Happy Friday!

Way too many grocery bags

You’ve done it. We’ve all done it.

You drive home from the grocery store. You’re exhausted—it’s the end of a long day. And there’s work left to do: you still have to put your groceries away.

But before you can do that, you have to… cue ominous music… carry. them. inside.

Whether your garage connects directly to your kitchen or you have to park on the street and hike up fourteen flights, you’re going to carry way too many grocery bags in one load. It’s human nature. We refuse to make more than one trip for those groceries.

And we usually make it! We slide fourteen plastic bags on our left arm and fourteen on our right and squeeze through every doorway between us and the refrigerator.

But sometimes we don’t make it. Bags break, and we lose all the time and energy we were trying to save while we're picking up (dented) cans of stewed tomatoes and gathering the (bruised) apples that rolled under the car.

Lazy Man’s Load

Overloading with groceries is one example of what my dad called a “Lazy Man’s Load.” It doesn't have to be groceries, of course. I’ve done it with firewood (ever dropped a split log on your bare foot? It’s unpleasant), with sports equipment (escaped baseballs roll for a really long time on sloped pavement), and with various other armloads.

You may balk at Dad’s terminology: “I’m carrying a whole bunch of stuff. How is that lazy?”

From Dad’s perspective, it's a "Lazy Man's Load" because you’re not willing to make more than one trip. It’s almost always better to take more trips with smaller loads, because you’re far less likely to drop or damage anything.

Most of us make this “Lazy Man’s Load” mistake with our productivity—like diving into our day’s work without planning what we’re doing or when we’re doing it. We overload ourselves, and make mistakes that could be avoided. Instead of saving time, we lose it.

To be clear: I’m cool with laziness. The key, though, is to prepare to be lazy so it doesn’t cause larger problems.

💡 Invest work now, be lazy later 💡

👆 That's your weekend upgrade.

​Kara Monroe used a perfect phrase during an Office Hours session of my AP Productivity: Cohort course. Kara said she “optimizes for laziness.” I endorse that approach!

In 2009, I took over as choir director at my current church job. My predecessor had recorded practice CDs every week for the choir and cantors, and I quickly spotted that as something I had no intention of doing. Recording, re-recording, burning CDs—that seemed like wasted energy and resources.

So instead, I spent 50 or 60 hours designing and building a choir website from scratch. Now, when I plan music for upcoming weeks, the music is listed where they can see it, and it includes links to their practice recordings. And those recordings? I make them once and then they’re available every time I schedule that hymn.

I optimized for laziness. I invested extra time up front to save countless hours in the years that followed.

Effective laziness

We want productivity systems to make our work more efficient, but not at the cost of effectiveness. We want both—more efficiency and more effectiveness.

To get both, we have to recognize when work is repeated and distill it into recurring tasks or standard operating procedures. When we optimize that work up front, it allows us to do less work overall.

There are two pitfalls to avoid in this approach.

(1) The “Lazy Man’s Load” pitfall is optimizing before you’ve fully understood what you’re optimizing. Trying to carry every grocery bag at once is asking for trouble, and so is trying to automate a process that you’ve never run manually.

(2) The other pitfall is not optimizing for laziness at all. Imagine if, instead of carrying all your bags inside at once, you made a return trip for every single grape. That would be a waste of time and energy.

A well-designed productivity system will shepherd manual processes toward automated procedures. As you understand your processes and how to improve them, you’ll recognize ways to do your work more efficiently.

How can Tools for Thought help?

If you’re new to the Weekend Upgrade newsletter, I explore how processes can be created in Tools for Thought (TfTs). TfTs are apps optimized for linking your ideas, thoughts, notes, etc.—apps like Roam Research, Amplenote, Logseq, Obsidian, and Craft.

Because you can write down practically anything in a TfT, it’s a great environment for distilling your manual processes into automated procedures.

Document your procedures

When you first perform a set of tasks—a new project, a new packing list for vacations, etc.—document the tasks in your TfT. Then, the next time you do something similar, refer to that list.

As you run the process again, refine the list. You probably left something out or wrote something down wrong—or maybe you’ve simply found a better approach the second time. (After all, you’re more likely to find a better approach when you have an approach at all!)

Once you’ve recognized and recorded a recurring procedure in list form, you can be lazier in the future. Because you know exactly what to do.

And, when possible, you can leverage the power of your chosen TfT—or another app in your productivity stack—to automate procedures. It’s much easier to plan a daily agenda, for example, when your recurring tasks, appointments, and daily startup and shutdown routines are already in place before you start actively planning your day.

None of that automation is possible, though, until you’ve done the up-front work of developing the procedure… until you’ve prepared to be lazy.

Optimizing for laziness is smart

A productivity system should make your best days extraordinarily productive. But it should also make sure your worst days don’t fall apart.

When you optimize for laziness, you make it far easier to get through days when you’re not at your best. You can invest some time from your best days into improving the system, and that pays off when you’d rather plop down on the couch than work on a major project.

Set your system up correctly, and you don’t have to carry all the groceries or firewood or sports equipment at once (and listen to my dad call it a “Lazy Man’s Load”). But you also don’t have to carry every grape or baseball separately. You can batch them (or, with grapes, “bunch” them).

What do I do next?

(1) Take 2 minutes and answer this question: What’s one thing I learned in this newsletter that I can put into practice right away?

By committing to a specific action, you make it much more likely you’ll do it.

(2) This weekend, identify two processes in your work or life that you’d love to do more efficiently and effectively and write down the steps of the processes as lists.

Then over time, iterate the lists until the processes are smoother—or even automated!

If this was valuable for you:

Share the newsletter with someone you think would also get value from it! https://rjn.st/weekend-upgrade-newsletters​

Until next time, friends:

Be lazy, but only once you’ve prepared to be lazy!

R.J.
​rjn.st/links​

P.S. Cohort Six of my AP Productivity course is launching October 7, and Early Bird registration (15% off) is currently open! This cohort will be especially focused on the fundamentals of productivity—lists and interactions between (and within) lists. If you’d like to dramatically improve your productivity, sign up for Cohort Six today!

P.P.S. I've been doing some writing on Medium. Follow me on Medium, if you like!