Smart laziness

Have you ever sped up your pass (or even start running) when you see that someone is passing through the door that you’ll pass? Even if the person is holding the door, you started before thinking “I don’t want to re-open the door”.

I’ve done it, many times. In most cases, this is not very smart.

I’d prefer spent energy now (maybe more energy) instead of re-open the door.

My fiancé after dinner, if she has to do dishes, prefers to lay on the couch for some minutes, then after a while get up and wash the dishes.

I think is very difficult to get up, so when is my turn I wash dishes and then I lay down.

Both behavior I think are lazy. I think mine is smart laziness. (I love you anyway, Marta)

Since I started working in companies, as a developer, I always had to track in some kind of software or excel files, how much I’ve worked on which project or client, or ticket. In Italy we call it consuntivazione, context-reverso translates it into final balance. I don’t trust always the internet, but I hope that now you understand what I’m talking about.

This operation for most of my colleagues is a nightmare. It is, but I prefer to do it every day, or even two or three times a day.

Most of them prefer to do it at the end of the month to enter all of the data they may be written on a TXT on the desktop, or reading through their commits. Maybe they are on holiday and have to do it from the beach (or mountains).

I think I don’t understand this kind of laziness. But most of the time I don’t even realize how not-smart-lazy I am, even when I’m running towards a closing door.

Is lazy to do effort now than later? I think is yes.

Is smart to do an effort now than later? Mostly yes.

I want to talk about laziness because last week my boss tell me that he wants me to do a two hours speech to my colleagues about test automation.

I’ve read many articles and books on tests. I’ve done some testing in my personal projects, but I’ve NEVER written tests in a company environment. That scares me the most, but I’ll be honest with my colleagues and I hope that the speech starts a conversation or even a debate.

Doing test automation is smart laziness, but instead, I’ve always thought that doing F5 multiple times on Visual Studio was more efficient.

Is not.

Is easy to write most of the documentation of a project during or after completing it? You know the answer, but your mind hopes that postpone the pain hoping that problems never come up. But you struggle with all the support and training your client demand on a not well-documented software.

And you end up that you have to spend more energy even if you never write documentation.

I’m not smart-lazy, but I hope that this article starts a conversation or even a debate.