One of the best motivators for getting things done is the relaxing free time at the end of the day/week. “Working hard to be lazy basically means investing the extra effort (working hard) at first so that it will pay off in the long run (be lazy).” Vivek Mahbubani gives tips on how to get to “lazy” faster without substituting quality.

Re-evaluate your work processes
The lazy man will try to accomplish 2 hours worth of work in 1 hour’s time but sometimes at the expense of the work’s quality. Think of it as efficiency = quality/time taken (referencing speed = distance/over). If the time taken is reduced, either the job’s quality has to be lowered or the efficiency must be increased. Efficiency really relates to the work process. So in order to keep the quality the same and reduce the time taken, the work process must be changed.

Don’t repeat yourself
After evaluating what you do, you may have some ideas of what you want to improve or modify. Break it down to its core.

Try a new process
Be open to completely changing the way you work. You can’t expect to become more productive unless you pay a price at first.

Refine yourself
By refining yourself I mean going through this work hard to be lazy process in iterations. Try a new process, if that doesn’t help as much as you hoped, try another process. The worst thing that could happen is that you don’t find any improvement in your work process and go back to your original process and just work hard. Did you lose anything?

Work hard to be lazy – [Vivek Mahbubani]