In the spirit of Maxwell Maltz ("The best response is no response), I humbly submit that the best effort is no effort.

Call it the Tom Sawyer strategy (hey, there's a great quickie business book title for you, take it and run).

You will recall how Tom Sawyer got his fence painted by another by cleverly making the other person feel it was in his (the other person's) best interest to do it.

I believe the "other person" is Huck Finn, but I'm not certain, and I'm not gonna break my train of thought by looking it up right now. Maybe when I'm done riffing. But I digress.

Anyway, Ray Kurzweil updated the Tom Sawyer strategy to the late 20th century with his pithy epigram, "Work smart, not hard." Precisely.

The reason I'm so passionate about good, clean design and function, whether in objects, ideas, or prose style, is that I have the Steve Krug syndrome: "Don't make me think!"

I want to do things without fuss or bother, so that I can have fun and spend all my time thinking about stuff that bears no relationship to any possible usefulness.

The highest and best use of the human mind is play. All else is a sad diversion. To this end, consider the most insightful definition of work ever, from a University of Virginia psychiatry professor:

"Work is what you're doing when you'd rather be doing something else."

There's nothing I'd rather be doing than typing these words, right here, right now.

I always look for the easiest way to do anything. As well as wondering whether it's even worth doing.

As my dad said (the only thing he ever said that was worth remembering - what a loser... but I digress), "A penny saved is better than a penny earned, because you don't have to work to save a penny."

My intense relationship with SW ended over the issue of my laziness, expressed in a seemingly innnocuous fashion when we disagreed vehemently over how dishes were stacked alongside my kitchen sink.

I do not stack dishes, because that doubles my work: now the bottoms are greasy and dirty, and have to be scrubbed as well. I insist people simply put the plates and bowls on the countertop, anywhere, taking up as much space as they need.

SW didn't like this idea at all. She said it was silly. I said fine. It is silly. I agree. No argument. At your house I'm happy to stack the dishes, but since I'm the one washing them at my house, please don't stack them here.

She continued to stack them. I went back and forth with her over this for months, and finally decided anyone whose thinking was this sloppy wasn't worth keeping around. And that's all I have to say about that (Forrest Gump, call your office).

Oh, yeah, the fence, and Tom Sawyer. Ben, not Huck Finn, was the first to have a go at it, in return for giving Tom his apple; then came Billy Fisher and Johnny Miller.

The first appearance of the Tom Sawyer strategy is worth a moment of your time. Read it in the original, and realize once again that there's nothing like the real thing.