Let's get this out there right up front: I'm a lazy guy. I won't take one step out of my way if it feels like a waste of time. I always look for the shortest route to work, the fastest way home, and the quickest way to get a job done. I hate wasting time, mine or anybody else's. Especially mine. All in all, I'm a very busy man, and I don't have a lot of energy to spare, anway.

That said, I don't think laziness, in and of itself, is a bad thing. The desire to expend the mimimum amount of energy to survive is a genetically programmed survival mechanism that allows organisms to get by when food is scarce. That's good, right? Only now, for most of us, food isn't scarce. If anything, we have too much of it, too conveniently, which has completely screwed up our programming, leaving many Americans fat and out of shape. But that's a topic for another blog.

You see, while I don't buy the whole primordial soup theory (mmm, soup...) I do think Mr. Darwin's theories were basically correct: the creatures with superior habits, thought processes, or innate abilities in their current environments prevailed over those without. I happen to believe that this is the result of divine planning rather than a global process of trial and error, but that doesn't negate the basic theory. Just its conclusions.

Stay with me here. According to our theory, good, helpful habits survive, while destructive or even unproductive habits remove themselves from the system. In this way, the species survives. So, why do we still have this energy-conserving mechanism we call laziness? Is it just a vestigial trait, like a tail stub in our brains? Has civilization progressed so quickly that we have essentially outrun evolution, making it obsolete? Or does laziness still serve a purpose?

In case you're too lazy to leap to your own conclusions, I'll get to the point: I think laziness still serves a very important purpose, if we can just apply it to different circumstances. Food is no longer scarce, so we don't need to literally preserve our energy so that we can keep breathing tomorrow. Time, on the other hand, is an increasingly precious resource, so much so that I would argue many people are dying for lack of it. I think we should apply our innate laziness to conserving time -- in every aspect of our lives, but especially at work -- so that we can put all that abundant food and energy to better use.

To further that cause, I'm going to use this space to start capturing my own ideas applying laziness to work. Even if no one else reads it, at least I'll have captured these thoughts so I don't have to keep trying to remember them later. I'm lazy that way.