Perhaps it is important to note that laziness is often joined at the hip with high aspiration. You want to achieve something that matters to you, and that, combined with a good dose of laziness, motivates you to rethink your basic fixed premises.

These people have mastered the art of being completely focused, while at the same time, completely relaxed.

This may be one of the most important principles you can get from this book: to establish structural tension first, and, from that, generate your art as a resolution of that tension.

If you are an artist, you do not have resistance you need to overcome. You simply need to understand how to set up your underlying structure in such a way that the path of least resistance leads to creating the work you want to create.

Another way of describing an artistic vision is that we create a unique universe in which the audience can live.

There are three unique domains we will cover: the mechanics, the orientation, and the spirit of the creative process.

This point is important for the artist to understand. The audience will fully engage if the universe you create has its own integrity, its own rules that are consistent within itself, independent of how the world really works. It also needs to be worth spending time with.

Neither approach can be productive. We need to have both elements, which means to narrow our attention on what we are creating, while, at the very same time, broaden our awareness to allow unimagined insight to surface.

Laziness must not be confused with lethargy. Lethargy comes with an inclination to be passive. But real laziness is not in conflict with the work ethic. Instead, laziness poses this question: isn’t there a better way to do this thing? That’s a different question from: how can I get out of doing this thing?