There are 10 ways to do just about everything.
Or so they say.
Who among us hasn't figured out a shortcut to so many things people have been doing with more effort than necessary?
Lazy. Or genius?
It's a coin toss.
One thing is for sure...
Some people will always find a way.
Redditor lauvnoodles wanted to hear about the ways certain types of people get the job done, regardless of effort.
"Bill Gates said, 'I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.' What's a real-life example of this?"
Work smarter, not harder. That's what personal trainers say. Let's see...
Be Lazy
Elizabeth Taylor Cleopatra GIF by 20th Century Fox Home EntertainmentGiphy"I had a math teacher that actively encouraged his students to be as lazy as possible, defining lazy as actively searching for ways to do as minimal work as possible. His logic was that the way math is now, it could always be simplified and still work the same, someone just needs to be lazy enough to find that."
Dovahnime
My Way
"I was working as a stockboy in a supermarket and when we had to fill the milk cooler people would bust open a 12 pack of milk cartons and put them in one by one. On my first day I just placed the 12 pack in the cooler and cut the plastic off on one side with my box cutter and yanked it from under it and the look of the store manager and the other employee who was training me was pure bewilderment. From that day everyone did it my way."
necropants
Alexa
"Start of lockdown, my 9 year old son was having worksheets emailed to complete at home. One day, left him at the laptop doing his maths while I made some dinner with my 3 year old daughter. Walked into the living room with his dinner to find him asking the Alexa all of his maths questions."
SparkieMark1977
Daily Tasks
"Worked as a laborer at a nursery one summer. Daily tasks included manually watering 15,000 plants each day. Put together a back of the napkin plan to build an irrigation system and spent the next few weeks building it with some money from the boss. That system is still running 15 years later and does all the work now."
"I did automate myself out of the job and had to find another eventually. Couple years later got my engineering degree. I’m convinced Engineers are inherently lazy people that will spend a disproportionate effort to make things easier."
InquiringKata
Parchments
Take This Job And Shove It Vintage GIF by US National ArchivesGiphy"The clerk was asked to bring 145 white papers into the office. He doesn't want to count the papers manually so he printed 145 blank sheets and took them in."
Rino_samuel
Is this lazy or GENIUS?! What a fine line.
Midnights
Alarm Clock Float GIF by jjjjjohnGiphy"I plug clocks in at midnight so they're already set."
january21st
Massive
"My brother in law spent a whole summer trying to figure out how to fix his sagging deck at the lake which he could in theory crawl under and jack it up. It would have been a tunneling project. It's a 60x60 area all long 2x6 boards. Massive."
"I sat there long enough with enough beers in me to come up with the idea of just cutting a square out of the sagging area about 3ft x 3ft, jacking it up then re-screwing down the boards."
"He paints the thing every spring with a roller anyhow so it's not like the square cut shows up. He thought I was a genius. I was just lazy."
bbbbbbbbbb99
chemistry class
"We had to hold a thermometer in water in chemistry class. It probably was only 20 minute experiment but your arms get tired after a couple minutes and you can’t let the thermometer touch the bottom of the pan or it won’t get an accurate reading. So instead of sucking it up and just holding the thermometer, my lab partner built a contraption out of lab books and paperclips to somehow hold the thermometer in the water without it touching bottom."
"It was the stupidest looking thing you would ever see in a lab class and our professor even walked over and said 'if it looks stupid, sounds stupid, but it works, then it isn’t stupid.' My lab partner and I joke that he wasn’t talking about the contraption but the intellect of my lab partner."
cojallison99
'Rock Me Gently'
"One of my favorite examples is Andy Kim. And I'd like to preface this by saying that I don't think Kim is lazy so much as a genius. Andrew Youakim was a singer/songwriter who became famous under the stage name Andy Kim. He achieved success writing songs for bands like the Archies, possibly most notably 'Sugar, Sugar.'"
"After his success he coasted for awhile until his record label dropped him for lack of output. At that point he created his own label and cranked out hits like 'Rock Me Gently.' When they saw this, the big record labels then bought his label under the assumption that they would then profit off of the songs he wrote and performed."
"He then very shortly stopped writing songs and largely lived off the sale of his label. Work smarter not harder."
Microwave_Warrior
Me Too
Saturday Night Live Eating GIFGiphy"Eating dinner out of the pot so there’s fewer dishes to wash."
jackrussellenergy
"Not gonna lie, since this stay-at-home thing, I've been eating standing at my kitchen counter or stovetop. Single life is great sometimes."
ehmmes
I've learned so much today. I feel seen. Sometimes the minimum effort can have maximal results.
Do you have similar experiences to share? Let us know in the comments below.
@jessicachastain/Instagram
