š Laziness Does Not Exist Book Club-Week 3ļøā£&4ļøā£
š Week 3: Sept28-Oct4 | Chapter 3 You Deserve to Work Less (p73-104)
&
š©µ Week4: Oct5-11 | Rest/Catch-up Week
I am curious what your reaction to the chapter title is, if you have one? Do you immediately agree, disagree, or somewhere in between?Ā
My immediate response to the chapter title: YES. This is true for most everyone I speak to and work with: you deserve to work less š
[the only criticism I have of this statement is that due to capitalism, not all of us can afford to work less and I wish the author addressed that better... yet, it remains true, everyone deserves to work less than the 40h+++ workweek]
I think what I liked most about this chapter was the emphasis on challenging the idea that our inability to constantly produce, achieve, and keep going is somehow a personal failing. Some weeks I feel like a broken record on this topic with clients, and it was nice to see the research and clinical evidence I reference constantly written out in lovely little paragraphs in this book.Ā
We live in a culture that has normalized the idea that a āproductiveā person should be able to sit down and āchurn out results for eight hours or moreā even though there is overwhelming evidence that this simply isn't realistic or achievable for us mere mortals. We can't sustain that level of output, yet we're often left feeling like we're lazy, unmotivated, or just not trying hard enough.
I liked that the author really emphasized that so many of us are actually doing far more work than is healthy. We're pushing ourselves through tiredness, ignoring the signals that we're reaching our limits, and then feeling guilty when we finally need to stop.
The chapter points out that (and I think more employers need to hear this on repeat) more hours of work doesnāt equal greater productivity.
Did you find it suprising when the author noted that we can only maintain consistent output for a couple of hours a day??
I I thought the book did a good job of outlining how the rest of the time, our attention and energy fluctuateāand that's not a moral failure. That's just being human.
I also really liked the discussion of how difficult we've made it to simply walk away from work. We feel like we should always be doing something: working, answering emails, being productive, improving ourselves, accomplishing something. In my experience working with clients, rest often feels like something we need to justify or earn.
I want to highlight and bold so many sentences in this chapter, including a resounding YES to the argument that what we call laziness is often just a person reaching a very normal human limit in a culture that expects them not to have limits.
One of my favourite lines was:
āTo do good work, a person has to rest and find moments to enjoy the beauty of life.āĀ
This felt particularly fitting to read as I transition from a remote work week into full vacation mode after today.
The quote feels so obvious when you say it out loud (or read it), and yet surprisingly radical to actually live by. Being in Europe right now, the references in this chapter to Europeans taking their vacation days and being better at switching off from work and tuning into life feel especially on point. I see it all around me here, and itās not just tourists on vacation. Locals seem to genuinely integrate life outside of work into their everyday lives, too. I worry that the North American response to this is often to label it lazy, when really, it seems far healthier than the typical North American culture of endless work hours and days. What a concept: doing good work andĀ making time to enjoy being alive.
Another quote that really stood out to me was around leaving toxic workplaces (below):
I had a number of friends express worry and reflect to me that my government job was harming my health, and it still took quiet some time and a scary leap of faith to move into fulltime private practice. I have never looked back and regretted the decision. Without a doubt, working for myself has been the best thing I could have done for my health and overall wellbeing. And, I appreciated this sentence (below) because it IS a very scary thing to do less, and rest more:
I hope Ch3 left prompted some reflection for you on this idea: āWhat am I expecting from myself, and is that expectation actually sustainable?āĀ
Because maybe (probably) the problem isn't that we're not doing enough. Maybe we've been taught that enough will never be enough.
Some questions to consider:Ā
Did this chapter shift how you think about laziness, productivity, or rest?
In what ways do you find it challenging to actually integrate the science and research presented in this book so far?Ā
Next Up:
Week 5 (Oct12-18)āCh4&5 (p.105-156)
PS. **likely the Week 5 post will be a little behind schedule, AND, I am going to keep reading and I hope you are still reading along with me. Thanks for being here!
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