What it is
A simple test. Efficiency is removing steps that don’t add value. Laziness is skipping steps that do add value, because the cost of skipping them feels abstract until it isn’t.
Laziness often looks like efficiency for a while. It’s just laziness that hasn’t been invoiced yet.
The good kind of lazy
Laziness gets a bad name, but a certain kind of it is a method: the refusal to do the same tedious thing twice. Its tools are automating processes, relearning fundamentals, careful planning and execution, and building expertise in the roughest areas so they stop being rough.
Smooth is fast.
How it shows up for me
I am lazy. For real. In 2008 I wrote, “Efficiency is intelligent laziness,” and I still believe it. The catch is the word intelligent: it only counts when the shortcut is real, and not just a step I’m skipping.
I learned the difference in code. I kept committing straight to the main branch because it felt faster. Twenty-two commits went fine. Then one broke the login, and I’d traded five seconds of making a branch for thirty minutes of cleanup. I don’t call anyone else lazy for doing the same. But I know it was laziness for me, because I knew better and skipped it anyway.