Nice Work If You Can Avoid It

Many commentators have criticized my self-obsessed columns as being narcissistic. I know because I spend several hours each day Googling my name and reading those comments. Sure, I was a lodestar for this generation’s narcissism, writing about my body hair in this magazine long before people wrote about their body hair on blogs, Twitter and Facebook. But I was also forging an even more important cultural shift: laziness. Because there’s no form of journalism that requires fewer interviews than writing about yourself. I know. I’ve looked. But not too hard.

Here are things I’m too lazy to do: fax, send mail, read questions on medical forms before answering them, talk on the phone, wash lettuce, punish my kid, wear a tie, click on a link, open an orange-juice carton using the built-in flap, press Save, go back to the car to get my reusable shopping bags after I forget them, make my own hot beverage, finish a book, wear glasses, call that guy to fix that thing, get clothes dry-cleaned, shop in a store, use the bathroom hand dryer instead of paper towels, read your entire e-mail.

And America is following my lead. A bunch of studies that I didn’t read show that Americans’ work ethic is plummeting. In 1955 about 80% of Americans said they’d keep working if they won the lottery; in 2006 that number was down to 70.3%. I’m so lazy, I can’t believe anyone made the effort to ask that question. Of course I would quit, and I have the easiest job in the world now that Andy Rooney has retired. How evil do you have to be to win the lottery and then go to work and pretend you’re worried about meeting a deadline? “Can I get an extra hour on this, Mike, if I, say, buy the company?”

It’s not the recession that’s getting us down–just hard work. Answers in 2009 to survey questions about valuing leisure over work are the same as in 2006. There’s no data more recent than that, most likely because the survey takers have become too lazy. It’s also not just people who think working is answering e-mails on their phone. By 2006 industrial workers were willing to lift only 69% of what they’d lift before 1991, despite the fact that those workers probably weigh much, much more. You think the Chinese are refusing to lift heavy stuff? Their motto is “This ain’t heavy; this is the psychological substitute for my brother that the government didn’t allow me to have.”

In 1992, 80% of people under 23 wanted to eventually have a job with more responsibility; 10 years later, that number was down to 60%. You know how I know about all this? I e-mailed Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University and the author of Generation Me, and asked if she had any ideas for my column this week because I didn’t want to think of one. You know how I know Twenge? She mentioned me in her book The Narcissism Epidemic. It’s the circle of lazy narcissism. “Hakuna Matata.” I’m not even sure if that’s the right Lion King song. But I’m not going to look it up.

People like me have worked not-hard to replace the work ethic with the leisure ethic. We value innovations such as Angry Birds, Avatar and Facebook instead of laying down railroad track and getting to the moon. We have even invented a euphemism for laziness: work-life balance. Just like not so long ago, we invented a euphemism for narcissism: Oprah.

Some will bemoan our nation’s laziness. Not me. And not just because bemoaning sounds like a lot of work. It’s because laziness is the mark of a mature society. China is exciting right now with all that dynamic growth, but you don’t want to live there with its smog, dangerous infrastructure and insistence on learning math. You want to live in Italy, where no one has worked in centuries. The French live better than we do, and the only things the French make are aspersions. Sure, you can watch your civilization go out in violent debauchery like the overly ambitious Romans did. But you’re better off looking around like the British and deciding that running an empire is a lot less important than finally paying attention to improving your own cuisine. Americans were so ready for a lazy caf culture that we spent the past 15 years building nothing but Starbucks.

There was no leisure culture until now because leisure sucked. Of course our grandparents liked to work. When they weren’t working, they were at home with their eight children. Without television. I’d rather lift a million 69%-heavier things than do that.

Our great-grandparents worked hard so we wouldn’t have to. To strive is to dishonor them. We work more hours than any other industrialized nation, and it’s getting us nowhere but miserable. That’s why I’m thinking about building a nationwide 30-week-work-year movement. It might also solve the unemployment problem. But there’s no way I’m calling an economist to find out.