Nov 05, 2018

When laziness is optimal

From Matt Levine's Money Stuff newsletter, which I highly recommend if you ever think about or use money:

I am always fascinated by business circumstances in which laziness is the optimal move.

Every so often, when I worked in law and banking, a thing would happen, and we’d gear up to go do a lot of work to respond to the thing, and a senior banker or lawyer would say “no, that’s just what they’ll expect us to do, what we should actually do is nothing, that will strengthen our strategic position,” and I would want to hug them. Because I didn’t want to do work, mostly, but also there is a minimalist beauty to accomplishing your strategic goals just by waiting quietly.