The wheel was invented not by the most energetic and diligent worker on the jobsite, but by the laziest and most indolent.
Later, Henry Ford was quoted as saying he hires the laziest people he can find, because they are most inspired to find the easiest and cheapest way of doing something.
Wittgenstein published one book, one article, a book review and a children’s dictionary in his lifetime. And the book was only 75 pages long.
Deion Sanders goofed around or slept through team meetings, never watched film, and loafed through practices.
But he was so naturally fast that he could still show up on Sunday and lock down even the best receivers.
People who are ‘all time greats’ in creative fields purely of the mind can definitely be lazy and great. In creative fields like music or art it depends on the genre. Or even the particular artist. Miles Davis was not that technically good a trumpet player, whether because he was lazy in trying to be or just didn’t have the technical potential I don’t know. But it wasn’t what his music was about. OTOH John Coltrane’s music wouldn’t have been what it was without his supreme technical abilities, which were the product of very hard work besides talent (even if some of his last work no longer depended as much on those abilities).
With athletes I think it’s well accepted that the expansion of the pool of potential competitors and the escalation in $ reward for being top has made it much less feasible to be a lazy great player in most sports now than in Babe Ruth’s time. Pro-athletes of that era in general didn’t commit themselves to the conditioning and nutrition like they do now. Guys were smoking in the locker room in the NBA only a few decades ago. Now it seems a repetitive pattern, again taking the NBA as an example, the true greats are supremely talented very hard workers, and while supremely talented lazy guys can maintain themselves in the league at least for awhile they are almost always notable disappointments.
There features in the above linked-to list, the 18th-century English writer Dr.Samuel Johnson, compiler of the first truly substantial dictionary of the English language. His notorious problems with meeting deadlines concerning his writings and their publishing – mentioned in the link – was, I gather, one aspect of his strong natural tendency to indolence. I recall reading that he both hated having to go to bed; and when he had done so, hated having to get up. Johnson – being a serious Christian – was worried that his prone-ness to giving in to his slothful nature, imperilled his chances for the salvation of his soul.
I’m willing to bet that the fellow who invented the TV Remote Control was not an exercise enthusiast.
Ronald Reagan was famously *not *a workaholic, something unusual for a POTUS. Not quite lazy but it’s all relative.
A well known military aphorism goes something like “Appoint clever and lazy officers to the highest leadership positions”. By the same thinking, industrious and clever officers are better used for staff positions, stupid and lazy officers are of use in some cases, but stupid and industrious officers are dangerous and must be removed.
This link discusses how attributing this quote to Von Moltke (the older or younger?) seems recent and it’s not clear where it actually comes from
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/28/clever-lazy/
I read somewhere that Samuel Taylor Coleridge was always disgusted with himself for his laziness and procrastination.
Charlton Heston saw it differently. He said (I’m quoting from memory, and am bound to get words wrong, but this is NOT a distortion of his words), "Everyone thinks Orson deserved better from Hollywood, but I think Hollywood deserved better from Orson. I’ve seen how charming Orson can be. He charms actors, stagehands, waitresses… and I’d wonder why he couldn’t show some of that same charm to studio bosses he was planning to hit up for millions of dollars!
Orson wouldn’t have this problem if he were a painter or a poet or a novelist. But film is a medium where the materials are too expensive for the artist to buy them himself. So, he had to beg for money from people he didn’t respect, who he could see had no talent, and he just couldn’t do it."
As Heston saw it, if Orson could have played the game just a LITTLE, he could have talked Harry Cohn and Darryl Zanuck into backing his projects. But he refused to play the game, and had to do Paul Masson wine commercials while letting his film projects die.
I don’t think it’s really different. Heston said Welles couldn’t get funding because he was an asshole to the people who controlled the funding.
But neither Vidal nor Heston said anything about Welles being lazy.
I’m sure all that laudanum didn’t help.