Billionaire Google cofounder Larry Page’s unlikely advice for new grads: Be lazy

‘Find the leverage in the world, so you can be more lazy,’ Page told University of Michigan grads in 2009. — Bloomberg/Getty Images/The New York Times

Do as I say, not as I do. University of Michigan Class of 2009 graduates might have left their commencement ceremony with that thought in mind after hearing from Larry Page, the cofounder of Google and their class speaker, who encouraged them to seek out avenues of laziness.

Page explained to the graduates that when he was in grad school, he had at least a handful of other ideas he was toying with – along with what would become Google. (In the late 1990s, Page founded the ubiquitous search giant alongside Sergey Brin while the two were earning their PhDs at Stanford.) Their guiding ethos in developing Google, they have said, was to “organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful”.