Advice for sloths

[cartoon id="304716"] I’ve never been one to follow self-help books. Sure, I know they’re good for me. They’re filled with actionable advice on how to make tens of thousands of dollars, attract a great partner, and get the career of your dreams. All you have to do is be as productive as 10,000 busy bees. Without so much buzzing. But if I had to choose the animal I most resemble, it would be the sloth. If I was in a room full of people and the instructor asked the laziest person there to raise their hand, I wouldn’t do it. It takes too much effort. So I decided to write down advice for sloths like me, so that the do-nothingers of the world could unite and become one percent better. The core idea is, little things compounded make big things. You may not be immediately sold on this idea, because you’ve been putting a little into retirement each year, and it hasn’t compounded to zilch. But I promise that my advice for sloths rings true. Here it is. 1) Set your main clock two minutes ahead. If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time in the kitchen, eating. Or in the living room, eating. Or in the bathroom—ew. Or in the den, eating. This usually means there’s one main clock that you spend a lot of time looking at. For me, it’s in the kitchen. I always set that clock to be two minutes ahead. That way, I end up always thinking I’m two minutes late and rush to get to my meetings or for walks with my neighbor or chores. But I always have those two extra minutes, so I end up arriving on time. How’s that for a sloth? Pretty good. 2) Keep one or two instant meals around. I’m fairly good at cooking. Exempli gratia, I have not burned the bologna when making a melt for at least six months. But every now and then, I run out of bread or bologna or cheese to make my usual lunch. So it’s useful to have a can of Campbell’s Soup in the pantry. Regular sloths eat leaves. But human sloths—this is not an image I’m proud of—can’t get along on healthy foods like (gasp!) kale salad. That’s why I like Campbell’s Soups. And if Campbell’s liked me, they’d pay me a million dollars for promoting their product in this newspaper. As it is, I get paid nada. But I guess that makes sense, for a sloth. 3) Practice slothfulness. Sometimes you just need to slow down, to approximately 0.2 miles an hour, to really appreciate life. Here is where slothfulness—slothiness?—slothing?—becomes useful. When you imitate the humble sloth, you find time to see the beautiful things in life. Like the way your cat’s eyes reflect the sun. Or the way a hummingbird flits by the daffodils near your front door. Or the way your neighbor trips in a pothole and flails, slow-motion, into a massive muddy puddle. There’s joy to be found in sloathing. Or sloafing. Or whatever the verb of “sloth” is. Especially if you have clumsy neighbors. I may not be a busy bee, but I am a happy sloth. And that’s enough for me. - Copyright 2026 Alexandra Paskhaver, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Alexandra Paskhaver is a software engineer and writer. Both jobs require knowing where to stick semicolons, but she’s never quite; figured; it; out. For more information, check out her website at https://apaskhaver.github.io.