Consider the scenarios:
Alec: Please come up with a good haiku
Bob: OK. gets out phone, types in notes for 10 minutes, visibly counting syllables on fingers
Cal: OK. sits quietly sipping a beverage for 10 minutes
Bob and Cal come up with the same haiku.
In this scenario, Cal is signalling slack. How praiseworthy that is is context dependent. If Alec was looking for someone to take this request seriously, Bob looks better. If Alec was looking for someone to do further work in the future, Cal looks better.
Consider the scenarios: Alec: Please come up with a good haiku
Bob: OK. gets out phone, types in notes for 10 minutes, visibly counting syllables on fingers
Cal: OK. sits quietly sipping a beverage for 10 minutes
Bob and Cal come up with the same haiku.
In this scenario, Cal is signalling slack. How praiseworthy that is is context dependent. If Alec was looking for someone to take this request seriously, Bob looks better. If Alec was looking for someone to do further work in the future, Cal looks better.