Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price

Author:Devon Price [Price, Devon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: self help
ISBN: 9781982140137
Google: FvztDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2021-01-05T05:00:00+00:00

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Noah, like a lot of people, has compulsive Internet habits. He gets into needless fights with people he’ll never be able to persuade. He obsesses over social problems he doesn’t have the power to solve, as if worrying were a productive form of activism. He’s struggled with an addiction to reading the news, cramming his brain with as much upsetting information as he possibly can.

Noah has a to-read list that is staggeringly long. When I told him about a book that I was really enjoying, Noah whipped out his phone, opened his Notes app, scrolled for what felt like five solid minutes, and then added the book to the end of the list. I marveled at how long his list was, and how it spanned a variety of topics, from anthropology to marine biology to personal finance to feminism. When he visits people’s homes, Noah scans the hosts’ bookshelves looking for enticing titles to add to his list. No matter the topic of conversation, he always has at least one or two books to recommend on the subject, sometimes titles he’s actually gotten around to reading, sometimes not.

Like so many overextended people I’ve spoken to, Noah comes from a working-class background. He grew up poor in a run-down area of Detroit. College was not guaranteed to him, nor was a future with strong career prospects. His parents often struggled to get by. That seems to have given Noah a higher-than-average motivation to avoid “laziness” in every possible realm of his life. No matter how exhausting his day job as an engineer can be, he’s always committing to doing more beyond that. He’s studied multiple languages and traveled abroad to practice his conversational Yiddish and Hebrew. He knows a ton about neuroscience for someone who’s never taken a class on the subject. He follows the news on countless platforms. He strives, in every way, to be informed, self-educated, and politically aware.

Noah’s computer used to regularly crash from the burden of keeping all his browser tabs open. He’s an absolute tab-hoarder, the worst one I’ve ever seen. He always keeps dozens and dozens open at once—news articles, op-eds, scientific reports, essays, Reddit threads, e-mail chains, and more, some of which Noah’s been meaning to read for weeks or even months. He works full-time and has a two-hour commute to work each day, so he never has time to make a real dent in the tabs. I suspect that even if he did find the time, he’d spend half of it reading and half of it finding piles and piles of new sites to add to his list. “I’ve been meaning to read an article about that” is his constant refrain. “Here, let me send it to you.”

A few years ago, I had to ban myself from a Facebook group Noah had created, because he was constantly sharing articles with everyone in the group, often multiple times per day. It annoyed me and stressed me out. I think it probably hurt

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