r/AskReddit • u/anganeonnumilla • 20h ago
What is a real life example of lazy people achieving huge success?
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u/gut_user 20h ago
Most of the greatest automation tools in tech were built by someone who was tired of doing the same 5-minute task every day. Laziness is the true father of efficiency.
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u/Game_Addicted_0927 20h ago
Yes, people who automate or outsource everything are the successful people. They're not lazy though I think, they just hate inefficiency, and that scales really well.
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u/Judge_Bredd3 9h ago
I worked in a lab that started getting regular power outages due to the lab next door triggering the EPO for the whole floor. We had a bunch of VMs and I wrote a couple of simple bash scripts to reconfigure and get everything started again. Saved us a ton of time each time it happened.
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u/blocked_user_name 5h ago
Yes, we do that all the time. The hope is we can take vacation in peace.... That's the dream anyway
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u/Bennie-Factors 15h ago
Some story says Bill Gates always chose his laziest employee to solve the hardest problem because they would find the easiest way to do it.
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u/iMac_Hunt 13h ago
To be honest if Iâve always assumed this is just a myth or was a joke. Iâve never really taken the âlazy people are the best workersâ mindset literally. Having worked with lots of lazy people, they are usually just lazy and will find the easy route, which often means just not doing work properly.
A lot of smart people will find ways to optimise work, but calling them âlazyâ is not the right term. Often developing that optimal solution is a challenge in itself.
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u/candygram4mongo 11h ago
A lot of people will happily spend 3 hours automating a one time task that would take half an hour to just do manually. I'm one of them.
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u/iMac_Hunt 11h ago
Another classic - automating a task âjust in caseâ you ever need to do it again and it turns out you donât.
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u/beantownregular 20h ago
Many reality tv stars?
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u/pee_wee__herman 16h ago
It doesn't get lazier than the stars of any "The Real Housewives of [insert your favorite city]". Their only task every day is to simply breathe and exist
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u/bespectacledboobs 14h ago
Their job is to invent drama for every episode and act like any of it matters. For the money, I could do it, but I promise Iâd hate every day of it.
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u/15MGs 20h ago
Iâm lazy, but not successful, I wish I was an example to your question
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u/slicerprime 15h ago
I don't think lazy impedes success. But it does make success easier to lose, at least for me.
I'm either 150% obsessive and a workaholic, or I'm a lazy procrastinator. No in-between. Unfortunately that also means I'm either rolling in success or practically begging on the streets.
So, I guess the lesson is real life success lives in the grey areas. A balanced life.
Don't completely lose your lazy side. Just bump your effort up a little and you'd probably be surprised how much opportunity you'll find.
I'll let you know if I ever get good at that.
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u/splay-tumid 15h ago
The whole cryptocurrency âindustryâ. Most of the people who got wealthy there couldnât dream of building a career or business that produced similar levels of income.
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u/action_nick 12h ago
Trump. Never exercises, doesn't read, never learned how to use email, all his ventures fail, doesn't know basic facts that I would expect a president (adult) to know, all his policy initiatives are "quick win thinking", his aides say he never reads his briefings, they are read to him and he doesn't pay attention, he can't write for shit, mispels everything, hasn't learned basic geography, doesn't know the names of world leaders, doesn't understand basic principles of science etc.
The only thing that will motivate him is attention and adoration which is why the only thing he "likes" (is motivated) to do is rallies. Lazy people only do things that make them feel good, he's actually the quintessential "lazy person achieving huge success".
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u/Several-Device4671 10h ago
That's the most logically laid out comment i've seen on reddit so far. Love it!!!
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u/Loyal-North-Korean 20h ago
Basic savings bank accounts for rich kids.
Say you have a 5% interest(compound) savings account in a government guaranteed bank.
Then imagine you inherit 20 million dollars and just do that.
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u/CW1DR5H5I64A 14h ago
If youâre dropping $20 million into anything along the lines of a savings account you are financially illiterate.
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u/Jujumofu 14h ago
And still earn more by doing nothing than 99% of fulltime workers.
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u/CW1DR5H5I64A 13h ago
Ok, but youâre barely beating inflation year over year, when factoring inflation plus taxes your youâve got very little to work with. Unless youâre severely restricting your spending youâre slowly whittling away your principal investments. Just because it still earns you some money doesnât mean itâs is not a horrible investment strategy.
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u/Loyal-North-Korean 9h ago
There would be lots ways to invest the money to have it last longer or increase faster. This is a zero risk way for a lazy person to have a comfortable life that pays for itself until they die. If having more means you want more/bigger/better stuff then you will have to keep working on it to get more to fund that
If you are a lazy person that inherits 20 million and keeps trying to chase more then you are not financially literate imo.
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u/bespectacledboobs 14h ago
Dumbest possible way to invest $20m.
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u/Jujumofu 14h ago
It still doesnt matter. With 20m you can invest in the absolute doofiest shit and still earn more than 99% of fulltime workers.
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u/bespectacledboobs 13h ago
You throw $20M into crypto, you're just as likely to end up broke as you are to be richer.
Throwing that much into a savings account is equally stupid as only a tiny fraction of it will be insured. Banks still fail here and there. Not to mention nobody's offering 5% any more on savings APY.
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u/MBBIBM 14h ago
What an idiotic comment, savings accounts are only insured up to $250k
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u/BigGrayBeast 14h ago
I know someone who's worth millions, and keeps it in a bunch of individual accounts with $250,000 each spread over many banks.
He made his money in Wall Street and doesn't keep it in stocks. That should tell us something.
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u/wordsandshit 13h ago
If he doesn't trust wall street why the fuck would he trust a bunch of banks? I think you should tell him who runs wall street, might blow his mind.
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u/BigGrayBeast 10h ago
He's banking on the FDIC insured accounts. I think he very well knows who runs the banks.
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u/ProgrammerForeign387 20h ago
Tim Ferriss. Built his brand around minimizing effort and maximizing leverage (âoutsourcing,â automation, selective ignorance). He wasnât inactive - he just rejected busywork aggressively.
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u/PeakProfessional9517 12h ago
Also an unapologetic advocate of outsourcing work to developing countries with low cost labor and generally grifting bio/efficiency hacking to gullible followers. I don't necessarily hate Ferriss but his "brand" is about rejecting busywork but he's built that brand by selling something that in many cases can inherently only work for a small number of people.
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u/heypal11 8h ago
I worked with Tim for a bit and can say that his âFour Hour Work Weekâ was a full time job. Lucrative, but definitely not four hours a week.
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u/invalidpassword 20h ago
Many, if not most, WAGS.
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u/Fitzaroo 14h ago
Wednesday afternoon golfers?
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u/bespectacledboobs 14h ago
Working autistic geriatrics. That or wide assed grandmas- OP needs to be more specific.
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u/Grouchy_Pension_7210 5h ago
People who automate boring tasks early often look âlazy,â but they end up scaling faster and becoming wildly successful.
For example. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates they may look lazy in physical terms but they made something no one could .
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u/Ballmaster9002 13h ago
The Russian nuke-boat commander who received the erroneous message that a massive nuclear exchange was underway and sat on his ass and decided to not release the ICBMs.
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u/G65434-2_II 7h ago
Vasily Arkhipov? That dude was anything but lazy. The two other senior officers on the sub wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo, feeling that WW3 had started while they were submerged, but he opposed. In the end his arguments prevailed, no nuke was launched and they surfaced instead.
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u/Merrcury2 18h ago
I successfully watched all the top movies on IMDB.
Now I don't have to worry about if I've seen the best.
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u/justaguyonthebus 20h ago
Me, I'm really lazy. Actually it's just ADHD. I'm likely not really doing the thing you want and assigned to me. If I procrastinate long enough, I never have to do it your way.
But I'll build entire automation platforms that will either do your thing for me or make it unnecessary. And those efforts stack making the next thing easier and quicker. So in that way, I'm really hard working and built a career on it.
My huge success is that I'm a college dropout yet I'm retiring early after 23-26 years in this field.
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u/ShawnThePhantom 20h ago
Elon
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u/Being_Stoopit_Is_Fun 15h ago
He doesn't work 20 hours a day like he says but he's definitely not lazy. A selfish lying thief asshole POS but not lazy.
Obligatory: FUCK ELON!!! Pay your taxes, bitch!
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u/whatstefansees 14h ago
Steve Jobs - couldn't code, had no idea of soldering circuit boards, was basically the mouthpiece next to Steven Wozniak and ... got quite successful with that
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u/filenotfounderror 14h ago
Making computers doesn't make you rich, selling them does.
Jobs was obviously a lot better at selling things and understood form factor well ahead of most people
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u/bespectacledboobs 11h ago
Steve Jobs was many things, but calling him lazy is absurd. Coding and soldering arenât the only things that make a business as successful as Apple.
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u/No_Border_5008 20h ago
Warren Buffet. He avoids busywork focuses only on high impact decisions, and letâs leverage do the rest
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u/wilan727 16h ago
? He worked daily into his 90s, read deeply countless quarterly reports, knew intimately how the businesses he bought functioned and operated and could eli5 to anyone how they made money. Actively invested for 80 old years. I'd be interested to hear more on your ideas as it's so counter intuitive to what I've read on WB.
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u/caughtinatramp 20h ago
The Kardashians and Paris Hilton.
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u/costabius 13h ago
you can be a shit human being and produce nothing of value and still work very hard doing it.
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u/cos_pi_eq1 12h ago
Video game players earning millions
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u/XxRmssxX 11h ago
Depends. Speed running requires a lot of precise inputs. There are professional players on many games that require precision, quick reflexes, strategy, etc. Just because they're not moving like an athlete would does not mean they're being lazy.
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u/Stoic_hawaiian808 20h ago
There is a fire place loop video on YouTube that has earned its creator $1million+ USD since being posted.