we could achieve world peace!

I do laundry as soon as I have one washer load full, to avoid spending a large amount of a day doing multiple loads.

I don't make the bed... I leave it 'open', so when I get back in it at night I don't have to throw back the covers. Also, I like airing it out.

If I ever build a house, and it's a two-story house with upstairs bedrooms, I'll put the laundry room between two bedrooms. Both bedrooms will have closets that back up to the laundry room. There will be some type of doors on the back of the closets, so you can throw your dirty laundry directly into the laundry room, and also put clean clothes directly into the closet from the laundry room, then be able to grab those from the bedroom side easily. I am highly annoyed that most modern house designs have you lugging dirty clothes downstairs to clean then upstairs to put in bedroom closets.

Grass... I'm too lazy to enjoy cutting non-edible (to me) plant that just grows back. If left to my own devices I'll either let it die (I mean who really thinks it makes sense to plant grass under trees, then constantly fight the three's natural ability to kill grass?!) or let it grow long and wild.

[Apple_Tango]

Gen Y...I think I am very lazy. Some things are just not important to me, like keeping a spotless house, or working more than 40 hours a week just to "get ahead". I watch a lot of tv, browse the Internet, read, and play music all the time when instead I should be doing my dishes (no dishwasher in my house lol). I graduated from two top public universities and have a masters degree, and I never felt busy. I always had time to take a nap, or go to the gym, (while being a full time student and having 2 part time jobs).

Because of the things I have accomplished, I suspect that most people don't think I'm lazy. But I feel lazy! Especially since the idea of FIRE has taken over. My job schedule is quite flexible throughout the year, and I would be more than content to just have a part time job for the rest of my life, supplementing with contract work as needed. I am scheduled to interview in the next week for a part time job, where the schedule is two 10 hour days and there are full health insurance benefits and 401k. If I get it and I like my boss and coworkers, I could see myself staying for a long time.

My mom certainly thinks this is lazy!

[soccerluvof4]

Tail end Baby boomer certifiable lazy! I am like a manic depressant when it comes to getting things done. Even when I was a workaholic I was that way. I would go nuts for weeks than crash and burn. Now its day to day. But thats who I am and I accept it more as I get older. Every morning I start out with a list of all the stuff I am going to do and most days I don't even begin. But I do exercise everyday for at least two hours usually around 4am and get dinner done and a few other things but by noon , 1pm pretty much toast.

[TheWifeHalf]

I voted boomer, not lazy.
I am never doing 'nothing.'
When I sit down and watch tv, rarely, every commercial I get up and do 'something.'
When I get up in the morning I don't think "What am I going to do today?" I think "which of these things am I NOT going to do today."
I think it's a metabolic thing, my hair grows 1 1/4 in a month. (my hairdresser said I have a lot of hair, but each individual strand is thin, I have an aunt who is the same way

After the birth of my third, it was finally figured out that I needed to take a 'serotonin re-uptake inhibitor.'  Without it I can not sleep. My brain never turns off. I always wake up 7 1/2 hours after my pill. I always wake up fully, instantly. I'm ready to go, no grogginess here.
The things I do may not be considered by some as worthwhile, but things I do have purpose to me.
TheHusbandHalf comments at times that he's 'thinking nothing.' That is so foreign to me, my mind is always going. Sometimes I just follow it and see where it goes.
Maybe it's the 'farm girl' DNA I have.

[arebelspy]

I often think nothing, but I have no internal monologue (i.e. no voice inside my head). Your husband may be the same way.

I think most people are like you though, and have fairly continual thoughts.

[undercover]

As a nation we are more than likely 100% "lazier" than we were several generations ago simply due to the fact that productivity has increased and we're just a richer and have access to way more inventions that make our everyday life easier. Naturally, the percentages per generation of those that identified as "lazy" went up with each generation.

When you can have virtually anything from any store or restaurant delivered for little to no extra fee, a cheap personal chauffeur, and all the cumulative human knowledge at your fingertips without leaving your house, I guess you're bound to feel a little lazy. Clearly millennials are more likely to use these services on a daily basis. And of course there are plenty of other improvements/inventions that take a lot of the work out of everyday life away.

[Zikoris]

Well, it's been four years since I last posted, and I think I've gotten lazier. I was overjoyed two days ago when my last two accounts were finally able to link to Mint, so I no longer need to have them as a manual asset and update them by myself. I was updating the first one once a year (GIC ladder), and the second one twice a month when I did deposits, and a manual update would take less than a minute. But now I don't even have to do that, so yay!

[CogentCap]

I'm really not that la

<3

[ACyclist]

Irresponsible, yes.  Lazy, No.  We rode ten miles today.  Cleaned house too.

[Tyson]

I often think nothing, but I have no internal monologue (i.e. no voice inside my head).

How is that even possible?  Man I'm jealous.

[Ynari]

Millennial. I would consider myself lazy, but only in a time-capacity sense. I'm efficient when I do work, so my output is higher than average, but I prefer to have a lot of time to sleep/read/write/cook/play Pokemon.

TBH I think it's just a heightened sense of time-value exchange.

[Bateaux]

I'm probably not as lazy as the average person.  I'm much lazier that I was in previous decades.   If anything I worked too much and played too little in the past.  Now my definition of lasy is probably a lot different than many.   Taking a week long backpacking trip vs doing the needed sheetrock repairs and painting at home to me is being lazy.  Running the heater instead of chopping fire wood is lazy.  I'm not inactive, I'm just not as productive as I was in my youth.

[arebelspy]

I often think nothing, but I have no internal monologue (i.e. no voice inside my head).

How is that even possible?  Man I'm jealous.

I think we discussed it in the aphantasia thread.

[Livewell]

Gen X.  Not lazy in that I’ve taken big chances in my life and made them successful.

I’m lazy in that I’d rather be efficient than work hard - and for many in this society working smart (ie I work 25 hours because that is what it takes for me to accomplish my goals) is viewed as worse than putting in “time.”

[TheWifeHalf]

I often think nothing, but I have no internal monologue (i.e. no voice inside my head). Your husband may be the same way.

I think most people are like you though, and have fairly continual thoughts.

For years his doctor double checked his blood pressure reading because it's low. That's just the way he is. He works in a very fast moving, stressful at times, control room at an oil refinery and it doesn't seem to affect his health at all.
Our son joined the Navy and they did the same thing. In the beginning, before he went to boot camp, he had to get something from his family doctor saying there was no problem. 
Things just don't bother them?

[LonerMatt]

I voted lazy but I really like/need to be active in unproductive ways.

Like going for a walk, or making some art, or just doing activities that I enjoy regardless of the product/outcome of that task.

[eostache]

I feel lazy at my 40 hour per week job, sitting all day at a computer tapping on the keyboard.

When I was unemployed I went for 50 mile bike rides, all day epic hikes, backpack trips, etc.

Now that I have a job I guess I'm not considered lazy.

49ish.

[Lmoot]

Xennial here (33...old millennial). I have lazy moments but do not consider myself lazy. I work a lot and try to be as efficient as possible so that I can have more time to laze around. But I work a full time and part time job so maybe I'm just not lazy by default. Part of the reason I got a part time job, was I just found myself wandering around without direction or cause, on my down time.

When it's something I am into, I'll stay up for 2 days straight working on it, so it depends.

[Nightwatchman9270]

I am fortunately in a good "lazy zone."  Not lazy enough to flake out at work but too lazy to have obscenely expensive hobbies like my partners (race cars, golf, horses, collecting vacation homes, etc.).

[Greenback Reproduction Specialist]

Unfortunately, I am not lazy to the degree that I have a difficult time relaxing and not "getting anything done." For me the challenge is to allow myself to not do anything and just be.

+1 this is how I feel

Fire for me is not about doing less, its about the freedom to do more things that I'm excited about doing.

[Laura33]

Early GenX here, and I have always considered myself lazy -- compared to my mom, I am a total slacker.  My psychiatrist is suggesting that perhaps I'm not actually lazy, and that the data point to whom I am comparing myself is not exactly representative of the average human.  She's probably right.  But that self-image is too ingrained by now.

I think what I really am is efficient and impatient with process.  My SIL told me the story of the sergeant who would give the nastiest task to the laziest guy in the platoon, because he knew that guy would spend 5 hours figuring out how to turn a 3-hr job into a 2-hr one.  That pretty much defines me.  Unfortunately, I also work in a field that bills by the hour, so my innate desire to manage things quickly and efficiently is in fundamental conflict with what makes us money.  Which, again, probably reaffirms the "lazy" self-image, because my whole career I have been surrounded by people who are chasing a lot more hours than I ever want to work.

The good news is that now that I've reached an age where I don't feel like I need to impress anyone anymore, I am totally comfortable telling people flat-out, nah, thanks, I'd rather be lazy and read my book.  I feel like I pretty much own the lazy; it feels more like independence ("I'm going to do what I want to do, not what you want me to") than something to be ashamed of.

[dude]

I think I am inherently lazy in some ways, especially when it comes to shit I don't like to do. But on the other hand, I am the kind of guy up and running miles at 5am, and putting in long hours of training and preparation for my next big outdoor adventure after work and on weekends. So I guess I'm only lazy when to comes to unpleasant (to me) tasks. Gen X, btw.

[Jessamine]

Early end of Gen Y as it's defined by Wikipedia.  I'll do enough to get by and give everyone else (managers, coworkers, etc.) the impression that I'm doing good work and am valuable enough to keep around, but really don't find the need to apply myself and go above and beyond as a shining star of achievement.

Given that I know I am capable of doing "more"/"better", but am satisfied with doing "enough", I consider myself lazy.

[MrThatsDifferent]

This was a tough one for me. By most people’s definition, I’m not lazy. I run a company that is doing well and I’m always active at work, have never had a boring day, my days fly. I pray for down moments. I’m active before work and on the weekends. Yet, I don’t go out to eat with friends or visit them or host them like I feel I should. I have 3-5 side-hustle ideas that I haven’t started yet. I want to be fluent in a couple other languages and still, not. I also want to do acting on the side, maybe stand-up comedy, travel more and help with charities. I’m not doing any of the extra stuff. I’m so burned up by work each day that when I come home, I just want to veg in front of the tv and pass out after dinner. I know I’m not lazy, but I feel a bit lazy for not doing all the other things that I want, have time for but don’t prioritize. If anything, all those things are my FIRE plans, so I’m wanting to hit that goal as soon as possible so I can get to the fun stuff.

[Travis]

I work hard at my job, but when I get home I just want to do as little as possible. If something could get done, but could also sit for another day, it's going to have to wait.  My garage is still a pile of totes and loose items left over from our move in July.  It's all piled in a corner and none of those items are an immediate concern. I might get to it before New Years.  Could my house be cleaner? I suppose. I'm not messy, but I also don't prepare for white-glove inspections every week.  That pile of paperwork on top of the printer that should be filed? We haven't been using the printer so I'm not in a rush.  It's the 1st and the 15th and YNAB needs to updated and Vanguard needs to be fed? Try to stop me.

[GnomeErcy]

I would say I'm lazy, but paradoxically very motivated to do very un-lazy things in pursuit of the freedom to be as lazy as I want.

Pretty much sums up my thoughts on it. I choose to be not lazy now so that I can aspire to maximum laziness in the future.

[BTDretire]

I put lazy boomer, but I'm only lazy for things I have no interest in doing.
There are projects I put plenty of work into, and then there is time on the internet that I enjoy.
 Just a few days ago I spent about 25 hours tracking down and fixing a buzz I had in
my radio reception. Turned out to be two outdoor lights created the buzz.
That was a project I went head long into. Most would say, huh?

[Retire-Canada]

Gen X and very lazy. Being lazy has proven to be a great asset in life...at least most of the time so I do not mind that part of who I am at all.

FWIW - I don't know if that ^^ quote is accurately attributable to Bill Gates, but I like the sentiment. ;)