Hello Inspirers
If you had met me a few years ago, you would have seen the poster child for "Hustle Culture."
I was obsessed with the grind. I had the color-coded calendar. I had the aggressive 5:00 AM alarm.
I was listening to audiobooks at 2x speed while brushing my teeth because I was terrified of wasting a single second of potential "growth."
And you know what happened? I didn't become a millionaire or a Zen master.
I burned out. Hard.
I found myself staring at my laptop screen at 11:00 PM, totally exhausted, yet feeling like I hadn't actually accomplished anything meaningful.
The personal development world often sells us a lie.
It tells us that growth requires suffering. It tells us that if you aren't uncomfortable, you aren't moving forward.
But as we wrap up this year (and what a year 2025 has been), I realized something counter-intuitive.
My biggest breakthroughs didn't come from pushing harder. They came from slowing down.
They came from adopting habits that, to the outside observer, might look a little bit "lazy."
But this wasn't laziness. It was strategic efficiency.
It was the realization that a sharp axe cuts down the tree faster than a dull one, no matter how hard you swing it.
Here are six surprisingly "lazy" habits that did more for my personal development in the last twelve months than a decade of grinding ever did.
1. The Art of "Strategic Underachievement"
This sounds terrible, doesn't it? We are raised to be overachievers.
We want the A+. We want the gold star.
But I realized that trying to give 100% effort to 100% of my tasks was a mathematical impossibility.
I was diluting my energy. By trying to be great at everything, I was becoming average at everything.
So, I adopted the practice of Strategic Underachievement.
I looked at my to-do list and identified the tasks that simply didn't matter that much.
Responding to non-urgent emails? Folding the fitted sheets perfectly? attending meetings where I had no speaking role?
I gave myself permission to be a "C-student" in those areas.
I aimed for "good enough."
Greg McKeown, the author of Essentialism, put it best when he said, "You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything."
When I stopped trying to polish every single aspect of my life to perfection, I suddenly had a surplus of energy.
I took that energy and poured it into the one or two things that actually moved the needle—like my writing and my health.
In those areas, I aimed for the A+.
By being "lazy" with the trivial many, I became a powerhouse with the vital few.
It felt like cheating, but really, it was just prioritizing.
2. The "Do Nothing" Protocol
In a world of constant notifications, doing nothing is terrifying.
If we are standing in line at the grocery store, we pull out our phones.
If there is a lull in conversation, we check social media.
We have lost the ability to be bored.
Earlier this year, I started a habit that I jokingly call "The Do Nothing Protocol."
For fifteen minutes every day, usually right after lunch, I sit on my couch and do absolutely nothing.
I don't meditate. I don't focus on my breath. I don't listen to music.
I just sit there and stare at the wall or out the window.
At first, it was excruciating. My brain was screaming for dopamine. I felt itchy with the need to do something.
But after a few weeks, the fog cleared.
Blaise Pascal, the famous French mathematician, once wrote, "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."
He was right.
In those moments of silence, my brain finally had time to process the chaos of the day.
Ideas that had been stuck in my subconscious started bubbling up to the surface.
Solutions to problems I had been wrestling with for weeks suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
It turns out, your brain needs downtime to archive information.
By constantly feeding it new data, we are jamming the gears.
That fifteen minutes of "laziness" made me more creative than hours of brainstorming ever could.
3. Sleeping Like It’s My Job
For years, I wore my sleep deprivation like a badge of honor.
"I'll sleep when I'm dead," I used to say.
The result was that I was walking around like a zombie—irritable, unfocused, and prone to making bad decisions.
I treated sleep as a luxury that I could trade for more work hours.
This year, I flipped the script. I started treating sleep as a performance-enhancing drug.
I became ruthless about my eight hours.
If I have a deadline, I sleep. If I am stressed, I sleep.
I realized that one hour of work done by a well-rested brain is worth four hours of work done by a tired brain.
Matthew Walker, the neuroscientist and author of Why We Sleep, argues that sleep is the single most effective thing we can do to reset our brain and body health each day.
When I started prioritizing rest, my emotional intelligence skyrocketed.
I was less reactive. I could handle stress with a smile.
My memory improved.
It felt "lazy" to go to bed at 9:30 PM when my peers were still answering emails, but the quality of my output the next morning spoke for itself.
I wasn't working longer hours; I was working with higher voltage.
4. Reading Fewer Books (But Reading Them Better)
The internet is full of people bragging about reading 50 or 100 books a year.
I used to be one of them. I would speed-read through non-fiction titles, desperate to hit my number on Goodreads.
But if you asked me a month later what I learned from those books, I couldn't tell you.
I was consuming information, but I wasn't retaining it.
I was treating knowledge like fast food—consuming it quickly and gaining no nutritional value.
So, I decided to be "lazy" with my reading goals.
I stopped trying to read everything new and trendy.
Instead, I picked three or four books that I knew were foundational to the person I wanted to become, and I read them slowly.
I read Atomic Habits by James Clear for the third time.
I re-read The Daily Stoic.
I took notes. I highlighted. I sat with the ideas.
I realized that reading one great book deeply is infinitely better than skimming twenty mediocre ones.
Naval Ravikant, the entrepreneur and philosopher, said, "Read what you love until you love to read."
He also suggests re-reading the best books is more important than reading new ones.
This "lazy" approach took the pressure off.
It turned reading back into a joy rather than a chore.
And because I was actually absorbing the material, I started applying it to my life.
Personal development isn't about how much you know; it's about how much you apply.
5. Saying "No" Without an Excuse
This was the hardest habit to build, but also the most liberating.
I used to be a chronic people-pleaser. If someone asked me for coffee, or to pick up a shift, or to join a committee, I said yes.
I was terrified of letting people down.
But every time I said "yes" to something I didn't want to do, I was saying "no" to myself.
I was saying "no" to my goals, my rest, and my family.
So, I started practicing the "Lazy No."
The "Lazy No" is simple: You decline the request, and you don't offer a long, elaborate excuse.
You don't say, "Oh, I wish I could, but my cat is sick and my car is in the shop and..."
You simply say, "Thank you for asking, but I can't make it work right now."
That’s it.
It felt rude at first. It felt incomplete.
But I realized that people actually respect clear boundaries.
When you stop scrambling to please everyone, you regain control of your time.
Steve Jobs famously said, "Focus is about saying no."
He wasn't just talking about business strategy; he was talking about life.
By ruthlessly cutting out the obligations that didn't align with my values, I created space.
Space to think. Space to breathe. Space to grow.
And yes, I probably disappointed a few people.
But I stopped disappointing myself.
6. Embracing "Good Enough" Consistency
There is a concept in fitness called "greasing the groove."
It means doing an exercise frequently but with low intensity, just to get your body used to the movement.
I applied this to my personal growth habits, specifically writing and exercising.
In the past, if I couldn't do a full 60-minute workout, I would skip it entirely.
If I couldn't write 1,000 words, I wouldn't write at all.
It was all or nothing. And usually, it was nothing.
This year, I adopted the "lazy" habit of the Micro-Win.
If I'm tired, I don't skip the workout. I just do 10 minutes of stretching.
If I don't have time to write an article, I write three sentences in my journal.
The goal isn't intensity; the goal is simply showing up.
I realized that the habit of starting is more important than the result of the session.
James Clear talks about this in Atomic Habits. He calls it the "Two-Minute Rule."
Make the habit so easy that you can't say no.
By lowering the bar, I stayed consistent.
And over a year, those "lazy" 10-minute sessions compounded into massive results.
I wrote more this year than ever before, simply because I stopped waiting for the perfect time to write.
I stopped relying on motivation, which is fleeting, and started relying on easy systems.
The Paradox of Laziness
We live in a culture that worships the grind.
We scroll through social media and see people waking up at 4:00 AM, drinking green juice, and running marathons before breakfast.
It makes us feel inadequate. It makes us feel like we are falling behind.
But true personal development isn't about adding more to your plate.
It is often about taking things off.
It is about doing fewer things, but doing them with more intention.
The "lazy" habits I adopted this year—sleeping more, doing less, saying no, reading slowly—were actually the most disciplined things I've ever done.
They required the discipline to ignore the noise.
They required the courage to step off the hamster wheel and ask, "Where am I actually going?"
As you look toward the New Year, I challenge you to rethink your definition of growth.
Maybe you don't need a new planner. Maybe you don't need another app.
Maybe you just need to slow down.
Maybe the most productive thing you can do today is absolutely nothing for 15 minutes.
Give yourself permission to be a little bit "lazy."
You might just find that it's the fastest way to get where you want to go.
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