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GeekNights 070809 - How to Not Suck at Slacking Off

RymRym
edited August 2007 in Everything Else
Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss the finer points of slacking off. In the news, vote-swapping is legal, and the US tax system is a little annoying.
Scott's Thing - FCC Prank

Rym's Thing - Good Table Manners
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Comments

  • Wow.  Now that I've actually watched it, props to the pranked for taking it in good humour. ^_^
  • Does it ever make you guys angry that the education system is structured in such a way that following your advice is not only possible, but the most beneficial of all choices? Angry that you were lied to and bitter that as structured the whole thing is mostly a waste?

    That's how I often feel, and how friends of mine who gamed the system often felt. It became a form of role reversal, a way of saying "No, the joke's not on me for buying the line of crap you guys fed me, for earnestly believing that by diligently following the system I would learn real things and become truly educated. The joke is on you; I understand the system now, I can own it. I get the last laugh."

    At least in my case, though, I'd gladly have given up the last laugh if only there'd been no joke in the first place.
  • To see the video for why they were doing the prank watch this video, it's kind of ironic he was talking about Sodom and Gomorra (sp?). Either way teh hilarious occurs.
  • God, this is exactly what my mom wants me to stop doing. Great show guys!
  • I liked this episode. People don't seem to understand the power of slacking. I am a huge subscriber to the slacking lifestyle myself and have found it nothing but useful in my life.

    Here's the deal . . . if you have any idea about technology, you don't have to work in IT or CS to make money. There are plenty of jobs that will pay you all kinds of money where your skills will make you a super hero.

    For example: when I joined my current group they had this silly, bloated process for analyzing financial data and reporting to sponsors on our status that required a solid twenty hours a month per project. This meant that there was always a scramble twice a month (as the financial cycle went through) to build reports. I'm sitting here thinking to myself hey! I'll just write some code to automatically pull one report that has all the data in the system, and write a macro in excel that will ask me what kind of report I need and build it automatically. I spend 20 hrs coding once and bam! Now I do 20 hrs of work in a push of a button . . . twice a month.

    Laziness is the father of innovation.

    I also liked how you mentioned that you needed to be able to not worry about walking the razor. It's an ability that helps you either way in life. I think the key to slacking is really your willingness and ability to step up when the situation requires it (when you slip from the razor) and to have faith in your ability to solve any problem. Of course, good contingency planning helps with this too.
  • I do not recommend slacking off if you are in an art class.

    It's the way to go for all other situations.
  • I do not recommend slacking off if you are in an art class.
    This is the truth . . . at least for anything over the high school level.
  • edited August 2007
    God, this is exactly what my mom wants me to stop doing. Great show guys!
    Weren't you the one complaining because your mom wouldn't let you go to Otakon because of grades??
    Here is my situation: I got two "C's" on my final report card for the year and my mom won't let me go to Otakon (even though I have already paid.)
    Yah it seems like you failed on the successfully slacking.
    Post edited by Corbin on
  • When slacking off in a corporate environment carry a clipboard with papers on it. No one ever questions the guy walking around with a clipboard because they assume he is a QC guy or an auditor.
  • I do not recommend slacking off if you are in an art class.
    This is the truth . . . at least for anything over the high school level.
    I third that. . . Damn you animation!
  • When slacking off in a corporate environment carry a clipboard with papers on it. No one ever questions the guy walking around with a clipboard because they assume he is a QC guy or an auditor.
    You walk while slacking?
  • If you have to walk somewhere, like outside or to the bathroom, carry some papers with you.  Even better, print something out, go the printer, pick it up, examine it, and then walk to wherever you're going while continuting to flip through the lorem ipsum you're carrying. ^_~
  • When slacking off in a corporate environment carry a clipboard with papers on it. No one ever questions the guy walking around with a clipboard because they assume he is a QC guy or an auditor.
    You walk while slacking?
    Yes. You use the walking to get where you intend to slack off.

    Back when I was in the service all you had to do was grab a PMCS (Preventative Maintenance Checks and Services) clipboard for a vehicle and head for the motor pool and no one would bug you all day. You then go in the back of your tool van and whip out your portable gaming system (mine was the Sega back then) and slack away!
  • Great show on slacking reminded me a lot of the little bit of slacking I did in High School, and then the large amount I did in college.

    I took a physics 101 course my first semester, I went for the first month, and the skipped the rest of the classes (minus the exam prep ones) and I was the first one to finish the final out of the probably 200 students. Got an A in the class too.
  • I have the impression that many educational systems try to imprint a work ethic in students as well as trying to teach. The goal is to make us productive members of society after all. I think successful slacking boils down to taking full responsibility for your learning while conforming to your own personal work ethic.
    When I came to uni we were told to work hard and play hard. Listening to the show it seems that slacking doesn't differ much, only rather than working your bum off when working hard, you choose the level and amount of work to put in depending on whatever more or less grandiose goals you have.

    I've never been a successful slacker. It was instilled in me early on to always do my best and I didn't even start questioning that until late junior high, by when it was too late for me to change my ways. I guess I just couldn't settle for a B if I could get an A with a few extra hours of studying. I've always admired good slackers though and I like the slacker attitude. Sometimes I wish I was better at it, it'd save me a lot of trouble.
    I'm often of the mind that if you have the potential, why not use it? See how far you can go. In high school I noticed a lot of people around me seemed content being and staying where they were but I've always liked to challenge myself. Admittedly I'm getting to a stage where I'm wondering where I'm headed now, keep going up won't do you much good if you don't know your final destination.

  • I'm often of the mind that if you have the potential, why not use it? See how far you can go.
    I agree, but sometimes there is a benefit to going further, and sometimes there is not. Also, sometimes there is a benefit to going further, but you don't really want that benefit, and whether you achieved it or not wouldn't make a difference.

    For example, let's say you are working a summer job at a fast food restaurant. For the sake of argument you make minimum wage. You know you are going to stop working at the end of the summer when school starts again. There is no chance for promotion. There is only the risk of being fired and having to find a new job. Therefore, there is no reason to try hard at this job. You should do the minimum amount of work necessary to keep the job without being fired. Flipping those burgers any faster or making those sandwiches any neater has absolutely no benefit whatsoever.

    The first key to being a successful slacker is to only care about things that actually matter.
  • I agree, but sometimes there is a benefit to going further, and sometimes there is not. Also, sometimes there is a benefit to going further, but you don't really want that benefit, and whether you achieved it or not wouldn't make a difference.
    ...
    The first key to being a successful slacker is to only care about things that actually matter.
    I don't think it's that easy to tell what things actually matter though. Doesn't this mean you need to know exactly what your goals are in life in order to know how to compromise your way there?
    I don't think there are many people in this world who show a lot of dedication to flipping burgers, nor should they, but education is a different story. This is usually where people see their chances to excel. Basic education is something that's more or less forced upon us, which is why I think people tend to show resentment toward parts of it. Yes, there are subjects which are less interesting than others and one might argue that it's not worth spending time on them but you have no way of knowing whether they will become useful to you until you know what you want to do for a living. Also, often learning certain things have benefits which aren't obvious at face value.
    Say that you were allowed to choose exactly what to learn from the age of 10 or something. People might show more dedication to their studies if that was the case but that means you'll have to know exactly what you want to learn at the age of 10. Most people don't even know that when they start uni.

    Whenever we talk about slacking it's usually in the context of school and work, i.e. places where you are expected to do certain things to a certain standard by external authority. I.e. it's you going around the establishment. I'm not saying it's necessarily bad, often the establishment can be quite crap. There is usually no mention about slacking when it comes to creative work though. An artist would hardly talk about slacking since they would just be pulling themselves down.

    It might be obvious that these words are coming from someone who's never failed to hand in an assignment but I must say that if I hadn't worked as hard as I did throughout school I probably wouldn't be where I am now. I never knew exactly what I wanted, keeping my grades up ensured that as many routes were open to me as possible. It's a tiring way to do it but I guess for someone like me it gives me the best chance of finding something I'll be happy doing for a living.
  • Being an artist, I whole heartedly agree that slacking at art is a VERY bad idea. It's far to competitive for you to not do everything in your power to wow people.
    I have always been able to drift through every other class in school and get A's and B's, but junior year of High School was harder than ever to drift. I need to rethink my strategy for next year to bring myself to maximum slacking potential, lest I repeat junior year.
  • Fuurin what do you do for a living or what are you going to school for?
  • Fuurin what do you do for a living or what are you going to school for?
    I'm studying biomedical engineering at Imperial College London. I made my way here from the tiniest town in Sweden. I thought if I was moving out to go to uni I might as well go as far as I could. Coming here to study has changed a lot for me, not only academically but I've also had the chance to bring my hobby, which is drawing, to the next stage since there are a lot more opportunities to get your work seen and published in a big city like London.
    I like the idea of being in control of my life and where I want to go. The only way to do that is to keep as many door open as possible, hence my work ethic. However, I'm coming to the end of the road now and I'm starting to wonder where to go next. Decisiveness has always been a big lack in me.
  • My only problem with schooling is the length of lessons, 70 minutes to teach something in Calculus class that I can read once and understand in under 15 minutes. In my city, if you do any schooling after high school you're getting out of there. Luckily we have a community college which is actually really good and we have one of the best Universities in Ontario. I can get into both already, so because of this, I set my goals for grades and achieve them. The actual amount of work I do compared to other students that only get around 4% higher than me is unbelievable. Here is an example, a student Adam gets 4% higher than me and studies for his Calculus exam for 36 hours, I started studying at around 8 PM the night before my exam and I went to sleep before midnight. Slacking for me can be a huge time saver, and sure I do think "what if I did study for longer and tried harder?" But then I think about how well I did vs. the amount of time spent studying or doing assignments. With that said, congrats on getting into college and I hope you do well for yourself.
  • How far north do you live elitest?
  • I'm amazed at what you guys claim to have been able to get away with in high school. My school (Australia) would follow up on students missing from any class during any day and exams and essays were checked by multiple teachers from several different schools. I could go into more detail about the marking system we have (mostly because of the OP system), but yeah, what you guys describe would be impossible here.
  • I think what it boils down to is that slacking isn't for everyone. It's definitely something where you decide your goals, and what you need to do to achieve them. Once you do that you'll know if you can slack or not, based on what you plan to do, and what your own abilities are. I imagine there are people in art who slack, but only because they are ridiculously good at it. So then slacking doesn't necessarily diminish their work.
  • Slaking of at school is easier when the teachers are also slacking off.
  • Even if you set your goals really high, you can still slack off. Let's say you want to become an amazing brain surgeon, so you want to go to Harvard Medical School. Alright, you need all As in high school then. Well, you aren't going to have a lot of free time. However, you can still calculate the exact amount of work you will have to do to get an A in each and every class. Once you figure that out, you can do that amount of work and not a single drop more. The same goes for you people in other countries or in private schools where the system is much tighter. You are going to have to do more work to achieve your goals, but with the slacker method you won't be doing any extra unnecessary work.
  • Even if you set your goals really high, you can still slack off. Let's say you want to become an amazing brain surgeon, so you want to go to Harvard Medical School. Alright, you need all As in high school then. Well, you aren't going to have a lot of free time. However, you can still calculate the exact amount of work you will have to do to get an A in each and every class. Once you figure that out, you can do that amount of work and not a single drop more. The same goes for you people in other countries or in private schools where the system is much tighter. You are going to have to do more work to achieve your goals, but with the slacker method you won't be doing any extra unnecessary work.

    I'm as surprised as Mamath about the level of laxity in the US education system.  Slacking gets to the point of being more work than just working (in  a private high school, in Australia).  I agree that I had reached that stage where the teacher would believe anything I said because I worked my ass off and displaying an unmatched work ethic, but to get to this point I had already mastered 80% of the curriculum half way through senior year.  Plus here in Australia you can and will be failed, rejected from Universites and your final exams are marked by a centralised party, the majority of our exams are short answer, essay and a few multiple choice and your Tertiary entrance score is determined by the average of a minimum of 4 subjects, a maximum of 5 which have to include atleast one humanities and atleast one science or maths.  Your final determination is done via ranking rather than raw scores.  There was a 50 seat limit to get into the Veterinary course and you had to be in the top 1.4% of the state to quaify plus you had to have done the most difficult subjects - Calculus, Applied Maths, Chemistry, Physics or Biology.
    I basically finished all my Maths curriculum half way through 2nd semester so my teachers would just let me have free study time which I used to go and play Quake 2 deathmatch against anyone in the computer labs or read Sandman graphic novels in the library.  The same happened with my LIterature teacher but because I knew I didn't need that subject to get into the course I wanted, I didn't even bother studying for it in my final exams, just passed and aced all my other subjects.  So I guess I did the bare minimum that I could.  Plus I joined the Economics state competition in a team and let them do all the work, managing a stock portfolio, apparently we won and I recieved a $500 cheque. 
  • Haha... I watched Track-Shun and I have yet to see a really GOOD Anime video podcast.

    SHUN.
  • Haha... I watched Track-Shun and I have yet to see a really GOOD Anime video podcast.

    SHUN.
    He was better before he took on the sponsor.
  • He was better before he took on the sponsor.
    He was still pretty bad. I watched his show a long time ago, he must be much worse now.
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