Marcel Deer
Are there any serious loafers in your life?
You know the type of people I’m talking about – lazy people who never work hard.
Well, you might think it’s all relative. I mean, for a real go-getter, their laziest day might be the busiest a regular person ever has.
But then there are people who seriously do almost nothing every day.
It’s amazing how they manage to get by! Some might come from money, while others have hardworking people who help and support them so they don’t have to lift a finger.
In this article, I want to take a deep dive into the characteristics that make up these people since they’re so alien to many of us.
That’s why we’re going to look at six habits of lazy people who never work hard a day in their lives.
1) Lying around
When I was younger, I worked as an English teacher in Northern Thailand.
I taught college students whose English level was generally low, so I felt like we should really start with the basics.
On the first day of school, I asked them to write out an introduction telling their name, age, hometown, and hobbies.
Easy stuff.
We all have hobbies, so I thought this would be a great way to get to know the students and their interests better. So imagine my surprise when over a third of the class wrote “lying down” or “lying around” as a hobby!
My first thought was that the word hobby had been misunderstood. After all, a hobby is an activity you do regularly in your free time for pleasure.
Lying around is anything but an “activity.”
And yet, when I consulted dictionaries and the local teachers, they assured me that the students had understood correctly. Many of them were just being totally honest in telling me that they loved to lie around and do nothing in their free time.
What won’t come as a surprise is how the lowest grades in my courses corresponded almost perfectly with the students who worked hard at this hobby.
2) Procrastination
How’s your Latin?
If you think that “carpe diem” has something to do with fish, I’m sorry to say that you’re pretty far off the mark.
This ancient phrase is still alive and well in the English translation “seize the day,” an admonishment to do things now while you can.
But lazy people prefer to seize any chance they can get to procrastinate. They put off until tomorrow what they could easily do today.
So what happens?
Do they end up doing double the work tomorrow?
Nope.
They simply put off tomorrow’s tasks for the next day, and so on. Soon, they have such an intimidating pile of work on the horizon that they do the only thing that makes any sense.
Since they’ll never get all these things done, they scratch them off their list, not as completed items but as things they’ll just never get around to.
Job done?
Uh, well…
3) Making excuses
This is certainly a habit of all lazy people.
Some are perfectly happy to admit their laziness and will fully admit that they didn’t do something because they didn’t feel like it or they were too lazy.
But many other lazy bums live in a state of denial.
While they procrastinate and put things off all the time, they love to make excuses for why their tasks didn’t get done.
These run from the perfectly reasonable, like “I was stuck in traffic for ages,” to the cliché and ridiculous “My dog ate my homework.”
They even get really creative, coming up with entire scenarios: “I was about to do the dishes when the doorbell rang, and it was the Cancer Society, so I went off to find my wallet. But when I found it, I didn’t have any cash. So I gave them cookies and coffee instead. Then we had a nice chat, and that’s why I ran out of time.”
Sometimes, it makes you wonder why they don’t just do their tasks when they seem to spend more energy making up excuses for not doing them!
4) Using others
Even in these tough economic times, you can certainly get by doing the bare minimum in life.
If your needs are simple and you have a bit of good luck, you can live off a meager wage and have all the things you need.
But most lazy people use a totally different technique to ensure they still have pretty good lives even though they do next to nothing.
They use others.
Remember, I’m not talking about people who can’t work due to disabilities or illnesses. That’s totally different.
I’m talking about people who have skills and are healthy and able-bodied but are just darned lazy. These people choose to let others work hard for them so they don’t have to lift a finger.
I have an old friend who’s like this.
A few years back, she gave birth to triplets. Sounds like an incredible amount of work, right?
It sure is, especially now that the kids are able to walk and talk and fight each other all the time.
But she never seems the least bit tired.
Why?
Well, she married a guy with tons of money and has a team of staff to help her. In fact, she has a driver, a cook, a cleaner, and four nannies for the kids, with three always on duty.
Yes, she has seven staff to take care of the house and three kids. Oh, and during the day, the kids are in nursery school.
Not long ago, she complained to me about her husband. He’d accused her of being lazy and not keeping up with her responsibilities, and she was really offended.
But while he was almost always working 12-hour days running a construction company, the only way she got tired was if she went shopping for more than a half day.
5) Feeling entitled
A habit of lazy people that goes hand-in-hand with using others is feeling entitled.
Some people just think the world or certain people in it owe them something like an easy, laid-back, happy life.
While the rest of us are working hard and breaking our backs to make bank and put food on the table, these folks just expect to be taken care of.
Another friend of mine has a brother just like this.
Now, I’m never going to judge people who live with their parents.
Times are tough, and in some places, you can bust your ass and still barely make rent. In many cultures around the world, multi-generational homes are the norm, and it’s almost unheard of for all the children to move out and leave their parents alone.
But my friend’s brother lives with his parents, so he can sponge off of them.
It’s abundantly clear.
He’s 35 years old and has a college degree and is perfectly healthy. However, it doesn’t seem to have ever occurred to him that he should get a job and pay his way.
Instead, he uses the excuse that he looks after his elderly parents as a reason to have them support him financially.
Except they’re just in their late 60s and are both really fit and healthy.
According to my friend, his brother has just always been pandered to and pampered as the eldest child, and he feels completely entitled to this treatment for the rest of his life.
It makes me wonder how he’ll survive, though, once his parents are gone.
6) Lack of discipline
One reason why some people appear lazy and never seem to work hard is that they lack discipline.
When I was young, my parents taught me the importance of being able to take care of myself. From an early age, I was getting myself up and ready, making my own lunch, and getting to school on my own.
I know other people who had even more responsibility, being taught to do their own laundry at the age of five in one example!
When your family teaches you how to care for yourself and the importance and value of things like punctuality, effort, and dedication, this can help you build self-discipline.
It allows you to make choices that will help your future rather than just your immediate present.
You might not stay up late because you have work the next day. You might not eat that absolutely scrumptious piece of chocolate cake because you know you’ll have to work it off at the gym later.
But people who don’t have self-discipline end up making choices that make their own lives harder.
If you stay up too late tonight, you won’t get your tasks done tomorrow and might be accused of laziness.
Final thoughts
These are just six of the habits of lazy people who never work hard.
But they all point toward a character that rejects effort and celebrates doing as little as possible.
I guess that’s exactly what laziness is!
