Why we need to rethink our ideas about laziness

Barack Obama and Stephen Fry have both described laziness as their worst trait. Neither is inactive. The former President of the United States works punishing hours; Fry publishes books and appears in films at a relentless pace. And yet both consider themselves lazy. This paradox—that highly productive people can feel lazy, while someone sitting still might not be lazy at all—is the starting point for Professor Katrine Devolver, an ethicist at the University of Oxford and leader of Project Lazy, a research project that aims to understand what laziness actually is and how we misuse the concept.

What laziness is—and isn't

Devolver argues that laziness is surprisingly difficult to define. It is not simply inactivity, because many inactive people have good reasons to rest. Nor is it the same as procrastination. When someone delays a tax return by cleaning the house, that is often driven by anxiety or perfectionism—not by a simple unwillingness to exert effort. True laziness, in Devolver's framework, is a specific form of unjustified effort avoidance: you avoid effort simply because you cannot be bothered, not because you are anxious, overwhelmed, or unsure how to start.