Leo at Zen Habits is a believer in my business model even if he doesn’t know it MUHAHAHA (::maniacal laugh ensues::).

I have to hand it to him though, his explanation of the virtues of laziness are much more eloquent than mine in his article The Lazy Manifesto.

Lazy means you don’t want to work too hard, which often leads to figuring out how to do less work. Just about all of the advances in technology come from laziness: we drive cars instead of walking because we’re too lazy to walk, we use washing machines because we’re too lazy to do it by hand, we use computers because writing things out by hand is hard. Of course, reliance on machines isn’t a good thing, but using laziness to figure out better ways to do things is a good thing.

It’s a fine-line to be sure, but when running your small business, every time you catch yourself thinking “I really don’t want to do this again, it’s so tedious, there’s got to be a better way to do this”. You could beat yourself up for being lazy or you could recognize it for what it is…

an opportunity.

This is instincts speaking to you.

We’re surrounded by technology that can automate much of the mundane and repetitive tasks for us. Sometimes, it’s not technology you need, just a better process. And sometimes it’s better to step back and evaluate whether what we are doing is even truly necessary or worthwhile (concentrating on being effective rather than being productive…or in other words, making sure we’re busy doing to the right things instead of being really good at doing all the wrong things.)

You’ve all seen those cartoons with the angel and the devil caricatures on someone’s shoulders telling them to do the right thing or the wrong thing. Well, I say we all have an additional companion - the Lazy Gnome.

This third little guy has an aversion to anything that even smells like effort. Everybody has one. Some of our Lazy Gnomes are louder than others though.

While your Lazy Gnome can be destructive when he convinces you to truly do nothing (aka procrastinate). We’ve been trained our whole professional and academic lives to silence him. My practice is built around the premise that we need to learn to embrace him and listen because when he starts squeaking in our ears, he’s usually alerting us to an opportunity to eliminate useless busy-work or an opportunity to find a way to do something better.

I still say that the comedian Steven Wright summarized it best:

“Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.”

I’ve printed this out and posted this in my workspace as a humorous reminder that there’s a big difference between being busy and being effective and that my Lazy Gnome deserves attention.

If you feel overstressed, time-crunched, you feel can’t-get-it-all-done-in-24-hours-itis and you’re working yourself to the bone and not making any headway - let me help your Lazy Gnome come out of hiding.

Now, in fancy terms - through a combination of multiple disciplines: business process analysis and re-engineering, organizational analysis, business model analysis, industrial engineering and the appropriate application of technology automation, I help you do it better, with less effort and better results.

Sound like your thing? Let me hear your story and I’ll tell you if I can help you.

Welcome back again!