According to Merriam-Webster OnLine, the Protestant ethic is "an ethic that stresses the virtue of hard work, thrift, and self-discipline." I've usually heard this referred to as the "Protestant work ethic".

My current state of employ is teaching me a new ethic; one which I label the Protestant laziness ethic. This ethic stresses the value of avoiding work which will ultimately prove futile and valueless, and in that sense is as pro-thrift and self-discipline as the original Protestant ethic. The primary difference is not in the values or the ethic itself, but merely the means to the end.

A good Protestant work ethic would encourage me to leap right in and give my employer value for the money they pay me when I am approached with some task to perform. In my case, I perform computer-programming tasks, and when I first joined my present employer I did indeed have such a work ethic. In time and with experience, however, I've come to appreciate the value and effectiveness of laziness. Experience, in this particular case, has led me to understand that not all the work I do will actually be used. On a number of occasions I've done analysis, written detailed design documents, and then implemented a program before passing it on to the testing department only to hear several months later that they decided not to use that functionality after all. What a waste of effort!

In the interests of thrift, therefore, I've made a point of learning what kinds of things cause my programs to be wasted. It's not that I write bad software or anything — quite the contrary. The problem is that people only realise they've asked for the wrong thing after they get the final product: the program is exactly what they asked for, but not actually useful.

So now when I'm asked to write a program, I start out by procrastinating to make sure that they really do want it. If nobody chases it up, then nobody really wanted it, and I've avoided wasting effort on useless activity. If someone chases it up, then I invest some time in determining why the project is a bad idea — trying to determine what would cause this project to wind up on the cutting room floor at the end of the day. Once I've determined at least one key issue, I raise it with the project originator, telling them the implications of the issue and preferably giving them at least two alternative ways of going about the project, complete with the consequences of each path. I then await their decision.

It's possible to repeat this step several times in some cases: take the proposed course of action, analyse it for show-stopping problems, return it to the originator for decision-making. Ultimately, you might have a proposed course of action which appears to be free of fatal flaws, and then you would switch to work ethic mode. I can't recall this having happened in recent times, however. The closest I've come is pointing out that a particular problem could be solved in a much simpler way than the one originally described, and getting the involved parties to agree on making those somewhat trivial changes instead of the fairly involved work that might otherwise have been necessary. More often what happens is that the project originator eventually tells me that they have decided not to go ahead with it after all at this time.

In essence, then, the Protestant laziness ethic dictates that one should pour no more effort into a task than is warranted by the outcome. If it seems clear that a project will ultimately be unused, why waste time and effort on it? One's duty under such circumstances is not to pour effort into a futile cause, like Sisyphus and his rock in Greek mythology, but rather to highlight the problems that will ultimately cause the project to be wasted. Perhaps some time will be spent idle in the meantime as a result of the project being dropped, but is this really any worse than being employed in unproductive labour? Better to have an idle employee who is ready to take on the next task than one that is unavailable due to being engaged in worthless activity.

On the other hand, I'd rather be employed at a place where the laziness ethic was simply not needed. I'm very good at avoiding useless work now, but I think it's making me lazy in a general sense. I'd elaborate on this, but I couldn't be bothered at the moment.