There’s a Better Way to Think About Laziness善解懒惰

To the people who know me best， I am a bizarre mix of discipline and ineffectuality. I rearrange my fridge daily with the efficiency of a professional Tetris player， but I once vanquished a snake plant after forgetting its monthly hydration needs. Waking up before sunrise poses no challenge for me， yet I lack the patience to cook anything that takes more than seven minutes. Recently， I completed a 16-mile run but scraped my knee in the process， didn’t bother to disinfect the wound， and found a healthy colony of bacteria on my leg the next day.

对于最了解我的人来说，我是一个严以律己和无懒散懈怠的奇怪结合体。我每天都会以俄罗斯方块职业玩家的效率重新整理一遍冰箱，但我也曾因忘记浇水而养死过一个月只需浇一次水的虎尾兰。日出前醒来对我来说毫无挑战，但我却没有耐心烹饪任何食物超过7分钟。最近，我完成了一次16英里跑，但其间擦伤了膝盖，懒得给伤口消毒，结果第二天发现腿上有一大群细菌在茁壮成长。

In many cultures and across many time periods， my minor triumphs would be seen as virtuous， and my habitual idleness might be considered a moral failure. Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins1. Napoleonic France， the late Ottoman empire， and the contemporary United States have all generally stigmatized laziness and praised industriousness. The notion that a person can embody both of those characteristics might feel incongruous.

在诸多文化中，以及在历史上的许多时代，我微不足道的成就可能被视为美德，而我习惯性的懒散则可能被看作道德上的缺陷。懒惰是七宗罪之一。拿破仑时代的法国、晚期的奥斯曼帝国及当代美国都普遍贬损懒惰，赞扬勤劳。同一人能兼具这两种特质——这种想法可能让人觉得很突兀。

Yet because of a linguistic fluke， I have never seen my actions as a problem. I grew up in South Korea， where there are two words that can roughly translate as “laziness”： geeureum and gwichaneum. Geeureum’s connotations are more or less identical to the English—the word bears the same condescension.

然而，我侥幸发现一个语言上的依据，以致我从未觉得自己的行事风格有什么问题。我在韩国长大，韩语里有两个大致可以翻译为“懒惰”的词：geeureum（懒惰）和gwichaneum（麻烦）。geeureum的内涵基本上与英语“懒惰”一词相同——这个词含有同样的轻蔑色彩。

But gwichaneum lacks the negative valence. There’s even a kind of jest to it. To feel gwichan （the stem word of gwichaneum， which I’ll use here for simplicity） is to not be bothered to do something， not like it， or find it to be too much effort. The key to understanding the term， however， is how it fits into Korean grammar： You can’t say “Bob is a gwichan person”; you can only say something like “Doing laundry is a gwichan endeavor for Bob.” The term describes tasks， not people. It places the defect within the act. Errands that are gwichan induce laziness in you.

但是gwichaneum不含消极色彩，甚至还有几分戏谑。感到 gwichan（gwichaneum的词干，本文用于简称该词）意思是不想劳神做某事、不愿意或觉得太麻烦。然而，理解这个词的关键在于韩语语法里它怎么用：不能说“鲍勃是一个麻烦的人”，只能用“对鲍勃来说，洗衣服是一件麻烦的活儿”这样的表达。这个词可以描述任务，不能描述人。它将问题归到行为中，是“麻烦”的差事使你懒惰。

To me， this is not mere verbal trickery. On the contrary， it is an illumination. Gwichan nails2 what’s wrong with the litany of errands that plague our everyday existence： Many of them don’t merit our devotion.

于我而言，这并不是单纯的言辞把戏，而是一种启发。gwichan点破了日常生活中接连不断的琐事困扰我们的问题所在：很多事不值得我们劳神费心。

Thinking about our moments of indolence this way is not a renunciation of responsibility—life still demands that toilets be scrubbed and toddlers be fed. Gwichanism （a popular neologism in Korea） is not an apologia for anti-productivity or anti-work， and the gwichanist will still fulfill their vital life obligations.

以这种方式看待我们不时表现出的懒散并不是要推脱责任——生活仍然要求我们清洁马桶、喂食幼童。gwichanism（偷懒主义，韩国流行的新词）并不是为反生产力或反工作辩解，gwichanist（偷懒派）也仍然会履行他们生活中的必要义务。

You see， gwichanists aren’t unproductive; they’re perhaps meta-productive， interrogating the merit of every undertaking. For example， you wouldn’t call the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes， who allegedly wrote at least a dozen books and seven tragedies， lazy. But in the presence of Alexander the Great， his only request was that the monarch get out of the way of his sunbathing. He illustrates a key difference between a lazy person and a gwichanist： The former is chronically unmotivated， and the latter is selectively， purposefully unmotivated. In that sense， gwichanism is a kind of controlled slackerism， a conviction that achievement is possible without a type-A personality3.

由此看来，偷懒派并不是不高效，他们审视每项任务的价值，或许是超高效的。举例来说，你不会认为古希腊哲学家第欧根尼懒惰，据说他至少写了十几本书和七部悲剧。但在亚历山大大帝面前，他唯一的请求是让这位君主别妨碍他晒太阳。他展示了纯懒人和偷懒派之间的一个关键区别：前者长期缺乏动力，后者则是有选择、有目的地缺乏动力。从这个意义上说，偷懒派是一种收放有度的偷懒主义，坚信即便不是A型进取人格亦能取得成就。

In fact， to me， the downsides of being a go-getter or a lazy person might manifest similarly： Both an overcommitment to all of life’s responsibilities—however petty—and a refusal to commit to any of them can lead to an absence of agency in one’s life. Instead， being a gwichanist might help you reclaim your time. During my mandatory military service in Korea， I chose to cover up scratches on my boots with black marker instead of polishing them. Yes， this was the kind of aggressive corner-cutting that my superiors would have abhorred if they’d been aware of it， but it spared me enough time to read practically all of Vladimir Nabokov’s oeuvre.

实际上，对我来说，进取之人和懒惰之人可能表现出类似的不足：过度承担生活的所有责任（无论多小的责任）和拒绝承担任何责任都可能导致一个人缺乏对生活的把控。然而，成为一名偷懒派可能会帮助你夺回时间。我在韩国服兵役期间，相比把靴子擦得锃亮，我选择用黑色记号笔掩盖上面的划痕。不错，这纯属投机取巧，上级知道的话，绝对深恶痛绝，但这为我节省了足够的时间，让我几乎读完了弗拉基米尔·纳博科夫的全部作品。