This Saturday, I want to share how to turn Remote Slackers into your most productive mates.

Is being a slacker always such a bad thing?

I like lazy people.
They know how to obtain the expected result with minimal effort.
Lazy but committed individuals are the most productive mates you could find out there.

It’s widely agreed that bootstrapping a company is the best way to force yourself to have brilliant ideas.
The lower the budget, the more you struggle to find that counterintuitive way to reach your goal.

Lazy people have a similar problem:
They have commitments, but their “struggling budget” is meager.

If well managed, this concept is the key to turning Remote Slackers into your most productive mates.

Consider 100 as the time available to perform a particular task.

A non-lazy individual spends 100 rolling up their hands right away, working hands down on execution.
It is not uncommon to see the same task completed as well by a lazy individual who spent: 

• 40 thinking about a lazy and brilliant solution.
• 20 to execute it.
• 40 to go for a walk to turn fresh for the next task.

Plus, there is one thing that all lazy people have in common: 

The terror of doing one thing a second time.

For this reason, it is highly probable that the lazy solution will also be definitive or – at least – easily replicable. 

With this result, do you think the time invested in the walk is not productive?

Remote + Committed + Lazy = Excellent + Guaranteed Results

Remote breaks have an unattainable quality compared to office ones.

That means there is no better environment for lazy people to perform at their best.

How to distinguish between a productive lazy and a lazy slacker?

To turn Remote Slackers into your most productive mates, you need to know how to distinguish between a productive lazy and a lazy slacker.

As a manager, there is nothing more frustrating than wasting money on unproductive resources.
It is therefore challenging to leverage a person’s laziness to achieve brilliant results without the risk of doing damage.

Knowing how to recognize and manage productive-lazy people is a mix of DNA and experience.

To evaluate a person’s productive laziness, do the following:

• Take a task you did in the past, which you can determine the complexity and time required.
  Important: it must be a task outside his/her comfort zone.
• Propose the task, informing that you are in a hurry.
• Do not share nor ask for details on how to complete it.
  Make it clear that you don’t want anything but results.
• Buy popcorn and see what happens.

Lazy slackers won’t have a happy reaction.
They will most likely complain or tell you that they don’t know where to start.

Lazy productive, instead, will be drawn to the challenge.
They will be drawn to finding the brightest solution with less effort.

When the task is done, ask for details about the delivered solution.
Ask also how he/she invested his/her time to make it.

If the delivery time is acceptable, ask yourself:

• Am I surprised by the solution?
• Did he/she spend enough time analyzing?
• Did he/she invest his/her time wisely?

If the answers are negative, you have only two options:

• Help him fix his working approach to be compatible with a remote environment
• Let him go

If the answers are positive, you have confirmation that you have a productive-lazy teammate onboard.
Congrats, you just discovered a treasure 🎉