10 "Lazy" Habits That Actually Make People Look Like The Smartest Person In The Room • Parent Portfolio

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Bill Gates once said, “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” Gates admires a person’s ability to delegate tasks, someone who “works on the business” versus “in the business.” So, a Reddit user asked the community what real-life examples make Gates’ statement true.

1. Stocking Items In One Try

Typically, people open a box and remove items individually to be placed on the shelf. For this one stockboy, he placed the box on the shelf, opened one side, and slid the box out. Done!

2. Asking a Smart Device To Help With Homework

A father left his son to work on his math homework while he prepared food. When he went to check on his son, he caught his son asking Alexa for help with his homework.

3. Built an Irrigation System

A laborer worked at a nursery one summer with the task of watering over 15,000 plants each day. So, she designed and built a simple irrigation system that automated the process. After 15 years, that automatic process is still running today. But unfortunately, it also caused her to lose her job.

4. Impatient Science Students

A science experiment required one of the students to hold a thermometer for 20 minutes. However, they were not allowed to let the thermometer touch the bottom, or it would impact the reading. So, the other student built a contraption from paper clips and their lab books to hold the thermometer in place. Although it didn’t look pretty, their teacher praised them.

5. Warm Blank Paper

A manager asked one of their interns to bring her 145 blank sheets of paper. The intern returned with 145 “warm” blank sheets of paper. However, the manager discovered the intern went to the copy machine and printed 50 blank sheets.

6. Excel Formulas To The Rescue

A user shared their experience as an intern one summer during college. They spent 95% of their time using SAP, importing it into Excel, cleaning data, and finally generating reports. After the first two weeks, he got the hang of the process and wrote Excel formulas to do 99% of the work. He turned a 9-to-5 day into a 1-hour work day and relaxed for the rest of the day.

7. Synchronizing All The Clocks

To synchronize all his clocks, he trips the main fuse for the house at midnight to reset the clock on all the appliances.

8. Eating Out Of The Pot

To reduce the number of dishes to wash, this Reddit user admitted they eat their home-cooked meal straight out of the pot to avoid washing his plate when done.

9. Tired Of Walking Up Hill

On the way home from school, a Reddit user and their friends always had to walk up this small hill. The walk took about 10 seconds to get to the top, and it wasn’t the easiest part of their walk. So, many of his friends spent three days digging through the hill to make it flat.

10. Create an Online Manual

Every time this person learns something new, they document what they learned. They combine screenshots with arrows to indicate where to click or type to make it easy to follow. They assume that whoever reads it has zero clue about what to do. So, whenever someone asks them for help, they refer them to their online manual versus spending time with them.