Laziness Does Not Exist

This was a wonderful book. It goes into the history of what they call the Laziness Lie, this American belief that your worth it tied to your output as a worker and that ever not giving 110% (even when your body is screaming for you to do so) is lazy and a sin.

In addition to taking us down memory lane to discover where this stupid lie came from (cough puritan religious beliefs and the need to convince slaves to work when they are not paid to do so cough), but it also provides some great examples of people who bought into this lie and what happened to them, their health and their relationships (Spoiler: It's not good).

The book also provide steps you can take to combat this lie and examples of how you can care for yourself and others to avoid the inevitable burnout that this kind of thinking leads to eventually. Overall an absolutely fabulous book!

THE INTERSECTIONALITY OF IT ALL!!!!!!

i really appreciated that this book was not overly hand holding, or overly telling, or even banging me over the head with statistics. what it really did for me was methodically lay out the ways in which the label of laziness has poisoned us against compassion and reflection. very solid, very balanced, and very real.

i think the only thing i would have liked more was for it to really go fully into the marxism lmao. but i sort of get why it didn't. it's so interesting to go through the reviews here on goodreads for this book now after finishing it because i can see that this was already too challenging for a number of readers to accept, so i think my hope is this paves the way for even deeper and more meaningful and intersectional conversations on productivity “lean in” culture.