How to be lazy while being busy

One of the most challenging things for me is the concept of "active laziness". This is the idea that you do many things to avoid doing the main thing, which usually is also the most challenging thing. I think Lojong slogan 51 is also exactly about that. It says "this time, practice the main points." In the Buddhist realm, practising the main point would refer to making sure you don't forget to practise, and when you practise, to ensure the practice is about reducing your self-importance rather than for example showing off what a good Buddhist you are.

Picture of being busy with lots of mostly 
meaningless stuff in the ballet Napoli
at Morlaix Ballet Camp. Picture by Michel Le

But of course this idea also applies to academia, where it is extremely easy to spend all your time doing things that are helpful, such as reviewing papers or reading other people's papers or improving your lectures, but do not move your career ahead and do not move your research forward. I think it is really challenging to decide what the most important contribution is that I can make in a given day to science. Because even if reviewing a paper on the short term helps science, getting my own ideas into the world also helps science.

Also in ballet it is important to think about those things, because it is really easy to just follow ballet classes and hope you will improve. Because as Julie Gill says in this episode of her podcast, it is important to analyze what are the most important things for us to work on, and then target those more specifically. Sadly those things, which include posture and foot strength, are much less exciting than twirling around a big bright studio or a stage in a tutu.

Finally, I don't think main points are always the same. The trick for improving in any area of your life is to regularly ask yourself what your main gaps are and what small goals you can set to move closer to these goals. For example, in the Buddhist context rather than abstractly going for "enlightenment" and doing an indiscriminate amount of practices, you can instead analyze your main problems, e.g., being too busy, and then focus on regular short meditation practices to calm your mind, and commit to ending interactions with other people by wishing them well. And once you have made progress in those, you can move on to another goal that addresses the main point.