Could it be that laziness isn’t about effort?
When someone hesitates to act, we’re often quick to label them as lazy.
But what if laziness isn’t about effort at all?
What if it’s not a refusal to work, but simply the result of where attention goes when a task shows up.
If the spotlight lands on effort then the task feels heavy before it even begins.
If the spotlight lands on outcome then the same task suddenly feels lighter.
Laziness, then, isn’t a permanent trait.
It’s the result of where we focus.
And if we’re not intentional, that focus can easily drift to the wrong place.
The science lines up and it’s all about the dopamine.
Dopamine doesn’t just fire at the prize. It fires at the anticipation of the prize. When we expect something worthwhile, the weight of effort shrinks. Which means laziness is a shiftable lens, not a fixed identity.
But we also know that chasing outcomes without paying attention to the process is a recipe for disaster.
So how do these two ideas square?
It comes back to effort.
When effort looks large, the brain exaggerates the cost and hides the reward.
When effort looks tiny, the brain misfires in the opposite direction, inflating the reward and ignoring the risk.
And the difference lies in what we call “effort.”
Take speculation vs investing.
In speculation, the effort is mechanical. A chart, a tip, a click of the buy button. Because the action feels effortless, the brain discounts the cost. With no visible cost, the imagined reward takes center stage. The odds against us get ignored. The brain imagines instant rewards precisely because it perceives the effort to be nothing more than clicking a button.
In investing, the effort is focused elsewhere. Reading balance sheets. Following twenty years of history. Watching how leaders allocate capital in good times and bad. Understanding how a company survives recessions and reinvests. That is effort.
And that effort leads to a realization: value cannot be unlocked instantly. Which means patience follows naturally.
So the same action - the click of the button - carries two very different meanings. In speculation that is the effort. In investing it’s just a chore. As Charlie Munger said, “The big money is not in the buying or the selling, but in the waiting.”
So, here’s the key insight.
Focus on the rewards when the effort is large and immediate, and the rewards are large but distant.
Focus on the process when the effort looks small, while the rewards seem large and easy.
Because a lot of life’s problems can be avoided by redirecting focus to the right part of the equation.
Sometimes that’s the reward.
Sometimes it’s the process.
So turns out people may not be lazy.
They may just be focusing on the wrong part of the equation.