Volunteering, helping and generally being nice.

Laziness Theory is like any great science, a subject of great debate amongst the experts. Like any other area new ideas are treated with a great deal of scepticism and even anger. With that in mind, I'm wary of posting this idea, because I know how controversial it is. This is the highly controversial idea that actually volunteering to do stuff can end up allowing you more time to spend doing nothing. It's as unintuitive as most of quantum physics and if you bring this up in a more traditional Lazology department people will generally look at you in mouth open disbelief. It's really not that silly. As Syl commented on my Dishwasher story sometimes being lazy takes some work, whether it be learning to use a dishwasher or writing a bit of code that'll do some boring repetitive task for you. I think that volunteering and spontaneously offering to help people out can actually make life easier.

I work in IT, and if anyone else reading this also works in IT you'll know that we get asked a lot of questions all the time by less IT literate people about how things work or for software or ISP recommendations etc. The questions often seem quite trivial to us but if you help someone out with their problem they are normally very grateful and will remember your help. If you go out of your way to help friends and acquaintances with a problem in an area you really know and understand you'll find that you'll get offers of help in areas that you are less skilled, saving you loads of time and effort. It's a win, win situation for both parties because everyone gets help with something they find hard, in return for giving some basic advice in something they find really easy. Some people might take advantage and never give anything back, but that's ok, you'll more than make up for that with the people who do help you in return. When volunteering to help you should do so for the right reasons and not put conditions about you getting anything in return, the friends and goodwill you build up will end up helping you loads in the future. The general rule here is that if you are nice to people, they'll be nice to you and your life will be easier.

Another much more calculating and cynical time to volunteer is when you know that an arduous task is coming up in the near future. In that case you should always get in early and volunteer for an easier task. You look keen and some other poor sap gets to do the difficult task.