Karl. N Mark - The Minimum Effective Lifestyle: A Lazy Man’s Guide to a Good Life

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy - Milan Kundera

Im inherently lazy. Ive always looked for the easy option in life, the shortcuts to success. As a kid, I would shout out to my mum when I finished in the toilet so she could come in and wipe my bum. Too lazy to wipe my own arse. The fact I can remember this means I was too old for it to be acceptable. And this was only the start.

I hated this about myself, my laziness, not my lack of arse cleaning abilities. I tried to 'fix' it many times. I read every article and book I could find on how to stop procrastinating. How to start being successful.

10 ways to stop being shit at life. The summary: be better at everything.

15 things Steve Jobs did in the morning so you should too (number 2 will surprise you). Spoiler alert, number 2 is he takes a dump.

'Warren Buffett's 10 simple rules for investing'. Number 1 is to have loads of money to start with and number 4 is to be able to predict the market.

I got fed up. Everyone was an entrepreneur. An expert or an inventor. A startup guru or an early stage investor. But that wasnt me. Their methods didnt seem to work for me. Im not even sure it ever worked for them. I was fighting an uphill battle the whole time.

I then had my own eureka moment, although altogether less dramatic. I thought I could flip the problem on its head. What if laziness was a good thing? It is not a desired trait, of course. But was it telling me something? Was it a symptom and not the actual problem?

The common cultural narrative is that I lack drive, I'm giving up on my amazing potential. The truth though, is that I didnt enjoy what I was doing. I thought I wanted something, I wanted the end result, but the process to get there sucked. And so, Id put it off, Id sit and watch Netflix, Id go on Reddit, Facebook, anything but the task at hand.

The real problem was that I was punishing the end result. I was not fixing the root cause of my issues. Like locking away junkies to solve a drug crisis. It turned out, either the methods to get what I wanted were terrible. Or the what I wanted part of the equation was too complex and I didn't want it at all.

I was using flawed methods to get what I wanted in life. I was thrashing against the flow of the river. I needed willpower. I needed motivation. All the stars had to align for me to get to my goals. All things which seemed outside my control.

Or what I wanted was something that had been thrust upon me by a broken society. Six-pack Abs - that require me to go to the gym every day for 2 hours. A massive house - that I have to clean on a daily basis. A beautiful car - that I have to work 14-hour days to afford.

But what if I could leverage my laziness, Judo style. What if I could see laziness trotting towards me. And I grabbed its arm and used its own power against itself. Flipping it over my shoulder and slamming it on the ground behind me.

To use another less confusing analogy, what if I stopped swimming against the flow? What if I, instead, let it take me down the river a little while I steer. See where it would take me.

This is what I like to call the minimum effective lifestyle.

The Minimum Effective Lifestyle

We all have shit we need to do but have zero motivation for. We all have aspirations to be super amazing human beings. But we cant handle all that work that's meant to go with it.

Is there is a way to do the bare minimum that gets us there?

Is what we want not actually what we need?

Do we have to be the next Richard Branson? Is being average and happy a pretty fucking good result?

The Minimum Effective Lifestyle is a lazy man's guide to a good life. Its aim is to simplify. Complexity is hard. Laziness is my reaction to complexity. But once we simplify, laziness will no longer be the issue.

Im a lazy man, and proud of it. My motivation is in finding the easiest solutions to my problems. It took me a long time, and a lot of experiments to finally find what works for me. And Im always learning and trying to improve.