While everyone’s ‘maxxing’ everything, I’m reviving the lost art of laziness

Last year, I got pneumonia and spent two weeks basically horizontal. Work was out of the question. Walking to the fridge felt like an Odyssean task. Even looking at my phone hurt.

When I wasn’t sleeping the only thing I could do was watch TV, and as the days blurred together I managed a Scandi Noir marathon (Deadwind > Bordertown, btw). Even this got old about 22 episodes in, but at least I had a good excuse for the bedrotting. God forbid anyone accuse me of being lazy.

The word “lazy” has always had negative connotations, conflating physical weakness and lack of effort with moral failure, but today it feels almost pathological. A couple of decades ago, the only people saying “optimise” were math nerds and IT boffins trying to speed up their computers. Now the term is inescapable and taken to the extreme in the form of “maxxing”, where everyday activities are approached with obsessive zeal.

We optimise our sleep so we can work harder, and turn our bodies into lab experiments to make ourselves more efficient. We track our steps and our protein intake and our REM cycles and our screen time, and because indulgence is basically a sin these days, little luxuries like going to the spa or sauna are reframed as “self-care”.

Laziness has been unfairly maligned but if you want to do it right, you have to be discerning about it. Doomscrolling for hours could be viewed as laziness, but it’s hardly pleasurable. “Nothingmaxxing” involves tech detoxes and meditation to improve attention spans, but doing something just because it feels good? That’s the kind of laziness I’m talking about.

Think naps for no particular reason, long lunches that stretch into dinnertime and watching movie after movie like we used to as kids, when you could rent five weekly videos for $10 from Blockbuster. Hit that snooze button, baby. Trade digital nightmare fuel for daydreaming. Let yourself sink into the lost art of lying around (the beach or park are best for this on sunny days, but no biggie if you can’t be bothered leaving the house).

I studied Italian at university and spent nearly a year there in my early 20s. It was in Italy that I really honed my laziness chops, inspired by their unhurried ways and disregard for punctuality. Work is a pesky intrusion on what life is really about: spending time with friends and famiglia, eating vast quantities of carbohydrates, flirting shamelessly and appreciating beauty everywhere. “Fare una passeggiata”, or going for an aimless stroll, is a national pastime.

Falling on August 15, the public holiday of Ferragosto dates back to the Roman Empire and originally marked a day of rest for agricultural workers after months of backbreaking labour. For many Italians, Ferragosto is now a month-long summer vacation. Shops and businesses are shuttered while everyone heads to the beach for a few weeks of R&R, and you can bet no one’s checking their work emails.

Even dictators understood the allure of idleness – in 1925, Mussolini formed a hugely popular state-sponsored leisure organisation to attract people to his party, but the subsidised entertainment and discounted holidays were only moderately successful at converting members into fascists.

Sure, the glacial pace of bureaucracy and irrelevance of train timetables in Italy can be frustrating, but it’s a small price to pay for the cultural emphasis on “dolce far niente”, or “the sweetness of doing nothing”. In Australia, the lyrical Italian phrase has been bastardised into something coarser: “doing sweet f— all”.

I spent most of last weekend in bed in a country town – not knocked out with pneumonia, but still lazily watching a lot of movies. It felt like the right time to finally check out The Big Lebowski and relate to the ways of “The Dude”, perhaps the patron saint of laziness. I even stayed an extra day, turning it into a long weekend.

Reflecting on the weekend later, I referred to it as “very unemployed behaviour” (this freelance writer needs a job if anyone wants to hire me). But it was the best weekend I’ve had in a long time, and I returned to the city reenergised and ready to get shit done.

I’m not allergic to hard work – I love it, in fact – but I’ve learned that a little indolence can make you quite happy, actually. I used to think laziness was only acceptable when I was sick. Now I see it as part of staying healthy.

Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter.

To read more from Spectrum, visit our page here.