Dr. Lonnie Golden, professor of economics at Penn State Abington, was recently featured in a CBS News Sunday Morning segment titled “The importance of being lazy”.

The story discusses Americans’ obsession with “productivity,” noting a recent Wall Street Journal/NORC survey on the importance of values (ranking them as “very” or “somewhat” important). According to the survey, Americans value hard work (94%) over just about everything else, including self-fulfillment (91%), marriage (70%), patriotism (73%), religion (60%), and tolerance for others (90%).

“The big payoffs in the U.S. are making yourself available for a promotion, or building your own business from scratch. So, there’s many good rewards from that,” Dr. Golden told CBS. “There’s no reward for being lazy, I think it’s fair to say. When you’re at your high school reunion, you don’t want to be saying, you know, ‘I’ve been doing nothing’!”

“Laziness gets a bum rap from religion, it gets a bum rap from capitalism, it gets a bum rap because we are trying to be productive in our lives,” he said.

Dr. Golden pointed out that even American retirees have a hard time doing nothing.

“It gets to be what’s called the conspicuous busyness,” said Golden. “Like, Hey, look how busy I am, and look how much time I’m spending [on doing things]. Maybe it’s volunteering. But it should be okay to say, ‘I’m retired. And as a result, I can be lazy when I feel like being lazy.'”

For the full story, you can click here. You can also watch the video clip below:

For more on Dr. Golden at Penn State Abington, you can click here.

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Screengrab: CBS