Instant Genius - Why we need to rethink our ideas about laziness

Episode Date: September 13, 2026

Often in life, we find ourselves being accused of being lazy or accusing others of acting lazily, or maybe even becoming frustrated by what we see as laziness in our own actions. But what do we really mean by the term laziness, why is it viewed as a taboo that transcends cultures, and what effect does considering ourselves or others lazy have on our mental health? In this episode, we’re joined by Prof Katrien Devolder, an ethicist based at the University of Oxford and research leader of Project Lazy. She tells us about the different ways we view laziness in ourselves and others, why working smarter and more efficiently is often misconstrued as laziness, and the impact AI is having on our views of laziness. Take your curiosity further with a subscription to BBC Science Focus magazine. Every issue is packed with fascinating insights into the science behind everyday life, the latest breakthroughs and expert analysis, delivered straight to your door. Receive an extra £5 when you subscribe using the code SF5OFF, (minimum spend £20, see full terms and conditions on our website). https://www.ourmediashop.com/bbc-science-focus-magazine-pod30 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Incent Genius, a bite-size master class in podcast form. Every Monday and Friday, you'll hear world-leading scientists and experts talking about the most fascinating ideas in science and technology today. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor, a BBC science focus. Often in life, we find ourselves being accused of being lazy, or accuse others of acting lazy. Or maybe we even become frustrated by what we see as laziness in our own actions. But what do we really mean by the term laziness?

Why is it viewed as a taboo that transcends cultures? And what effects are considering ourselves or others lazy, having on our mental health? In this episode, we're joined by Professor Katrina DeVolver, an ethicist based at the University of Oxford and research leader of Project Lazy. She tells us about the different ways we view laziness in ourselves and others. Why working smarter and more efficiently is often misconstrued.

rudest laziness, and the impact AI is having on our views of laziness. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us. So today we're talking about the project that you're involved in, Project Lazy. First off, you know, could you give us an overview of what the project is and what its aims are, please? Sure. So Project Lazy is a research project based at University of Oxford, a project that I'm leading. And its aims are to better understand what laziness is and to rethink how we use that concept that's broadly speaking the goal of the research project. The project is led by philosophers mainly. So the research, the academic research is mainly philosophical, but there are also people from other disciplines involved, mainly

psychology. And one big aspect of the research project is the community engagement aspect, because we think that, of course, many people are affected by laziness judgments, and we are very keen to hear about everyone's views and experiences with regards to laziness and judgments about laziness. So let's get the big question out of the way first then. What exactly do we mean by laziness? I mean, I mean, this can be quite subtle once you start thinking about it. Yes, that's the tricky question, actually. And it's part of the goal of the research to get a better idea of what laziness is.

Because once you start thinking about it, first you may think like, oh, it's just inactivity or not doing anything. But then once you start thinking deeper, many people actually worry that they are lazy. It's one of the most commonly self-ascribed weakness. even of very, very productive people, Barack Obama, Stephen Fry, they've all said that laziness is their like worst trait. And then you may wonder, well, they're not inactive. I mean, they're like hardworking, successful people. And even they think they're lazy. So how can laziness be compatible with hard work? And I think it can be. I mean, depends maybe some people understand it as, you know,

not realizing your potential. So for example, Stephen Frye, he says, well, I'm so talented. I have all these skills. I have opportunities. And still, I have the feeling I could do more. I work hard, but I could do more with the talents and opportunities I have. So there's an idea of not realizing your potential that may make you lazy. But then, for example, Barack Obama, he works hard. He's very successful. And for him it might be more something like an inclination not to do much. So he attributes his laziness to being Hawaiian. So like, oh, I usually feel inclined to, you know, go surfing. But he overcomes that inclination. So that's interesting. I'm like, is he lazy or is he actually the opposite of lazy because he can overcome his inclination to maybe avoid effort? So

I give some examples just to show like it's not that easy to know what laziness actually is. Yeah, so that those examples there are all coming from sort of self-examination or self-criticism. But on the other side of the coin, you know, quite often people are accused by others as being lazy, you know, it's quite common. Yes, it is very common. It's probably one of the most common accusations in many societies, really, because I look a little bit into it, and it's not only, you know, the UK or the Western world, laziness has been used historically as a criticism across cultures, even in all major religions and so on.

And I think we're very quick to judge others as lazy. And it's interesting because we sometimes even judge entire groups or generations as lazy. And you may wonder, how can that be? So, for example, Gen Z is the generation that now gets that label lazy very quickly, very often. And you may wonder, like, how can it be that like an entire generation is lazy? What does that even mean in that case? Or, for example, I think it was the Minister of Education in India who called people from Gen Zet in India, cockroaches.

And he said they were lazy. And that was the start of a big, you know, grassroots movement, a rebellion, because that judgment is so powerful because it's a criticism clearly and often not only a criticism of like a personal failure, like you're not realizing your potential, but also of a moral failure, something that sort of matters to society, something that affects people, something that we think you're responsible for and that, you know, you should be blamed for. it's your own fault laziness. And that has, yeah, important implications. And I think part of the research that we want to do with Project Lazy is also map the sort of harms that can result from judging others as lazy. And I'm happy to, yeah, talk a bit more, of course, about that. Yeah, well, let's have a look at that then because it's sort of, in some ways, you know,

if you think of it on a surface level, so I'm 46 now. So I remember when I was younger, you know, lots of my parents' generation would say, you know, you kids don't know you're born. I had to walk 90 minutes to school and back every day. You know, the jobs were physically demanding. Everything was more difficult. And now, you know, people of my generation are saying the same thing about younger children. You can think, well, that's just a sort of a generational thing that's just inevitable.

And in some ways, kind of amusing. But if we look more closely, These sort of accusations of laziness, like you said, can be based on stereotypes, can actually be quite damaging. Definitely. So, especially because not everyone attracts the label lazy in an equal way. So often it will be groups or individuals that are already maybe somewhat more vulnerable who will attract that label. And it's also then those people who will suffer more from the label lazy. just the last point first. So if, you know, we may call like a rich aristocrat lazy,

but that's not going to affect their life very much. I mean, he might just brush it off. But if we call someone, you know, who is unemployed, lazy, or someone from a certain minority ethnic group or someone with a chronic health condition that may not be visible or people who are neurodiverse, these are groups that are often labeled as lazy. If we call them lazy, it might affect them much more. It might harm them much more because once the label lazy is applied, our attitude and our behavior changes, like the way we treat those individuals or those groups may change because we think, well, they're lazy. So their failures or their struggles, it's their own doing, it's their own fault. So we, it's, it's, it's,

It's not our responsibility to support them. You might just think, well, they have to just do better, try harder, instead of thinking that we actually might have an obligation to support them. So there's, for example, research that shows that in the UK, if you're a black kid in school and you struggle, that will be attributed to laziness much more quickly than if you were like a white kid. And then the response is often punishment rather than support. So the label lazy can have these lifelong consequences.

People with obesity, for example, get promoted less often at work because they're perceived as lazy. So it can even result in discrimination in that case. So it does have harmful consequence or it can have harmful consequences to label others as lazy and it can deepen social inequality because it links to the support you provide the opportunities you give to people. Yeah, so sort of going back to the self-criticism angle we were talking about earlier. I mean, we'd like to say, it's quite strange that people like Stephen Frye, who seems to

do like every few months he's got a new book or a film or something out and considers himself lazy. Are some of us sort of more prone to this self-criticism of laziness? Can we say anything about that? Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. So I think if you're, for example, if you have perfectionist tendencies, you might be much more prone to criticize yourself or being lazy or worry about being lazy. So you may have unrealistic expectations about yourself.

And that may be due to some mental health issue. So Stephen Fry has been open about this, that he has bipolar disorder. And that may contribute to this sort of feeling that he is not living up to his potential. But many people with like perfectionist tendencies may worry about being lazy. Or it might also depend on how you were raised if you have like parents with very high expectations. or like a strong work ethic, you might feel lazy more quickly than, you know, people who had another upbringing that was much more relaxed.

So yes, it will depend on the individual and the context you're in and the expectations of the society you live in. When Westcham first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to Westjetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. So let's have a look at some of the cultural factors that we sort of touched on there.

Because you mentioned things like religion. So, of course, you've got Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins, etc. So this kind of feeling has been prevalent for thousands of years. But recently, over the last, I don't know, decade or so, we've had this sort of the emergence of this sort of cult of productivity. You get people giving these absolutely, you know, mind-boggling personal schedules. Well, they say, I'll wake up at 4.30 a.m. in the morning. I'll run 10K.

You know, I haven't got time to eat, so I'll have a meal replacement drink. I have a shower and I'll brush my teeth at the same time. Where is that coming from? And, you know, what affects that having on this whole idea? Yeah, well, I'm not 100% sure where it's coming from. I mean, it does have to do with like society's ideas of what productivity should look like and sort of an increased desire to produce more and more and more and to value that.

So, for example, I mean, China is not only China, but China is an example of that where the importance that is accorded to being more and more productive is quite striking because, and that's where like this grassroots movement has arisen. I don't know whether you've heard of it, the laying flat movement, the Tang Ping movement, that actually tries to resist these ideas of productivity in China. And the people from that movement just say, well, why are we working so hard?

Like, what's the point? We're never going to become rich or we're never going to climb up that socioeconomic ladder. So what's the point? And people choose to opt out of that whole crazy productivity treadmill and choose to lead different lives, spending more time, lying, relaxing in a hammock, the leader of the movement. He spends time doing philosophy and he just has some acting jobs to earn enough money to survive. But even when he does these jobs, he chooses to play a corpse. So even then chooses to put him minimal efforts.

So yeah, where does it come from? It has to do with economy, capitalism, I guess, to just produce more and more and more. But we forget to ask, why are we doing this? Does this add value to the world, to our lives? Yeah, so it's sort of having a look at, like you say, the actions that we do there, somebody could be working long shifts in a factory or something or demanding physical work. Other people might be doing things that, you know, from the outside, outside might look lazy or they're making shortcuts.

But actually, they're using their intelligence and they're putting their efforts in the right directions. Yeah, exactly. So I think the problem is that so many things look like laziness. But actually, I think, and I think they're actually what I call, you know, justified effort management where people make much more considered judgments or. choices about where to allocate their effort, to where to direct their effort at. Because of course, our effort is some sort of internal resource we have, but it's finite. We don't have endless,

you know, energy and time. So we have to make decisions about where to put it. And I think it makes much more sense to sometimes slow down and think, well, does it make sense to put all my effort in, you know, work or doing, I don't know, for answering 400 emails per day or in academia, just publishing papers, you know, quantity. Does that make sense? Sometimes I think what looks like laziness is actually slowing down, taking the time to sort of think, well, what is it that I value in life? What is it that I can contribute that is valuable to my work environment, society at large?

And then you choose, yeah, where just to reduce your effort maybe at work. And then so you have some left over to put, you know, in your family, in your friends, leisure. Yeah. And I think that's justified every management and not laziness. Yeah. Yeah. So how about the way that we work has changed over?

Obviously the COVID pandemic and the lockdowns had a big influence on this. And, you know, lots of people did start working from homeless and still did. now? I remember there was a big sort of debate about this, isn't there? Sort of, well, if people are working for a moment, obviously they're just going to be lazy. I don't know why people focus so much also on what is visible, what is physically visible. And I think that links to the fact that people sort of think of laziness as, as, yeah, inactivity or not putting in enough visible effort. But I think you can be lazy while actually being very busy. Business, just keeping yourself busy without thinking why you're doing it.

Maybe that is a form of laziness. Maybe it's a form of intellectual laziness, which can be more problematic than sort of the physical laziness that most people seem to be focusing on. Why don't we think about intellectual laziness, just sort of failing to pause, you know, to to think about what we value, why we do things, whether we're pursuing the right goal or moral laziness. Are we doing the right things? Should we do more to support others? But everyone seems so focused on this physical, visible lack of effort, yeah, which I find quite puzzling and also problematic at the same time. Can we say anything about like, you know, delaying tasks or

procrastinating. So like, I'm as guilty of, if this is anyone, if I have tax returns to do or something, I'll just, I'll clean my home. It'll just be, I have the cleanest home ever when it's time for doing things like that. It's just, I do think, like, wow, why did I do that? It's sort of not a waste of time, but I'm not doing really what I know I should be doing. Yeah. You're not putting your effort in what you, you know, like in the activity, you know, you actually should be putting your effort in. That's right. So I would call that like it's unjustified effort avoidance, right? You don't have a good reason to avoid effort at that time. But I don't think it's necessarily laziness. So I'm glad you asked this because this

complicates things in a way even more because I think laziness is also a form of unjustified effort avoidance, but it has something to do with the fact that you do it because you just don't want to put any effort in it. And it's about nothing else. It's about nothing more. Whereas procrastination is often driven by anxiety, sometimes caused by perfectionism, or you find a task overwhelming, and then you just start doing something else. But often anxiety, some sort of anxiety is in the mix when one procrastinates. And that's why I think it's not necessarily laziness. I think for it to be laziness, the effort avoidance have to be driven by maybe a tendency to want to avoid the effort itself. So it's just because you can't be

bothered, not because you're anxious about something, or not because you don't know how to start. I often don't know how to start big tasks. I panic and then I also start procrastinating. I don't think that's laziness. But if I say, well, you know, I'm not going to take part in the podcast because I just can't be bothered. Like I just, you know, I just don't want to put any effort in it because I just because it takes effort. And I, you know, I'm inclined not to put any effort in anything. Maybe that, maybe that's laziness. Yeah.

So how about the impact then of technology? I think this is quite interesting. And obviously with all of the talk about AI that's been going on the last several years. So, you know, some people say, oh, you know, that's lazy. They're just using AI to do everything. But if you think of other technologies, nobody says, well, you know, riding a bicycle or driving a car somewhere over a long distance is lazy. Why don't you just run like we used to?

You know, there's an interesting sort of thought process going on. It is. Well, but, I mean, historically, actually people have sometimes. criticize the use of other technologies because it involved laziness. So the dishwasher, for example, I mean, that's not that long ago. And people would just look down on people who use dishwashers. It was like, well, you know, you can just wash the dishes with your hands. Why use a dishwasher? That's so lazy. And now we think, you know, very differently about that. Of course. Of course, you're going to, I mean, it would just be a waste of time, maybe, like washing the dishes with your hand.

or a calculator in schools. I think people used to panic about that as well. But then of course AI, the question is, is that something different? Because AI is something that is being used for, well, almost anything these days. Whereas, for example, a calculator is much more specific. But even then, so there is a risk, I think, that, like, if people very easily use AI, that they get out of the habit of thinking themselves, thinking critically, thinking a bit harder.

And what you put effort in, or it's almost like a muscle that you have to train sometimes. Like the less effort you invest in things that you put into things, maybe that has consequences. It will be harder and harder to exert effort to achieve something. So there there's a risk that AI will weaken our muscle to exert effort or to be patient because doing things yourself, it requires patience and you have to accept that something may involve struggling before you actually achieve something. It doesn't have to involve

struggle and your achievement is not better because it involves struggling. But it's just part of the process often. And one worry is that like if we use AI for everything, we'll just forget that struggle is a normal part of achieving something valuable. So I worry a little bit about that. But that being said, I don't think that the use of AI necessarily involves laziness. It depends how you use it, where it is used. And I also think that. think that just saying, oh, the use of AI is lazy, for example, in the context of education is very unhelpful and it stops any interesting discussion, for example, about what the goal of education is. So I think that the use of AI may even help us rethink those goals. It may

help us pause and think, like, what have we actually been doing? Have we been doing the right way? Is it okay to sort of, for example, in a university setting, to use essays, writing essays as the primary way to assess students? Maybe there are other ways of assessing students. And AI pushes us to ask that question because now everyone can write an essay using AI. Maybe we need to talk more. Maybe we need more time and space for critical thinking skills. and have more classroom discussions where people learn to build an argument, express their views, learn to listen respectfully to other people, who they might disagree with,

things that actually have been neglected a little bit in our educational system. So I'm sort of hopeful as well, like because of AI, because I think, well, let people write their essays using AI. and then the time that this frees up, maybe we can use this to teach students other important skills that we've been neglecting. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius, brought you from the team behind BBC Science Focus. That was Professor Katrina DeVolver. If you liked what you just heard, then please do consider subscribing to Instant Genius on your preferred podcast platform. If you'd like to see our guests and hosts in person, then why not check out our YouTube channel at Science Focus.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, why not take your curiosity a step further with BBC Science Focus magazine. Receive an extra £5 off when you subscribe using the code SF5 off. For more details, see the show description. The current issue of BBC Science Focus magazine is out now. Pick up a copy wherever you buy your favourite magazines or download us on your show. your app store of choice. You can also find us on Apple News or online at sciencefacus.com. Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know the same way you can skip an ad? I get it. I'm Siaya and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions

that didn't end up the way I planned and today I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better. Apparently that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem.