Strategic Laziness Maximizes Impact

Jeremy Giffon shares his perspective on "strategic laziness" - the idea that success comes from being selective about where you put your energy, maximizing effort on things you want to do while minimizing effort on things you don't.

Key Points:

• Definition of Strategic Laziness:

  • Not about doing nothing, but about not doing things you don't want to do
  • Full force engagement with desired activities
  • Very selective/cheap with effort on unwanted tasks
  • Opposite of the "grind harder" mentality

• Two Types of Successful People:

  • The "Arnold Schwarzenegger" type:
    • Focused on grinding and putting in more hours
    • Success through volume of work and repetition
    • "Laying more bricks" mentality
  • The "Sam Altman" type:
    • Finding big opportunities early
    • Being clever about setup and execution
    • Making strategic moves vs pure grinding
    • Finding elegance in doing things with minimal moves

• Benefits of Strategic Laziness:

  • Forces you to be more thoughtful about approach
  • Leads to finding clever solutions vs brute force
  • Creates space to focus deeply on what matters
  • Allows sustained energy for important work

• Key Insight on Work vs Play:

  • Work = things you don't want to do voluntarily
  • Play = things you do want to do voluntarily
  • Success comes from converting more activities into "play"
  • Lower tolerance for pure "work" compared to average successful person

• Practical Application:

  • Be conscious about what energizes vs drains you
  • Design your role/business around your natural interests
  • Optimize for doing things you actually want to do
  • Find ways to delegate or eliminate unwanted tasks

The approach acknowledges that while hard work matters, being strategic about where and how you apply effort is equally important for success.