
The Three Kinds of Laziness - sethbannon
http://sub.garrytan.com/the-three-kinds-of-laziness
======
hkmurakami
3 weeks ago, I was hit by a car. I was cycling. The car was going 50mph. When
I was hit from behind, it felt like a wall had come out of nowhere and had
slammed into me. On the ground, I was in so much pain I couldn't move, yet as
I lay on the ground screaming, I was strangely calm enough inside to be
thankful that I wasn't dead.

I was in the hills (I had been training to prepare for a multi-month bike
tour), so I was helicoptered to the hospital. If just a few things had gone
worse, I could have been paralyzed or even dead. The driver had his eyes off
the road to adjust his sun visor, so literally anything could have happened. I
was aware of this myself but the paramedics and doctors all made sure to make
me aware of my said luck. I've somehow gotten out with just a few broken ribs
and abrasions throughout the left side of my body (probably will be
permanent).

It's definitely brought a renewed sense of appreciation for the time I have
left here on this little blue ball.

I wasn't going to write about this until all the insurance claims had been
settled, but I felt compelled to spill the beans here on this occasion here. I
guess it's a sign that I've grown pretty close to this community.

~~~
yarianluis
About five weeks ago I fell of my motorcycle into the path of an oncoming car
on my way to Skyline/Woodside. The motorcycle went in front of it and lifted
the car into the air. Then I slid underneath it. One of the rear wheels landed
next to my head and I came out of the rear part of it.

The outcome was a broken left wrist. That's it. Literally nothing else
happened to me.

There are things that happen to you that make it clear how close we all are to
death at all times. I am glad to hear your injuries weren't too bad and hope
you recover from them well.

Edit: I have to add, it's also times like these that you will oftentimes show
you the best of people. The girl who was driving the car was very nice about
everything and even offered me a ride into the city (more than 45 minutes)
even though she lived in the opposite direction. The tow truck driver charged
me only half the normal rate because "we gotta stick together" and he rode
bikes too. Lots of people who were around near the accident helped immobilize
my arm after the injury. The friendly folks down at Motoshop unloaded the bike
and removed some of the ugly bits sticking out. Friend came to pick me up and
take me to hospital. It was pretty inspiring. People are amazing.

~~~
hkmurakami
Coincidentally, I was hit on Skyline just north of Page Mill Road (I had
climbed Page Mill from the bottom then had turned north on Skyline). But my
gosh, talk about a close call for you... were you heading up highway 9 or 84
and slipped out?

I remember looking up towards the direction the car that hit me went and
thinking, "please, _please_ stop so you can call 911 for me," and the driver
did stop and come back to me. He must have been in a state of panic, since he
asked me, "Oh my god are you alright, can I do anything for you?" and I
replied, gasping, "C-a-l-l 9-1-1".

In the ensuing minutes, a person with EMT training and a biker who was an off
duty fireman stopped to check me out, make sure my hands and toes moved, made
sure I didn't have pain in my neck, etc.

When a friend of mine crashed his bike descending Page Mill last summer (and
fractured 3 spinal fins), a random car stopped for him and took him to
Stanford hospital. Complete strangers!

You're absolutely right; give them an opportunity and people will show their
wonderful side.

~~~
yarianluis
I was on highway 84. Amazingly, we can do things like this:

<http://goo.gl/maps/vC1Cu>

The car stopped roughly where the men are standing.

I am always very thankful for people with EMT training. When I climbed Mt. St.
Helens last year a man had a medical complication and passed away on the
mountain. There were about 20 of us who spent about 45 minutes helping him out
until the helicopter arrived.

That experience really solidified for me the importance that we all get some
basic medical training. Even something as simple as CPR certification can
really save someone's life.

I get a little bit nervous for you cyclists. On the motorbike at least you
have thick leather protecting you from road rash. I can imagine that that part
can't have been fun.

------
WalterSear
This simplistic 'snap out of it' ideology belies and belittles the very real
issues of fear, discouragement and depression that underly much of what people
berate themselves over as 'laziness'.

~~~
kinleyd
"This simplistic 'snap out of it' ideology" lies at the heart of Buddhism. It
is neither ideology nor simplistic.

~~~
virtualwhys
What is this Buddhism that you speak of? Put another way, what is Buddha?
Given the epoch, it's not even clear that all of the teachings attributed to
the Buddha derive from one being (i.e. Buddhism is the evolution of a core
teaching that has become an ism).

IIRC, from the Diamond Sutra: a cloud, a flash of lightening, a dew drop, a
star...view all created things like this.

If that doesn't divert one's attention from sex, beer, or a pint of Ben &
Jerry's, nothing will ;-)

~~~
kinleyd
True, Buddhism is no different from Hinduism, Christism, Muhammadism or any
other ism in that it cannot escape the additions to the core teachings. Errors
in narration, translation and interpretation all contribute to giving one a
good reason to take what is passed down with healthy skepticism.

IMHO, the Buddhist recommendation to exercise this type of necessary
skepticism is to try it out, to experience it. If your experience confirms
what the received wisdom is said to be, you are probably on the right track.
Of course, there are lots of other basics, including the most basic of all -
get a good teacher. Needless to say, the meaning of "good" in this respect
always requires a modicum of circumspection. :)

Yup, there's lots of stuff like those you mentioned to divert your attention.
The idea is to give you a reason to get started. In this case I'd say
something like Nike's _Just Do It_ as mentioned in some of the other threads
is a tad overconfident. The Buddhist way would more likely be _Life is Short.
Just Get Started_.

~~~
swayvil
Luckily we in Buddhism have something better than mere teachings : Meditation.
More educational than a billion wise words.

~~~
kinleyd
Yes, indeed. I was referring to the practice of meditation as a good basis for
testing the worth of Buddhism.

------
davidroberts
How about the fourth kind of lazyness--not knowing what the hell to do out of
the many choices available, so you sit around hoping the right choice will
make itself obvious. It can turn into a very long wait.

~~~
hnalias7
"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice". That Rush quote
seemed relevant.

I do this often myself. I try to make educated decisions which means
researching all my options. Eventually you end up with "analysis paralysis".
Being overwhelmed with all the choices and variables and the "right choice"
isn't always clear.

I blame this somewhat on tv and movies that always have the epiphanic moment
where the right choice becomes clear and the protagonist knows what to do. We
usually don't get those in real life.

~~~
SatvikBeri
_"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice". That Rush quote
seemed relevant._

Trivia: Rush were actually quoting Ayn Rand. It's entirely possible that the
quote or at least the sentiment predates her too.

~~~
philwelch
While the sentiment is possibly there, I haven't encountered Ayn Rand using
those words specifically and I've read a fair amount of her work. Can you give
a more specific citation? Otherwise I'm fairly certain it was an original
lyric.

------
jasonlotito
The reason why quips like this are dangerous is that people will assume that
because of who Garry Tan is, they'll take his word for it.

Simply put, this is wrong. There are not three kinds of laziness. Better, it's
wrong to assume that your laziness and inability to act is one of those three
types mentioned.

As someone who was recently diagnosed with ADHD and OCD, I can assure you,
reflecting doesn't solve anything. Nor are the three types mentioned accurate.
Maybe the intent wasn't to classify ADHD and OCD as laziness, but until I was
diagnosed, that's what I called it.

So no. This is dangerously wrong. If you have any thought that you might have
ADHD or OCD, get it checked out. It can make a world of difference, not only
in medication (which doesn't have to be addicting) but in therapy. The
difference just over the last month has been staggering. It's a big
difference, and hard to quantify.

If you have a problem, seek professional help in understanding it. Ignore
meaningless platitudes "to reflect on death" and how there are "three kinds of
laziness."

~~~
garry
I'm sorry to hear about your diagnosis, and I wish the best for your ongoing
treatment.

I agree with you -- if there is a medical condition that can be treated, then
it makes sense to pursue that. I read a passage in a book earlier today that I
liked, and I posted it on my personal blog. I would never encourage someone
who had such problems to "just reflect on it."

~~~
jasonlotito
Thank you for the concern. On one hand, it's haunting to consider what it's
like to learn you've been operating at 50% efficiency all your life. On the
other hand, you focus on how much you've done in spite of the condition.

I didn't mean to imply that you would suggest to someone with a condition to
"just reflect on it." No reasonable person would, and apologies if it came off
like that.

Rather, my hope is that more people realize that this condition does exist, it
does carry a stigma, and you might not find out until you are well into adult-
hood. Too many self-help and GTD-like books and articles focus on simple
tricks. These all might help out, but if you find yourself constantly
struggling, get checked.

And if you know people like this, people that are otherwise smart and do good
work, but are somehow always behind, always playing catch-up, suggest they get
tested.

A part of me was ashamed about having this condition. I felt as if it said to
everyone around me that I'd really never been giving 100%. That I had lied to
people around me. I thought that I can't complain. I had a great life already,
and who was I to worry about not doing enough. OCD and ADHD, the premier first
world problems.

None of that is true, of course.

The truth is, the best thing I can do is speak up about it. Make people aware.
And share with them the fact that proper treatment and care can result in a
dramatic difference in their lives. That the more we are aware of ourselves,
the better off we can be.

------
obviouslygreen
I have a close friend who's an intentional Buddhist. Based on my values and
habits, he refers to me as a Buddhist; though this isn't something I choose
for myself, I have a hard time disagreeing with him. So understand that my
evaluation here is based on a limited understanding and not that of someone
who follows this philosophy.

Based on my understanding, this is crap.

First off: Buddhists aren't trying to perfect themselves. They seek stillness
and reflection, and harmony. Perfection isn't part of that lifestyle because
it's not even a concept they believe in.

Second: Essential? Essential IS sleeping and eating. What about programming or
resolving any of the _impermanent_ problems of the human race is any more
important, in a necessary sense, than the very vital acts that result in one's
continued existence?

 _Life is short, and if we want to develop our inner qualities it's never too
soon to start getting down to it._

This post, in its entirely a quote (or pair of quotes, I can't quite tell),
succeeds only in telling us that the things we think we ought to do don't
matter at all and we should instead concentrate on... something, and that
something isn't even hinted at, let alone defined in a meaningful way.

~~~
hkmurakami
Wouldn't you say that that 'something' is an entirely personal choice?

~~~
obviouslygreen
You certainly could. But if that were their intention, it'd kind of defeat the
purpose of suggesting that some things didn't qualify as "something."

~~~
brudgers
Does nothing qualify as something?

~~~
obviouslygreen
A worthy if abstract question, though it's presupposed by the original piece
(or at least what it quotes), as it specifically dismisses certain things...
so while it may allow nothing to be something, it indeed dismisses some things
despite, perhaps, coincidentally accepting nothing. ;)

------
throwaway1980
Does anyone else feel kind of confused and guilty when they read this? It just
seems so condescending to me.

I like eating and sleeping. I pay a lot of attention to these things. If
you're eating well and sleeping well, your life is probably going pretty good.
Sure, I'm going to die, that's why food and sleep matter even more. This
planet would be a pretty happy place if everyone was eating and sleeping as
much as they needed.

Second, what the heck. Too lazy to work on perfecting myself? I thought
spiritual enlightenment was about having a smaller ego, not a bigger one. I'm
going to feel more motivated if I focus on how awesome I'll be if I do the
inner work? You can't do this stuff for very long because you want to get
something out of it, you only do it in the long term because circumstances
push you into it and you have no choice.

Third, details vs. essentials. Details are bad now? You won't get far with
only one or the other. Yes, essentials are important, but so are details. In
startup terms, a great idea is essential, but you're dead without a great
execution.

Anyway, "laziness" is such a crap word in a spiritual context. As if
enlightenment was an achievement, when the point of just about every religion
is being, not doing.

Eat. Sleep. Give yourself a break when you hit a wall; perhaps you ought to
re-evaluate your priorities. Do a thorough and meticulous job on all of your
little projects. Pay attention to what you're doing, and you'll come out of it
all the wiser. Lack of progress in any one area is not laziness, it's a signal
that you need to try a different course of action.

~~~
AlexDanger
I think you're missing the point of the article.

Firstly, everyone understands the difference between healthy sleeping/eating
versus sloth and gluttony. Everything in moderation right?

Secondly, you confuse ego with self-importance. A poor ego doubts itself and
may never attempt a daunting task because of the belief one is not 'good
enough' to complete it. This becomes a convienient excuse to avoid doing
difficult (but worthwhile) tasks. A healthy ego will undertake challenging
tasks, because failure (in the traditional sense) is ok - failure will not
define you as a person. The success comes from learning along the way.

Thirdly, we all have to do trivial things. This is a fact of life. However,
how many times have you focussed on non-essential details in a project to
avoid the meat of the thing? Its a common form of procrastination I catch
myself doing. You also see it in overstuffed corporate environments - the term
'busy work' comes to mind.

~~~
throwaway1980
Look, the non-essential details here are all the particulars of this
conversation about some religious precepts. The essence is that you and I
trying to connect on a human level to each other across the internet for some
reason or another. Both the essence and the details are important.

It's not really about what you do, it's about what you see and how you do it;
the essence is always there, even if you're fixing idiotic bugs in some
obscure corner of your codebase.

------
vinceguidry
I was hoping for a mention of the useful programmer's type of laziness. The
laziness that leads to DRY and building tools that build your tools. I feel
like more could be said on that topic, how that sort of laziness relates to
the others.

~~~
yen223
Laziness is _not_ a virtue. If a lazy person could be productive by building
smarter tools, imagine what a dedicated, focussed person could do with those
same tools. And no, you don't have to be 'lazy' to recognize the value of
those tools.

Personal anecdote: I used to be the sort of programmer who would waste all my
time surfing the net, and maybe banging out a script once in a blue moon,
while congratulating myself on working 'smart'. The end result: a massive
backlog of unfinished tasks, and a whole lot of wasted years.

Thing is, working hard and working smart - they aren't mutually exclusive. I
found out all too late that when we say 'laziness is a virtue', we actually
mean ' _efficiency_ is a virtue'. It's the desire to be efficient at our job
that leads to DRY and building productivity-multipliers. Laziness - that just
leads to thumb-twiddling.

~~~
vinceguidry
>I used to be the sort of programmer who would waste all my time surfing the
net, and maybe banging out a script once in a blue moon, while congratulating
myself on working 'smart'.

If I have tasks to do involving programming, I would naturally gravitate
towards doing them rather than screwing around.

Hmm. Perhaps you don't have enough passion for programming. I'm not trying to
attack your skills or anything, but if I were you, I'd try to find something
that involves coding, so you don't have to learn completely new skills, but
that you actually have passion for. Then apply your skills towards that.

The thing about passion is that it makes most every other concern moot. You
don't have to worry about procrastination, you don't need to concern yourself
with whether you're wasting your life, because you already have something
driving your actions every day.

~~~
yen223
If a guy is passionate about his work, doesn't screw around while coding,
nobody would call him a lazy programmer ;)

~~~
vinceguidry
"We will encourage you to develop the three great virtues of a programmer:
laziness, impatience, and hubris." -- Larry Wall, Programming Perl

Laziness is then defined as "The quality that makes you go to great effort to
reduce overall energy expenditure." You don't want to spend an hour writing 40
slightly different functions, so you spend 3 drilling into the problem domain
and devise an abstraction that allows you to express the whole thing in 17
lines of code.

His project manager might call him lazy, after all, he technically pushed back
project completion by two hours more than needed, by wasting time on an
abstraction that was probably unnecessary, all just to scratch an itch. Is it,
though? You could argue both ways.

------
brudgers
Hacking is often prompted by a fourth species: productive laziness - lest we
forget, seeking to not be lazy is also grasping.

Productive laziness leads to the improvement of tools from new programming
languages to editor extensions to automating testing.

~~~
cafard
Indeed, hard not to think of the Perl world's Laziness, Impatience, and
Hubris. Or for that matter of Equord-Hammerstein's good words for laziness.

------
Swizec
> "The antidote to the first kind of laziness— only wanting to eat and sleep—
> is to reflect on death and the impermanent nature of everything."

No, the antidote is boredom. Only eating and sleeping is _boring_.

~~~
beat
Reflecting on death is boring.

------
nsomaru
I cannot recommend the book mentioned in this post enough for anyone
interested in the intersection between science/spirituality.

I found it challenged many assumptions held by my younger self who was a self-
admitted atheist and believed in the ability of Science (in my limited
understanding thereof) to explain everything.

I'm not saying that all the arguments presented therein are correct, but I
found them quite suitable to rock my world-view.

Then again, "when the student is ready, the Guru will present himself" (a
quote from my master).

~~~
qu4z-2
I think science can, with enough effort, predict most things. Whether it
explains anything is an open topic of debate in my friend group.

Also, just FYI, that's a fairly famous quote that gets tossed around a lot.
Although usually with "teacher" or "master" in place of Guru. (Does anyone
else have a negative connotation with that word?) I assume your master was
referencing it.

------
6d0debc071
I imagine there's some fairly serious miscommunication going on in quoting the
fella in a context of general advice about laziness. A philosophy that tends
to eschew materialism does not map well onto motivational speaking.

\- I tried thinking about death, but it turned out nothing was really
essential without desire and thus it didn't serve to get me desire.

\- I tried thinking about the benefits of something I didn't believe I could
do, but since I didn't believe I could do it I just felt depressed.

\- Just drop everything and get down to what gives life meaning - meh, unless
you're prepared to sacrifice an awful lot it can be difficult to just drop
everything.

Buddhist philosophy is about... well, it's more about exploring consciousness
and letting the experience of that change the way you relate to the world. If
you're looking for something to change what sort of person you are, this may
be an awfully long road for something that, at best, seems to touch on what
you're interested in as a side effect. May perhaps be better off looking at
research into akrasia/depression.

------
jjb123
One thing I've realized as we've gone from a group of friends to a company is
that my 'to-do' list is constantly edited with items simply removed at the
beginning or end of a day. I put things on there all the time thinking they're
important, but once a day, I will re-assess and take certain things off so
that the list does not bury itself/become meaningless. Productivity in my life
seems to be a function of pragmatism and de-cluttering (both physical and
mental).

------
loup-vaillant
If procrastination was _that_ easy to beat, we probably wouldn't have a
laziness problem in the first place. I mean in general, not just for
"spiritual" practices.

As for spiritual enlightenment, my best bet right now is mind uploading, which
should make introspection and subsequent ascension much easier. (I know it's
still a long shot, since we may not have that possibility before my body fails
me —if ever. But it _is_ my best bet.)

~~~
cLeEOGPw
Many artificial intelligence researchers say mind uploading is probably never
going to happen.

~~~
loup-vaillant
I believe you. I'd be shocked however to learn that it is the _consensus_ in
the AI community. Also, many brilliant people said heavier-than-air flight
will never happen. Fermi himself didn't believe in supercritical nuclear chain
reactions. I'm sure there are some other examples.

But the interesting question is: _why_ is it never going to happen? I can see
several reasons:

(1) Dualism is true: we have a soul without which our bodies could not
function, and souls cannot be uploaded with mere earthly artefacts. Such
machine not only wouldn't be us, they would be nearly empty shells. Like
zombies, only mechanical.

(2) Subjective identity does not transfer to the machine along with the
information contained in our bodies. While the machine would be a perfect
copy, behaving like us and all, it wouldn't be _us_. Only problem, the others
can't make the difference, so your elaborate form of suicide goes undetected.

(3) Mind uploading requires an understanding of the human mind that is
forbidden to us because of its deep self-referential nature. Gödel theorems
and such. A superior being could do it, but _we_ cannot.

(4) Our minds run on quantum stuff that we can't copy without screwing them
(measurements of quantum system tend to have significant consequences on the
system).

(5) We could never attain the necessary technological level. Moore's law may
cease to apply, we could screw ourselves in a major catastrophic event (World
War III, virus from the lab, environmental collapse, Gray Goo accident, Skynet
turning the solar system into paper clips… or the banal asteroid).

I think AI people only have authority on (3). Anyway, to the best of my
knowledge:

(1) is bunk. The world most likely runs on math, and probably relatively
simple math. Sure, we haven't found the complete laws of physics yet, but I
have hope.

I wouldn't bet my life on (2) just yet, but it does sound improbable. My
confidence is grounded on the fact that current physics say that copy&paste
transportation works. If you were disassembled and scanned into a hard drive,
then reassembled elsewhere with local material, it would still be you, not
just a copy. Mind uploading only have the additional problem of the change of
substrate (from neurons to silicon). I'm not sure it's a real problem though,
because we could still imagine downloading you back into your body, only with
a few additional memories.

(3) Shouldn't be much of a problem, provided we only need a low-level
understanding of our inner workings. Self-referential or not, computer viruses
_are_ capable of copying themselves, because they don't need to comprehend
themselves to do the copying.

(4) Is highly improbable. I know of no evidence pointing that way, and our
neurons tend to respond in much more obvious ways to stimuli (easily
detectable electrical impulses, modification of the blood stream, sizeable
chemical reactions…). Anyway, we should probably ask neuroscientists.

(5) is the most probable in my opinion. That would really suck, but there _is_
a good chance we bamboozle ourselves too deeply to ever recover.

Conclusion: like I said, it's a long shot. Not too long a shot however to give
up hope just yet.

~~~
rejschaap
Your computer virus analogy is a bit off as the virus was created by a
superior being. Self-replication is something that was programmed into the
virus, the virus did not develop this ability itself.

------
ultimoo
>> "You spend all your time trying to resolve minor problems, one after
another in an endless sequence, like ripples on the surface of a lake. You
tell yourself that once you've finished this or that project you'll start
giving some meaning to your life."

This reminds me of another insightful quip from the Dalai Lama talking about
Man -- _"...he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having
never really lived."_

~~~
virtualwhys
Quite similar to Thoreau's stated intent in going to Walden:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the
essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,
and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

------
tomsthumb
If you see this as actionable information you could probably get a good deal
out of perusing information on the eightfold path, particularly Right Effort
([http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca4/samma...](http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca4/samma-
vayamo/index.html)).

------
nileshtrivedi
I often joke that a to-do list should be filtered through the 4 "D" filters:
Discard, Delegate, Delay and Do. This is exactly the same as focusing foremost
on what's important and urgent (Stephen Covey's time management matrix that
everybody knows about). Just flips it around for a lazy man's perspective. :D

------
mreid
Sloth, apathy, and procrastination.

------
shawnc
This is great. For some reason, I read it as the point to this was the third
kind of laziness, and how to overcome that. It seemed like the least obvious
of the three, and also once I read it, how to overcome it was also the least
obvious.

And it's a very good thing to bring up. I for one, am always working on
something, attending to something, and it's all as a lead-up to the 'something
big'. What my co-founder tends to do is realize when we're in this mode and
declare it's time to 'step it up a notch'. We do things if we realize we're
scared or nervous to do them, purely to get past that and move forward.

------
arianvanp
You know you've done too much haskell for the day, when you expect this to be
a haskell article. halfway through I realized, "What does buddhists have to do
with haskelll... ooh shit my mind is molten"

~~~
dllthomas
I came to ask "Which type is Haskell?"

------
leke
I quite enjoy the first one actually. I mean, what good is it to do anything
if we are just going to die? Eat good, sleep good, digest in the middle good.
Very nice.

------
pastaking
The third kind of laziness is a contagious type of procrastination that eats
away at you slowly from the inside. You won't know what happened until one day
you realize that you're hollow.

I realized exactly that a few years ago (when I got into a car accident) but I
didn't relate it to laziness. It's so important to have the courage to stop
beating around the bush, especially when it comes to getting what you want out
of life.

Great post! Now I'm intrigued by buddhism.

------
guylhem
Excellent content and suggestions. To attack the 3 kinds of laziness at once,
I for one find motivation in reading the dharma (see the miracle of knowledge)
and Seneca letters.

Speaking of Seneca letters, the last one is especially thoughtful, in
reminding us that physical pleasures should not be scorned either.

The parent article may insist too much in spirituality - but besides that
minor drawback, it's a great read, with actionnable practical advice.

------
lsiebert
Code complete also talks about 3 types of laziness, and how some are more
beneficial than others.

1\. Deferring an unpleasant talk 2\. Doing an unpleasant task quickly to get
it out of the way 3\. Writing a tool to do an unpleasant task so you never
have to do it again

------
stormbrew
For all the people who seem to find buddhist philosophy uplifting and
empowering, I've never been able to see it as anything but deeply depressing.
"Not doing anything with your life? Think about death and that'll fix it." ...
I don't see it.

~~~
nsomaru
I suggest you see Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement Speech (2005):
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHWUCX6osgM>.

The part which conveys this idea beautifully is this:

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever
encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything
— all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -
these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly
important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to
avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.
There is no reason not to follow your heart"

Basically, If we deeply[1] accept/realise that we are transient beings (which
requires significant reflection given that we all secretly act as though we
are immortal, though we may intellectual comprehend that we are not), one may
more clearly distinguish between what is important in life and what is
superficial.

A definition of the Spiritual Path which appeals to me: "Nitya anitya viveka
vichara" -- "the ability to discriminate between the eternal and the
ephemeral" [2]

[1] As an inherent and basic measure from which all action emanates

[2] I would be willing to delve into that a bit deeper should anyone be
interested.

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wavesounds
Most Buddhist Monks depend on other people to feed them yet he is calling
those people who work jobs they might not like to put food on their tables
lazy? Wish this came from more of a place of compassion then judgement.

~~~
Volpe
I don't think he's saying that at all. Could you be viewing it from a place of
judgement rather than compassion?

Do most buddhist monks depend on other people to feed them? More so than the
rest of us?

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alok-g
There is fourth kind: Love for figuring out challenging problems but then not
taking the time to implement the solutions (which sound boring once the
problem has been figured out).

------
blendergasket
For me laziness is usually driven by some or another fear.

------
nati
who have not been all kinds of lazy at least one time? Just stand up and get
exited about anything to get going again!

