Earned Laziness, 10 Years Later

In December 2015, I coined a term for my favorite perk of being Ridiculously Efficient: earned laziness. Leisure time created solely through effectiveness.

The analogy came from earned media, the publicity great work attracts without a dollar of ad spend. Here is how I explained it then:

Imagine being a runner. When you train to cut your 8-minute mile down to 6 minutes, you've freed up two minutes for yourself every time you perform at that pace.

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And when you complete the same amount of work in two hours as you used to in six, you've earned those four hours of leisure time.

This essay has lived at this URL for a decade, and it still says something I believe: effectiveness should buy your life back. It also carried a belief I have since put down. The word "earned" was the problem I couldn't see yet. This refresh keeps what held up and updates the one belief that expired.

TL;DR: Earned laziness is leisure time created solely through effectiveness, a term I coined here in December 2015 by analogy to earned media. A decade later, the effectiveness mechanics hold up, and I retired the earning requirement: rest now goes on my calendar first, ahead of the work that once had to justify it.

About the author: I've published at Ridiculously Efficient since 2011 and coined earned laziness on this page in December 2015. Since March 16, 2023, I've run my business on a 3.5-day workweek, documented publicly with dates attached, and I've coached 500+ senior leaders through some version of the same recalibration since November 2022. The page that ranks for this term should tell the truth about where its author landed, so I rewrote it at the original URL.

What Earned Laziness Meant in 2015

The 2015 essay picked a fight with the way our culture talks about laziness. The examples I used then still sting:

He's so lazy that he can't even get off the couch to answer the door.

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She's too lazy to call her mother.

Those sentences reinforce the idea that we're supposed to be busy at all times, and that every unproductive minute is a wasted one. My rebellion was aimed at presenteeism, the expectation that we stay planted at our desks for a set number of hours regardless of focus or results. My counter-ritual on an off day: brainstorm one aggressive, complete to-do list, then issue myself a challenge. Today's free time begins when this list is complete.

The question at the center of the original essay is the one I still ask leaders today:

What's the point of being productive if you can't choose how you spend the time you create by being effective?

What Still Holds

The engine still runs. Effectiveness creates choice, and choice is the whole prize. The runner math from 2015 grew up into a documented 3.5-day workweek with real numbers behind it, and the culture caught up to the fight I picked: Devon Price's "Laziness Does Not Exist" reached millions of readers making a case the 2015 essay made in miniature.

The management scenario holds up too:

If Anne gets the same results in 10 minutes as Catherine gets in an hour, but both of them have to sit at their desks the entire hour, how do you incentivize Anne to continue working faster and more effectively?

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(Hint: It isn't by overloading Anne with more work… unless you don't want Anne sticking around.)

Every leader I've coached on retention eventually meets Anne. She leaves quietly, and she leaves for someone who lets her keep the time she creates.

The Question I Couldn't Answer

Years after I wrote the original, I hit a season where the math stopped working on me. I was running on fumes, and I couldn't remember the last time I felt like myself. My shoulders spent that season hiked up to my ears. So I started questioning everything, and one question stopped me cold:

Where did I learn this belief that I had to earn rest? I'm not even sure. Everyone believes it.

The 2015 frame had a catch I never priced in. If rest must be earned, the ledger never closes. I used to wait until everything was done, and everything is never done. The earning frame kept me productive and kept rest perpetually one accomplishment away, which is the exact arithmetic the World Health Organization now classifies as an occupational burnout pathway: chronic workplace stress that never gets a recovery window. Gallup's burnout research keeps landing on the same driver, workload that never lets up, and the APA's Work in America survey shows how much company I had.

Earned laziness taught me to create free hours. It never taught me to protect them from my own scorekeeping.

How Rest Works Now

Rest goes on the calendar first, before it gets squeezed out by everyone else's needs. I call them REST days, and on weeks when a full day won't happen, I schedule rest hours instead: pockets of time where I can unplug, shut down, and actually be somewhere without my brain running a to-do list in the background. Sometimes that's time alone, and sometimes it's dinner with a friend where I leave my phone in the car.

The structure underneath is the Three Day Types framework, which I adapted from Dan Sullivan's Entrepreneurial Time System at Strategic Coach. Recharge days are meant for full restoration and replenishment, filled with activities that fill your cup; it doesn't matter what you do on a recharge day so long as it is exactly what you need. Reset days absorb prep, cleanup, and recalibration. Revenue days hold the focused work clients pay for. My week defaults to three Recharge days, and a quarterly energy audit keeps the mix honest.

The days (or hours) I do nothing are the reason the other days work. Once rest came first, ideas arrived better and decisions came faster, because a rested brain stops second-guessing everything. My patience returned, and my family noticed before I did. Even the "on" days got sharper. Researchers who study recovery keep landing in the same place: deliberate rest is a skill that compounds, and psychological detachment from work predicts the energy you bring back to it.

What I'd Tell the 2015 Version of Me

That version of me built the engine I still run on. She learned how to create free hours; I learned to put them first. She took back the word lazy, and I took back the hours themselves.

Earned laziness still names something real: the specific, glittering pleasure of an afternoon that follows finished work. That pleasure survives the update. What the update adds is a floor under it. My calendar now holds rest that no output justified, and the finished work happens because of it.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is earned laziness?

Earned laziness is leisure time created solely through effectiveness. Complete the same amount of work in two hours that used to take six, and those four hours belong to you. I coined the term in December 2015, modeled on earned media.

Who coined the term earned laziness?

I did: Marissa Brassfield, on this page at Ridiculously Efficient, in December 2015. The coinage borrowed its logic from earned media, the publicity great work generates without paid advertising.

Do you have to earn rest?

You don't have to earn rest. I believed the opposite for years, and the belief kept rest permanently one accomplishment away. Rest now goes on my calendar first, and a decade of receipts shows the work gets sharper when it does.

What is a recharge day?

A recharge day is a workless day for full restoration, from the Three Day Types framework I adapted from Dan Sullivan's Strategic Coach model. Laundry and a reorganized closet count. A hike counts. The test is whether the day gives you exactly what you need in that season.

What are the Three Day Types?

Recharge, Reset, and Revenue: workless restoration days, prep-and-cleanup days, and focused high-value days. The framework adapts Dan Sullivan's Entrepreneurial Time System, and my week starts from a default of three Recharge days.

Schedule the Nothing First

The 2015 essay ended with a puzzle for managers. This one ends closer to home. What would shift if you scheduled the nothing first?

If you want a weekly nudge toward less: The Simplicity Protocol is my newsletter for ambitious professionals who do less to achieve more. One elimination strategy every Tuesday, implementable in 20 minutes or less.