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Just the fact that you're actually reading this page suggests you have a long way to go when it comes to SLOTH. Fear not, though, by skimming through the admittedly contradictory advice in this essay and ignoring the pointless exercises at the end, I guarantee1 you'll be doing nothing in no time.
Who are you working for?
If you're like most people, your office hierarchy is a chain of bosses working for bosses working for egomaniacs working for eccentric billionaires with bizarre comb-overs. Since a pathetic cubicle climber like yourself is never going to meet the exalted Mr. Comb-Over, let's focus instead on your immediate boss. For specificity's sake, I'll use the masculine pronoun and refer to him as Mr. Pantload.
 Now a well-trained Mr. Pantload (from the corporation's point of view) has studied enough managerial theory to know that for some reason most people really want to work hard. This is probably just an evolutionary holdover from when all those nuts and berries and wooly mammoths you gathered were actually for you and your family (instead of, say, the biological weapons division of ExxonMobil). In fact, all a well-trained Mr. Pantload has to do is spout sports clichés like "No pain, no gain!" or "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog!" or just "GO, GO, GO!!!" and you'll find yourself grinding through 120 hour work weeks. Even foreign-raised Pantloads who lack the appropriate local sports clichés can often achieve exceptional results by simply waving cricket bats in the air and whipping jai alai balls at the heads of unsuspecting workers.
Of course, the plot thickens when you start to push the synergistic envelope and monetize outside the paradigmatic box (sorry, I ran out of sports clichés). Ask yourself if the corporation you work for (either directly or through the miracle of mega-mergers) is actually a positive force in the world. Or are they, perhaps, grinding up live puppy dogs to make carcinogenic baby food additives?
Okay, okay, maybe there are two or three of you out there working with quadriplegic inner-city teen prostitutes or researching a combined AIDS/malaria/male pattern baldness vaccine, but you're definitely the exception. Because most of us aren't. We're working for Mr. Pantload.
Utterly Superfluous Bulleted List - Drink milk straight from the carton.
- Learn to microwave your eggs.
- Skip the Laundromat and use Febreze™.
- Skip the toilet and use Depends™.
- Wear loafers.
The Power of Quitting
Tenth grade was the year that I learned the most important lesson of my life. I had somehow found myself on both the football and the wrestling team despite a deep and profound hatred for the twin sports of football and wrestling. I don't think I'm alone in falling victim to peer/societal pressure during high school, but my participation in these sports (in particular the after-school practices) was making my life a living hell. In smoggy 100+ degree L.A. heat, the football coach would literally make the team run around the track until people started puking (with me often leading the trend), and the wrestling coach would force us to attend three-hour-plus practices which left us so worn-out that we inevitably lost the actual matches.
 By tenth grade, I started praying that my carpool would crash on the ride to school and leave me too crippled to play. Desperate and on the verge of tears, I confessed this to a friend one day, and after looking at me like I was some kind of lunatic, he said simply, "Dude, quit."
Quit?
The thought that I could actually quit something had never crossed my mind. After all, "quitters never win" and "winners never quit" and "good things come in small packages"… etc. That very day, I went up to my football coach and told him I was quitting. Since I basically sucked at football, he simply said "okay" and shrugged. Elated beyond belief, I went straight home and turned on the TV. Learning to quit had miraculously changed me from a miserable fuck running around a field until I vomited into a smiling young man lounging on the couch eating raw cookie dough out of the tube. Not only that, but I finally found time to indulge in some of those SLOTH-enhancing drugs I'd been hearing so much about.
Of course, a few months later when wrestling season started, I learned that quitting isn't always so easy. While I was far from a great wrestler, I was at least okay, and just so happened to be the only kid in my weight class. I also had a psychopath for a coach. When I came into the gym before practice, and told him I was quitting, he literally exploded2.
"You can't quit! You're our 175 pounder!"
"I'm sorry, but wrestling just isn't for me."
"What are you some kind of cocksucking faggot?" (Since wrestling essentially involves rolling around on the floor and groping other skimpily-clad boys, homophobia was actively encouraged.)
"Uh… no…"
"Listen to me." Since he wasn't a tall man, he went up on his tiptoes to get in my face. "If you quit now, you will regret this for the rest of your fucking life. On your fucking deathbed in whatever loser shithole you end up in, you will regret this!"
All the other miserable wrestlers had stopped rolling around on the sweat-soaked mats and were staring at me in awe by this point, but I stayed strong and walked out of the gym a quitter. I have to admit that for the next hour or so, I was in shock, wondering if I really had made a horrible decision. But when I got home, cranked up the stereo, and kicked it on the couch with my tube of cookie dough and bong, I started to cry—tears of joy. It is to this day, the single best decision I have ever made.
A Word of Warning
It's best to think of SLOTH in terms of gravity. Once your fat ass3 starts rolling down Indolence Hill, you really begin to pick up speed. A mistake many new converts to SLOTH make is—ironically enough—putting effort into their laziness. If you currently have a job, there's no reason to burst into Mr. Pantload's office and give your two week notice. Take the low road instead, and simply do nothing. Chances are it'll take at least a week before anyone notices that you're not working, and then another week or two before they get the cojones to actually fire you. That's free money (see GREED), something any self-respecting slacker should appreciate.
 Likewise, if you're attending a college or university, don't drop out, flunk out. Most colleges offer a staggering number of freebies—from subsidized housing to slutty coeds—that you'd be foolish not to abuse. Through the successful manipulation of academic probation (see LYING), you can extend your cushy dorm life for an extra semester or even a whole year. Just make sure to crank up the BitTorrent while you still have fiber optic broadband, and to raid the health center for a few thousand free condoms (they'll come in handy when you reach the LUST section).
Once you've been fired or kicked out of school, you're pretty much home free. Or at least free to move back home and live with your parents.
EXERCISES
Do you regularly find yourself "putting in extra effort?" Perhaps you occasionally "burn the midnight oil" or even find yourself "sautéing the corporate shiitake?" Well, the following exercises should have you slacking in no time.
1) TAKE UP A NEW HOBBY OR SPORT AND THEN QUIT IT
I recommend doing this in the "New Year's Resolution" tradition. I'll take up a sport (I think boxing was the last one I tried) and train like a madman for a week, spending hours in the gym or on the field and reading every book I can find on the subject. Then at the end of the week, I quit. I tell you, it makes you feel like you're lying on the couch eating cookie dough for the first time.
With hobbies I go out of my way to pick something really really pointless, lest I end up actually enjoying it. I've tried everything from trainspotting to studying Esperanto. At the end of the week, I crack open a twelve pack and watch Family Guy reruns until I forget every bit of useless hobby-related knowledge I've acquired. It's almost on par with bitch-slapping your boss and quitting a job you really hate.
2) DO NOT ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS
1) What's the most amount (in kilograms) of cheese that you've ever eaten in one sitting?_______________________________________________________.2) If you had to have nonconsensual sex with a member of the crustacean subphylum, would you go lobster or crab?___________________________. 3) Valium or Vicodin?_____________________________________________. 4) Would you rather slaughter and clean an ostrich or a moose?_____________. 5) Are you more prejudiced against redheads or people with webbed toes?_____. 6) If you were a porn star, what would be your onscreen specialty?___________. 7) Would you rather have really big hair or a really small head?_____________. 8) They just announced that your plane's departure time has been delayed ten minutes. Do you join all the other moronic passengers in whipping out your cell phone and calling someone who obviously doesn't give a shit?_____________. 9) Would you rather spend two years in a maximum security prison, or have your left foot amputated?________________________________________________. 10) If you had to bludgeon a small child to death, would you use:
a) A baseball bat.
b) A hammer.
c) A golf club.
d) Another small child.
3) CONVINCE A COMPLETE STRANGER TO PERFORM SOME MENIAL TASK FOR YOU
See if you can't get someone to carry your groceries to the car, or go down to the vending machine and buy you a candy bar. My all time favorite is convincing someone to take off my shoes for me.
This is actually an excellent time to utilize some of the other sins in this section, such as LYING ("Dude, I fractured four vertebrae in my neck skateboarding yesterday. Could you help me take off my shoes?) or LUST ("If you take off my shoes, I'll let you suck on my toes.").
1No guarantee implied.
2Well, maybe not "literally," but I swear he burst a few blood vessels in his left eye.
3If your ass isn't fat yet, please see GLUTTONY
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