Book review The Lazy Way to Success - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Book review The Lazy Way to Success - The Chief Happiness Officer Blog Fred Gratzons book The Lazy Way to Success is a joyous, thoughtful and provocative celebration of the notion that work should, above all, not feel like work. If your job is a struggle, if you must constantly put your nose to the grindstone, knuckle under and get it over with youre not doing it right. Or youre doing the wrong job and should get out of it with all haste. And Gratzon should know. Though he graduated sine laude whatsoever as an art major in 1968 and was the original long-haired hippy dropout, hes started two wildly succesful businesses. The second one, Telegroup, grew to 1100 employees with $400 million in annual sales. All this without ever doing a single days work. His credentials established, what does Fred want us to know about laziness as a tool to success? The three major messages must be these: The notion that success comes from hard work is wrong and is corroding people and businesses Laziness is not about doing nothing, its about only doing what you like to do If you follow your bliss (as Joseph Campbell put it) success will follow. In fact, if you follow your bliss, youre already succesful no matter what the outcome Fred has this to say on the traditional work ethic: I put in 16 hours a day of hard work, is a typical boast from a poster boy for this twisted, snore-inducing mentality. Now dont get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with hard work and long hours per se. If you dont mind sacrificing your health, your family life, the rest of your life, and your spiritual evolution and you are willing to settle for a pedestrian achievement (snore), there is nothing wrong with working long hours. In this light, hard work has its own level of merit and satisfaction. I will readily concede that if you achieve something in one hour, you will achieve two somethings in two hours. If your desiring limit is 16 somethings, then you have the mindless formula. But what if you want a million somethings? Then you need a new math. The basis of that new math is this pure, simple and elegant truth success is INVERSELY PROPORTIONAL to hard work. That means, as effort and hard work become less, success becomes more. As you move towards effortlessness, success moves towards infinity. The book itself is absolutely beautiful with very funny illustrations throughout by Lawrence Sheaff. The tone is informal and irreverent but the book does not shy away from a few deep, complicated topics. I bought my copy directly from the website and it came with an inscription from Fred that said Wishing you effortless success. Thank you Fred, what more could I wish for. And is there really any other kind? One thought that struck me repeatedly while reading the boook, is that what Fred calls laziness is nearly identical to what I call happiness at work. Many of his principles and ideas are very close to what we teach, which just validates my thinking that happiness at work is not just a nice thing in itself, its the best path to business success. I never rate the books I review, because I only review books I really, really like. And The Lazy Way gets my very highest non-rating :o) Also read this great interview with Fred Gratzon and of course his blog. Thanks for visiting my blog. If you're new here, you should check out this list of my 10 most popular articles. And if you want more great tips and ideas you should check out our newsletter about happiness at work. It's great and it's free :-)Share this:LinkedInFacebookTwitterRedditPinterest Related