Smart but lazy

Back when I was in grade eleven, I came close to failing French class. The teacher brought my mother and me in one morning before school and gave us a talking to. There was one thing that stuck: she called me smart but lazy. She wouldn't have minded, she said, if I were stupid and trying my best. It was the lack of effort that got to her. In the intervening years, I've thought a lot about her accusation. And I've not only come to terms with it, but embraced it.

Smart but lazy isn't a problem. Smart but lazy, if done right, is a kind of optimization. It's much like that old saw, "work smart, not hard." If applied properly, in conjunction with a little drive to actually get the job done, smart but lazy works. That's the trick to it, though. You have to actually want to get the job done. My younger application of smart but lazy wasn't actually smart. It was lazy and disinterested. I didn't care much for French and wasn't particularly interested in getting the job done. Today's incarnation of smart but lazy, on the other hand, relies on the assumption that I actually want to accomplish something. With that assumption in mind, smart but lazy can be good. It can lead to optimizing the amount of work that goes into a project. With an end goal, the ideal application of smart but lazy results in a shorter timeline and less stress. That's smart laziness.