Laziness Does Not Exist: A Defense of the Exhausted, Exploited, and Overworked - Softcover

Price Ph.D., Devon

 
9781982140113: Laziness Does Not Exist: A Defense of the Exhausted, Exploited, and Overworked
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1982140119 ISBN 13: 9781982140113
Verlag: Atria, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

From social psychologist Dr. Devon Price, a conversational, stirring call to “a better, more human way to live” (Cal Newport, New York Times bestselling author) that examines the “laziness lie”—which falsely tells us we are not working or learning hard enough.

Extra-curricular activities. Honors classes. 60-hour work weeks. Side hustles.

Like many Americans, Dr. Devon Price believed that productivity was the best way to measure self-worth. Price was an overachiever from the start, graduating from both college and graduate school early, but that success came at a cost. After Price was diagnosed with a severe case of anemia and heart complications from overexertion, they were forced to examine the darker side of all this productivity.

Laziness Does Not Exist explores the psychological underpinnings of the “laziness lie,” including its origins from the Puritans and how it has continued to proliferate as digital work tools have blurred the boundaries between work and life. Using in-depth research, Price explains that people today do far more work than nearly any other humans in history yet most of us often still feel we are not doing enough.

Filled with practical and accessible advice for overcoming society’s pressure to do more, and featuring interviews with researchers, consultants, and experiences from real people drowning in too much work, Laziness Does Not Exist “is the book we all need right now” (Caroline Dooner, author of The F*ck It Diet).

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dr. Devon Price is a social psychologist and professor at Loyola University of Chicago’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies. His work has appeared in Slate, Business Insider, Financial Times, HuffPost, Psychology Today, and on NPR and PBS. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

From social psychologist Dr. Devon Price, a conversational, stirring call to “a better, more human way to live” (Cal Newport, New York Times bestselling author) that examines the “laziness lie”―which falsely tells us we are not working or learning hard enough.

Extra-curricular activities. Honors classes. 60-hour work weeks. Side hustles.

Like many Americans, Dr. Devon Price believed that productivity was the best way to measure self-worth. Price was an overachiever from the start, graduating from both college and graduate school early, but that success came at a cost. After Price was diagnosed with a severe case of anemia and heart complications from overexertion, they were forced to examine the darker side of all this productivity.

Laziness Does Not Exist explores the psychological underpinnings of the “laziness lie,” including its origins from the Puritans and how it has continued to proliferate as digital work tools have blurred the boundaries between work and life. Using in-depth research, Price explains that people today do far more work than nearly any other humans in history yet most of us often still feel we are not doing enough.

Filled with practical and accessible advice for overcoming society’s pressure to do more, and featuring interviews with researchers, consultants, and experiences from real people drowning in too much work, Laziness Does Not Exist “is the book we all need right now” (Caroline Dooner, author of The F*ck It Diet).

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Chapter One: The Laziness Lie — CHAPTER ONE — The Laziness Lie
I work in downtown Chicago, just off Michigan Avenue. Every morning, I make my way through throngs of tired commuters and slow-moving tourists, passing at least half a dozen people sitting on street corners asking for change. Many times, I’ve witnessed a suburban-looking parent discouraging their kid from giving money to a nearby homeless person. They say the typical things people say about giving money to homeless folks: they’re just going to spend the money on drugs or alcohol; they’re faking being homeless; if they want to improve their lives, all they need to do is stop being lazy and get a job.

It enrages me to hear people saying these things, because I know surviving as a homeless person is a huge amount of work. When you’re homeless, every day is a struggle to locate a safe, warm, secure bit of shelter. You’re constantly lugging all your possessions and resources around; if you put your stuff down for a second, you run the risk of it getting stolen or thrown out. If you’ve been homeless for more than a few days, you’re probably nursing untreated injuries or struggling with mental or physical illness, or both. You never get a full night’s sleep. You have to spend the entire day begging for enough change to buy a meal, or to pay the fee required to enter a homeless shelter. If you’re on any government benefits, you have to attend regular meetings with caseworkers, doctors, and therapists to prove that you deserve access to health care and food. You’re constantly traumatized, sick, and run ragged. You have to endure people berating you, threatening you, and throwing you out of public spaces for no reason. You’re fighting to survive every single day, and people have the audacity to call you lazy.

I know all of this because I have friends who’ve been homeless. My friend Kim spent a summer living in a Walmart parking lot after a landlord kicked them, their partner, and their two children out of the apartment they all shared. The hardest part of being homeless, Kim told me, was the stigma and judgment. If people didn’t realize Kim was homeless, then they and their kids would be allowed to spend the better part of a day in a McDonald’s, drinking Cokes, charging their phones, and staying out of the oppressive heat. But the second someone realized Kim was homeless, they transformed in people’s minds from a tired but capable parent to an untrustworthy, “lazy” drain on society. It didn’t matter how Kim and their children dressed, how they acted, how much food they bought—once the label of “lazy” was on them, there was no walking it back. They’d be thrown out of the business without hesitation.

Our culture hates the “lazy.” Unfortunately, we have a very expansive definition of what “laziness” is. A drug addict who’s trying to get clean but keeps having relapses? Too lazy to overcome their disorder. An unemployed person with depression who barely has the energy to get out of bed, let alone to apply for a job? They’re lazy too. My friend Kim, who spent every day searching for resources and shelter, worked a full-time job, and still made time to teach their kids math and reading in the back of the broken RV that their family slept in? Clearly a very lazy person, someone who just needed to work harder to bring themselves out of poverty.

The word “lazy” is almost always used with a tone of moral judgment and condemnation. When we call someone “lazy,” we don’t simply mean they lack energy; we’re implying that there’s something terribly wrong or lacking with them, that they deserve all the bad things that come their way as a result. Lazy people don’t work hard enough. They made bad decisions when good ones seemed just as feasible. Lazy people don’t deserve help, patience, or compassion.

It can be comforting (in a sick way) to dismiss people’s suffering like this. If all the homeless people I see on the street are in that position because they’re “lazy,” I don’t have to give them a cent. If every person who’s ever been jailed for drug possession was simply too “lazy” to get a real job, I don’t have to worry about drug policy reform. And if every student who gets bad grades in my classes is simply too “lazy” to study, then I never have to change my teaching methods or offer any extensions on late assignments.

Life, however, is not that simple. The vast majority of homeless people are victims of trauma and abuse;1 most homeless teens are on the street either because homophobic or transphobic parents kicked them out, or the foster system failed them.2 Many chronically unemployed adults have at least one mental illness, and the longer they remain unemployed, the worse their symptoms will generally get and the harder it becomes for employers to consider them as a prospect.3 When a drug addict fails to recover from substance use, they’re typically facing additional challenges such as poverty and trauma, which make drug treatment very complex and difficult.4

The people we’ve been taught to judge for “not trying hard enough” are almost invariably the people fighting valiantly against the greatest number of unseen barriers and challenges. I’ve noticed this in my professional life as well. Every single time I’ve checked in with a seemingly “lazy” and underperforming student, I’ve discovered that they’re facing massive personal struggles, including mental-health issues, immense work stress, or the demands of caring for a sick child or elderly relative. I once had a student who experienced the death of a parent, followed by the destruction of their house in a natural disaster, then the hospitalization of their depressed daughter, all in one sixteen-week semester. That student still felt bad for missing assignments, despite everything she was going through. She was certain people would accuse her of “faking” all these tragedies, so she carried documentation with her everywhere she went to prove that these things had happened to her. The fear of seeming “lazy” runs that deep.

Why do we view people as lazy when they have so much on their plates? One reason is that most human suffering is invisible to an outside observer. Unless a student tells me that they’re dealing with an anxiety disorder, poverty, or caring for a sick child, I’ll never know. If I don’t have a conversation with the homeless person near my bus stop, I’ll never hear about his traumatic brain injury, and how that affects basic daily tasks like getting dressed in the morning. If I have an underperforming coworker, I have no way of knowing that their low motivation is caused by chronic depression. They might just look apathetic to me, when really they’re running on fumes. When you’ve been alienated by society over and over again, you tend to look totally checked out, even if you’re really busting your ass.

The people we dismiss as “lazy” are often individuals who’ve been pushed to their absolute limits. They’re dealing with immense loads of baggage and stress, and they’re working very hard. But because the demands...

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Verlag
Atria
Erscheinungsdatum
2022
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1982140119
ISBN 13 
9781982140113
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
256
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV, GPSR Europäische Union
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande

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