Laziness is more complicated than the mere notion of “I don’t want to do it.” In truth, feeling lazy is more accurately a lack of motivation, and that can come from anything from eating too much to having a clinical disorder like Depression. No matter what causes you to feel lazy, you do have the ability to empower yourself to break free from your habits. Here are the seven most common things pulling you down and how to counter them.
Being lazy often comes down to feeling paralyzed. Procrastination and distractions are key contributors, but it also stems from having improper expectations and failing to plan for your goals. We’ll show you how to spot when your perceptions are off and how to correct your view to get back on track.
It’s Time to Axe These Massively Draining Demotivators.
Procrastination
Sometimes it’s appropriate to put a task on hold until the appropriate time. The real question is how often are you putting things off? Right now is the best time to do whatever it is you’re thinking about while you have the motivation. You’ll never get it done if you keep pushing it back on your schedule.
Distractions
Break time is important to avoid burnout and wasting time when you’re brain drained and making no progress. Taking breaks all the time and never accomplishing anything isn’t so great, though, either. It’s all about balance. Everything around you has the potential to pull your focus away from what’s important or what you “should” be doing to self-indulgence and laziness. Turn off the social media account, shut off your phone, and learn how to block out the distractions eating away at your valuable time. That alone can be a significant source of change.
Unrealistic Goals
Maybe you’re distracted because you feel like you can’t achieve what you want. Tricking yourself into paralysis is easy by setting unworldly expectations. Take a step back and be reasonable with what you want to (and realistically, can) achieve.
You don’t have to do everything at once, and in reality no one can. Break up your goals into shorter milestones that are realistically attainable. Also, tone down your vision if you’re actually trying to corner a marketplace or revolutionize a type of product. It’s great to shoot for the moon, but don’t pin everything on the arrow actually getting there in one shot.
Lack of Planning
Perhaps you have a reasonable goal now, but you haven’t defined precisely how you’ll get there. You need a detailed plan of how you’re going to achieve what you want. Creating a roadmap and schedule ahead of time lets you spend more brain power working on your projects and less time debating how to complete them. Your dreams are just hearsay without an actionable plan to make them real.
Lacking Consistency
Being consistent with your actions is a crucial element to success that’s often overlooked. Doing a little bit every single day is more productive than tackling large chunks once a week. Turning actions into habits is how all successful people earn their status, and that starts with committing to just a few minutes a day.
You’re Overloaded by Too Many Goals
Attempting to do everything in the world at once is a quick way to crash and burn. It’s great to dream big, but you can’t do everything at once. Stick to one or two goals to work on for each aspect of your life. Start small and slowly add on tasks until instead of tackling everything at once.
You Have No Guidelines
Lacking a plan of action on its own will hold you back. With that said, how should you go about making that plan? Do you know what good looks like?
People look up to mentors and role models for a good reason. They embody the framework for success in their individual fields. Few of us operate in a vacuum; we all learn from someone along the way. And there’s so much to learn from those at the top.
Create guidelines that help you achieve your goals by studying and emulating experts in your field. Analyze what they do, how they got there and the changes they went through to learn from their experience. Then, translate that experience in a way that makes sense with your goals and your personal context. Emulating success the best way to be successful.
Being “lazy” mostly comes down to being paralyzed by success and a lack of motivation to change. Nothing worthwhile comes without change, so embrace it. Identify and remedy the aspects in your life secretly making you lazy to do great things.
