The Art of Divine Sloth
The silk sheets of my penthouse suite felt like clouds against my skin as I stretched lazily, watching the Tokyo skyline glitter through floor-to-ceiling windows. At twenty-one , I had achieved what most would consider impossible: a life of complete, leisure funded by a business empire I'd built specifically to require zero effort from me.
But as I reached for the remote control—hand-carved from rare mahogany, naturally—my mind drifted back to where it all began. To the moment when little Astro Kinoshita first realized that the world's greatest tragedy wasn't poverty or war, but the simple fact that humans were expected to work for a living.
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It was the year 2025 and I was ten years old, sprawled across the living room floor of our modest Tokyo apartment, surrounded by the scattered remains of my latest masterpiece: a blanket fort so architecturally sound it could have housed a small family. My parents were having one of their "discussions" in the kitchen—the kind where voices got progressively louder and the word "responsibility" got thrown around like confetti at a wedding nobody wanted to attend.
"Astro needs to learn discipline," my father was saying, his voice carrying that particular tone adults use when they're about to ruin a perfectly good childhood. "He can't just lie around all day reading manga and playing video games. He needs structure. Chores. Purpose."
I pressed my face deeper into the pillow I'd stolen from the couch, feeling a profound sense of injustice settle in my chest like a stone. Why did I need purpose? I had purpose. My purpose was to be comfortable, to enjoy the simple pleasure of existing without the burden of productivity. What was so wrong with that?
"He's just a child," my mother replied, though her voice lacked conviction. "He'll grow out of it."
But I knew, even then, that I wouldn't grow out of it. The desire for effortless peace wasn't a phase—it was my calling. While other kids dreamed of becoming astronauts or firefighters,business man,scientists, I dreamed of becoming ,completely, unapologetically lazy.
The problem was obvious: such a life was impossible for an average person. The math didn't work. Even if I became a doctor or lawyer or whatever respectable profession my parents envisioned, I'd still be trading my time for money, still be trapped in the hamster wheel of modern existence. The only people who achieved true leisure were those born into generational wealth, and the Kinoshita family bank account definitely didn't qualify.
Unless.
Unless I broke the system entirely.
That night, as I lay in my actual bed (having been evicted from my blanket fort by parental decree), I made a promise to my ten-year-old self. I would find a way to live exactly as I wanted: doing absolutely nothing except reading manga until my eyes burned, watching anime until I'd memorized every frame, gaming until my thumbs cramped, and eating exquisite meals prepared by someone else. I wanted a mountain-top villa where servants brought me whatever I craved, where my biggest decision was whether to nap in the hammock or the silk-upholstered reclining chair.
Most adults would have called this the fantasy of a spoiled child. I called it my life's mission.
The next morning, I began my research. While my parents thought I was playing educational computer games, I was actually studying the habits of the world's laziest people. I read about kings who governed entire empires from their beds, about philosophers who built entire schools of thought around the virtue of doing nothing, about modern entrepreneurs who'd figured out how to make money while they slept.
There had to be a way.
I started small. Instead of doing my homework the traditional way, I figured out how to automate it. I created templates for essays, formulas for math problems, and systems for memorizing facts that required the absolute minimum amount of mental effort. When my parents praised my improved grades, I didn't correct their assumption that I was finally applying myself. Let them think I was working harder. The truth was, I was working smarter—so much smarter that it barely counted as work at all.
By the time I was twelve, I had seventeen different passive income streams, most of them involving other kids paying me to do things they didn't want to do. I wasn't exploiting them—I was providing a service. They got to avoid unpleasant tasks, and I got to practice the art of profitable laziness.
My parents never understood. They saw a child who refused to make his bed, who would rather pay his sister to do his chores than do them himself, who approached every task with the single-minded goal of finding the easiest possible solution. They saw laziness as a character flaw to be corrected.
I saw it as a superpower to be perfected.
Now, twenty-one years later, as I lounged in my penthouse suite with a net worth that would make most CEOs weep with envy, I could honestly say that seven-year-old Astro had kept his promise. I had built an empire on the foundation of strategic laziness, created a business model so elegant in its simplicity that it generated wealth while I slept, traveled, or spent entire days doing nothing but enjoying the fruits of my deliberately minimal labor.
The irony wasn't lost on me that achieving perfect laziness had required a tremendous amount of initial effort. But that was the beautiful paradox of my life: I had worked incredibly hard to never have to work again.
I reached for my phone—a custom model that responded to eye movements, because lifting my hand was sometimes more effort than I cared to expend—and checked my daily earnings report. Seven figures, as usual. All generated by systems I'd designed years ago, maintained by teams I'd hired specifically for their ability to work without requiring my input.
My childhood blanket fort had been demolished within hours, but the empire I'd built on its philosophical foundation would last forever. Or at least until I got bored of being rich, which seemed about as likely as me suddenly developing a passion for manual labor.
I closed my eyes and smiled, feeling the familiar warmth of a dream perfectly realized. Somewhere in the multiverse, there was probably a version of Astro Kinoshita who had listened to his parents, who had learned discipline and responsibility and the value of hard work.
I felt sorry for that poor bastard.
In this universe, I had chosen a different path. I had chosen to be , completely, unapologetically lazy. And against all odds, against all conventional wisdom, against the protests of every adult who had ever told me that dreams don't pay the bills, I had made it work.
The sun was setting over Tokyo, painting the sky in shades of gold and crimson that would have inspired poets to write epic verses about the beauty of nature. I watched it for exactly thirty seconds before reaching for the remote to close the smart curtains. Even sunsets, I had learned, were more enjoyable when you didn't have to crane your neck to see them properly.
Perfect laziness, I had discovered, was an art form. And I was its greatest living master.