This week's DEV challenge is about building something that rewards laziness.
Which did make me laugh a little bit.
We're usually encouraged to be more productive, work harder, get more done, and make better use of our time. And now here's a challenge asking us to reward people for being lazy.
But the more I thought about it, the more I started wondering whether laziness is really such a bad thing.
Because there are different kinds of laziness.
There's the kind where you avoid doing something you really should be doing. I'm certainly guilty of that sometimes.
But then there's the kind that makes you look at a tedious, repetitive task and think, there has got to be a better way to do this.
And I think that second kind deserves a little more credit.
Sometimes laziness makes us creative
As developers, we do this all the time.
We'll spend hours building a tool to automate something that probably only takes a few minutes to do manually.
Does it always make sense? Absolutely not.
Do we do it anyway? Of course we do.
But I think there's something valuable in that instinct. It's not necessarily about being unwilling to work. Sometimes it's about being unwilling to keep doing work that doesn't need to exist.
That kind of laziness can lead to some pretty clever solutions.
But what about doing nothing?
Here's where I think it gets even more interesting.
We've gotten so used to measuring everything in terms of productivity that even our free time sometimes feels like it needs a purpose.
We take breaks so we can come back refreshed and work harder. We track our sleep so we can perform better. We turn hobbies into projects, projects into products, and sometimes products into businesses.
And there's nothing inherently wrong with any of that.
But does everything really need to accomplish something?
What about doing absolutely nothing just because you feel like it?
Not to recharge. Not to improve your focus. Not because it's part of some carefully planned routine.
Just because you want to.
I think there's value in allowing ourselves that kind of freedom, too.
Maybe it's about choosing where our effort goes
I'm starting to think the good version of laziness isn't really about avoiding effort.
It's about being more selective with it.
Sometimes that means finding a smarter way to do something.
Sometimes it means recognizing that something doesn't need to be done at all.
And sometimes it means giving yourself permission to spend an afternoon doing something completely unproductive without feeling guilty about it.
I have been diligently working on my challenge submission, which I suppose is the opposite of being lazy, but the theme for this week got me thinking.
Maybe laziness has a little more going for it than we give it credit for.
