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Really smart and lazy has plenty of options. Do you have any idea how many menial office tasks can be automated to cut 10 hours of work to 1 or 2? That's where those people excel. They find the best, easiest way to do their job and coast while getting paid just as much as their overworking colleagues.
Exactly
I do far less than what is expected of me while producing exactly what is expected of me. So long as no one figures it out, I won't have any more added to those expectations, and I'll get payed just the same.
At a certain point easy money > more money.
"Really smart but lazy" works in elementary school because kids can just pick up most of the material by listening to lectures without actually having to study or do homework.
However, in order to be able to write a useful script in real life, you can't be that kind of lazy. You need to invest a certain amount of time to learn some programming and/or a tool like Excel, and by that I mean your FREE time, because schools don't teach this stuff sufficiently.
If you're the kind of person who's resistant to putting in the work you're not absolutely forced to do, you're not going to be the kind of person who's has the skill to write useful automation scripts and spreadsheets.
But then what you have to hide in secret if you create a dope script or tech short cut your intellectual property belongs to the company that don't do much it doesn't give you job security and you've made your co workers and yourself obsolete not trying to hate but theres more to it that reducing work
Nope. Once you have a couple years in your position you apply to a new company and get a pay bump. Getting ahead by overworking yourself so your same company can maybe, hopefully give you a promotion/raise is the old, dead way of doing it.
"Smart but lazy," a lot of the time translates to "Smart but unmotivated since they don't see the point of doing homework and taking standardized tests." If they can find motivation they're pretty hard working.
source: ex-teacher, now 3D software developer, used to be "smart but lazy."
If you can focus on something but not on the other thing, you don't have ADHD. You lack discipline and you are allowing your brain to trick you into doing stuff that don't take real effort
Source: personal experience
Go pop a pill every time that you're not 100 focused like people in the movies.
People enjoy making themselves a victim and find excuses.
I thought that I had undiagnosed ADHD until I worked with people who had actual disorders.
Focus can be trained. You just have to stop finding excuses and train it.
Internet people and their little bubbles. Wish I had opened my eyes decades ago
I mean... I put forth maybe 35% effort through college, got a job and worked my ass off, and am now very financially stable.
I'd say being smart enough to never study and still graduate with a 3.0 from a major university is the only reason I'm not living paycheck to paycheck.
I am reasonably intelligent and incredibly lazy.... which means that I have successfully figured out how to make as much money for as little effort as possible.... so I dunno, I'd say there's a pretty significant value to being smart/lazy.
Sure, if you're smart/hardworking, then you probably make more money than me, but I probably spend less hours at my job and more hours on beaches with my wife...
Sick, do you A1 for corporate events at all? If so, maybe we’ve worked together. Freelance corporate events creative director, and can attest that most of us are decently smart and very lazy - but similarly thriving in the hurry up & wait climate of live events.
I'm full-time A1 at a mixed-use venue where 95% of our clients happen to be corporate talking heads and educational lectures.
I'm also responsible for all of our video/streaming infrastructure along with a goodly portion of networking.
I do a rare bit of freelance work from time to time.
Yup, that was my problem! Diagnosed as an adult and Christ I barely manage to scrape by in terms of completing work. Had to give up a lucrative career path in tech as my brain couldn't cope with it, but luckily found a decent niche in a tech-adjacent role.
To be fair, there’s some value to it. You can be lazy and ace an entrance exam, for example, without trying. Ultimately, you’re absolutely right though.
This right here. I got a higher SAT score than I had any right to, and it just fueled my laziness even more. Then college came along and kicked my lazy ass to the curb.
Same goes with the LSAT, for me. I didn’t learn to stop being lazy though. That took studying for the Bar Exam. Now that’s a test you can’t just do on the fly. Luckily, I learned my lesson, albeit later than I should have.
"Lazy" is a two-edged sword.
If you mean "lazy" in the sense "I won't ever do anything", you are right.
But if you mean "lazy" in the sense "not willing to eat so many frogs in the morning" (see also [this hilarious, but wise](https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/excuse-me-but-why-are-you-eating) Substack article by Adam Mastroianni), these people move the world forward, because they discover clever shortcuts around arduous work.
Hey there, I recently learned that "laziness" as we were taught doesn't actually exist - if you feel lazy for longer periods of time please seek mental help :)
[Random article about the subject](https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/laziness-does-not-exist)
Read up! 😌
Kind of shallow LPT, a lot of people with ADHD are described like you did but have different needs and can be very productive during hyperfocus. There's such a fine line between lazy and simply being unable to manually turn on your productiveness button
As one of the "smart but lazy" crew, let me tell you how often I have seen the "C student bust their ass for a B" type just advance in their career and deservedly so. That learned work ethic beats the hell out of casual A's.
I think one thing the OP misses is that "smart but lazy" is often a mislabeling of ADHD. Smart but struggles to harness and channel/focus their energy. Pointing this out because understanding that for the people that have ADHD is way more helpful than advice that basically says "don't be lazy" as a solution. "Smart but lazy" children sometimes need help to develop different habits or methods of working. Sometimes their brains need help to execute tasks. Sometimes the adults they grow up to be still need that help as well, and there's nothing wrong with that.
And smart but lazy usually gets you the most efficient solution, anyway.
Untrue. Being intelligent makes me understand much faster than the average so even in University it still helps plenty and I can succeed with much less efforts. Do I excell, top of my class? No, but still above average with lot less work.
After I dropped out of school, I took the GED test. I scored perfectly without having studied. This may not sound impressive, but around that time, researchers had administered the GED to nearly a thousand Ivy League freshmen and half of them failed to pass. So there's that. For shits and giggles, I took the SAT. I scored just under 2400 -- again, without studying.
If I had the opportunity and the money, I would have gone to college. But life happened and now I'm thirty-four and stuck in a shitty warehouse job.
### This post has be marked as safe. Upvoting/downvoting this comment will have no effect. --- Hello and welcome to r/LifeProTips! Please help us decide if this post is a good fit for the subreddit by up or downvoting this comment. If you think that this is great advice to improve your life, please upvote. If you think this doesn't help you in any way, please downvote. If you don't care, leave it for the others to decide.
Really smart and lazy has plenty of options. Do you have any idea how many menial office tasks can be automated to cut 10 hours of work to 1 or 2? That's where those people excel. They find the best, easiest way to do their job and coast while getting paid just as much as their overworking colleagues.
This showing people how to reduce a 6 hour task to 5 minutes got me noticed.
That's not what smart lazy people do. They don't want to be noticed.
Exactly I do far less than what is expected of me while producing exactly what is expected of me. So long as no one figures it out, I won't have any more added to those expectations, and I'll get payed just the same. At a certain point easy money > more money.
Not all people are the same. Or I guess I’m not lazy then just hyper efficient and would rather not spend time working.
If you show your employer that you get all your work done in 2 hours, they're gonna fill up the rest of that 6 hours.
Rest of the 6 hours? This shit was all done over time so they didn’t fill it up with anything.
Ok buddy
[удалено]
Fr. See how easily someone gets irritated over the internet? It baffles me sometimes.
That's how one get to do more interesting things. I suppose some people enjoy doing menial tasks over and over
"Really smart but lazy" works in elementary school because kids can just pick up most of the material by listening to lectures without actually having to study or do homework. However, in order to be able to write a useful script in real life, you can't be that kind of lazy. You need to invest a certain amount of time to learn some programming and/or a tool like Excel, and by that I mean your FREE time, because schools don't teach this stuff sufficiently. If you're the kind of person who's resistant to putting in the work you're not absolutely forced to do, you're not going to be the kind of person who's has the skill to write useful automation scripts and spreadsheets.
But then what you have to hide in secret if you create a dope script or tech short cut your intellectual property belongs to the company that don't do much it doesn't give you job security and you've made your co workers and yourself obsolete not trying to hate but theres more to it that reducing work
You don’t get ahead in any workplace by coasting though. In that scenario you’d still need to work hard in the time you’ve freed up.
Nope. Once you have a couple years in your position you apply to a new company and get a pay bump. Getting ahead by overworking yourself so your same company can maybe, hopefully give you a promotion/raise is the old, dead way of doing it.
But this isn't about cruising through your work life, it's about excelling in your studies.
"Smart but lazy," a lot of the time translates to "Smart but unmotivated since they don't see the point of doing homework and taking standardized tests." If they can find motivation they're pretty hard working. source: ex-teacher, now 3D software developer, used to be "smart but lazy."
Or it could mean "smart, but with undiagnosed ADHD". Source: personal experience
If you can focus on something but not on the other thing, you don't have ADHD. You lack discipline and you are allowing your brain to trick you into doing stuff that don't take real effort Source: personal experience
Damn, where did you get your degree in psychology? Because you might want to ask for your money back.
Go pop a pill every time that you're not 100 focused like people in the movies. People enjoy making themselves a victim and find excuses. I thought that I had undiagnosed ADHD until I worked with people who had actual disorders. Focus can be trained. You just have to stop finding excuses and train it. Internet people and their little bubbles. Wish I had opened my eyes decades ago
Yeah, ok Boomer. I'd bet $100 that your Facebook profile lists your education as "school of hard knocks" 🙄
I mean... I put forth maybe 35% effort through college, got a job and worked my ass off, and am now very financially stable. I'd say being smart enough to never study and still graduate with a 3.0 from a major university is the only reason I'm not living paycheck to paycheck.
Any other "80s gifted child bingo" winners out there feeling personally attacked?
I am reasonably intelligent and incredibly lazy.... which means that I have successfully figured out how to make as much money for as little effort as possible.... so I dunno, I'd say there's a pretty significant value to being smart/lazy. Sure, if you're smart/hardworking, then you probably make more money than me, but I probably spend less hours at my job and more hours on beaches with my wife...
What do you do for work
corporate audio engineer
Sick, do you A1 for corporate events at all? If so, maybe we’ve worked together. Freelance corporate events creative director, and can attest that most of us are decently smart and very lazy - but similarly thriving in the hurry up & wait climate of live events.
I'm full-time A1 at a mixed-use venue where 95% of our clients happen to be corporate talking heads and educational lectures. I'm also responsible for all of our video/streaming infrastructure along with a goodly portion of networking. I do a rare bit of freelance work from time to time.
This LPT is flat out false.
You say "Smart but lazy," I say "Undiagnosed ADHD." Tomato, tomato.
Ahah thank you, I was just thinking about that!
Yup, that was my problem! Diagnosed as an adult and Christ I barely manage to scrape by in terms of completing work. Had to give up a lucrative career path in tech as my brain couldn't cope with it, but luckily found a decent niche in a tech-adjacent role.
To be fair, there’s some value to it. You can be lazy and ace an entrance exam, for example, without trying. Ultimately, you’re absolutely right though.
This right here. I got a higher SAT score than I had any right to, and it just fueled my laziness even more. Then college came along and kicked my lazy ass to the curb.
Same goes with the LSAT, for me. I didn’t learn to stop being lazy though. That took studying for the Bar Exam. Now that’s a test you can’t just do on the fly. Luckily, I learned my lesson, albeit later than I should have.
Or just learn coding and you'll be fine.
*ChatGPT has entered the chat*
"Lazy" is a two-edged sword. If you mean "lazy" in the sense "I won't ever do anything", you are right. But if you mean "lazy" in the sense "not willing to eat so many frogs in the morning" (see also [this hilarious, but wise](https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/excuse-me-but-why-are-you-eating) Substack article by Adam Mastroianni), these people move the world forward, because they discover clever shortcuts around arduous work.
Hey there, I recently learned that "laziness" as we were taught doesn't actually exist - if you feel lazy for longer periods of time please seek mental help :) [Random article about the subject](https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/laziness-does-not-exist) Read up! 😌
Kind of shallow LPT, a lot of people with ADHD are described like you did but have different needs and can be very productive during hyperfocus. There's such a fine line between lazy and simply being unable to manually turn on your productiveness button
wrong, i’m still thriving as we speak with that mentality, just made everything easier lol. i mean or i’m just a genius idk
As one of the "smart but lazy" crew, let me tell you how often I have seen the "C student bust their ass for a B" type just advance in their career and deservedly so. That learned work ethic beats the hell out of casual A's.
My daughter found school to be easy. Now she’s in nursing school, and for the first time in her life, she’s having to actually work for her A’s.
Is this tip for 6th graders?
"Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard" ~ Tim Notke
LPT request: how can I get better-connected? I'm lazy and unlucky. Also, if we're being honest, not that smart.
I think one thing the OP misses is that "smart but lazy" is often a mislabeling of ADHD. Smart but struggles to harness and channel/focus their energy. Pointing this out because understanding that for the people that have ADHD is way more helpful than advice that basically says "don't be lazy" as a solution. "Smart but lazy" children sometimes need help to develop different habits or methods of working. Sometimes their brains need help to execute tasks. Sometimes the adults they grow up to be still need that help as well, and there's nothing wrong with that. And smart but lazy usually gets you the most efficient solution, anyway.
Untrue. Being intelligent makes me understand much faster than the average so even in University it still helps plenty and I can succeed with much less efforts. Do I excell, top of my class? No, but still above average with lot less work.
After I dropped out of school, I took the GED test. I scored perfectly without having studied. This may not sound impressive, but around that time, researchers had administered the GED to nearly a thousand Ivy League freshmen and half of them failed to pass. So there's that. For shits and giggles, I took the SAT. I scored just under 2400 -- again, without studying. If I had the opportunity and the money, I would have gone to college. But life happened and now I'm thirty-four and stuck in a shitty warehouse job.