Home » laziness

Tag: laziness

Your Name at the Top of the Page

I know well enough that very few people who are supposedly interested in writing are interested in writing well. They are interested in publishing something, and if possible in making a ‘killing.’ They are interested in being a writer, not in writing. They are interested in seeing their names at the top of something printed, it matters not what. And they seem to feel that this can be accomplished by learning certain things about working habits and about markets and about what subjects are currently acceptable.

-Flannery O’Connor, The Nature and Aim of Fiction, from Mystery and Manners, p.64

I found a lot of Ms. O’Connor’s points to be applicable to preaching and preachers as well. This is only the first example. Everybody wants a paycheck; not everybody wants to work. Everybody wants notoriety; not everybody wants to take notes. Everybody wants a gimmick. Everybody wants to figure out the market and opt for the easy thing that evokes some sort of reaction.

I’m reading nothing these days on the internet other than tirades – from both sides – about a trans on a magazine cover. That’s way too easy. Write something that will change people’s lives. Write something that will make people think. But, wait, that would actually take some hard work.

I say this as a note to self, really.

Laziness Means More Work in the Long Run

I often share a maxim with young people I work with. It takes a couple of different forms: Only lazy people work hard, or lazy people end up working the hardest. I think it is a helpful proverb. I have for some time attributed the idea to C.S. Lewis, but I couldn’t remember where I picked it up. So, I began to search for exactly where I got this idea.

As it turns out, I actually got it from a Eugene Peterson book I had to read in seminary called The Contemplative Pastor. Peterson remarks that this (‘only lazy people work hard’) was a ‘favorite theme’ of C.S. Lewis. It may have been a favorite theme, but I am only aware of one place where he says it outright:

Teachers will tell you that the laziest boy in the class is the one who works hardest in the end. They mean this. If you give two boys, say, a proposition in geometry to do, the one who is prepared to take trouble will try to understand it. The lazy boy will try to learn it by heart because, for the moment, that needs less effort. But six months later, when they are preparing for an exam, that lazy boy is doing hours and hours of miserable drudgery over things the other boy understands, and positively enjoys, in a few minutes. Laziness means more work in the long run (Mere Christianity, chapter 30).

I’d like to know of other places in Lewis where he expresses the idea, so by all means, share it with me if you know of any.