One of the things I find the gremlins in my head telling me most often is "your lazy", and I'm sure I'm not alone in this. Largely my mentality and how I approached my self-improvement journey was mostly an endevour at proving this voice wrong. However trying to outwork this voice is a fruitless endevour that always left me feeling like a failure. The line between self-care and being lazy is quite a blurry one, and carving out time to do important things like rest and recover can be easily corralled into laziness. I'm not sure where I first read it, but someone introduced me to the idea that "there is no such thing as lazy" and this planted a seed in my mind that waited dormant in my brain for me to unpack it. Turns out today would be that day.
If you're a millenial like me this word was likely wrapped around you anytime you any time you didn't immediately drop what you were doing to complete some innoucouus, defferable task. It conjured images of some slack-jawed, self-centered leach who exist only to serve their own ends. A lazy person doesn't want to do that task because someone else will do it, they shouldn't have to do it because they don't want to. I'd argue that this person doesn't exist.
There are three reasons people don't want to do things; lack of motiviation, lack of capacity, lack of effectiveness. These lacks can be real (I personally lack the capacity of flight) or perceived.
Motivation can be characterized as "the force that drives someone to acheive a goal". Motivations can be posative or negative, and change over time. You might be motivated to drink a glass of water right now because you're thirsty but you probably won't be after you've finished the water.
You often hear ironically titled motivational guru's talking about how you need to do things "weather" you're motivated or not, but this is simply assanine. All this does is make your goal "be someone who does things they're not motivated to do" which in simple terms means "be someone who does things that potentially serve no purpose".
If your goal is geniunely something you want to acheieve then the work in doing so will always be something you can do, because you know you will acheieve it. This all comes from my hypothesis that despite all the bullshit, people intrinsicly want to do things the provide them with meaning; weather they know it or not. This is why videogames are so prolific. They provide a low barrier to entry on the effort-reward cycle that humans thrive on (or die on, if we're talking pokies). Imainge a really lotfy goal you would want to achieve, earn a million dollars, have a body like Brad Pitt in Fight Club. Now imagine that all you have to do to get it is push a button. You'd push that button right? The amount of work needed is relaitvely low in this instance so you'd be a fool to say no. What about if I say you have to move a pile of 100 cinderblock 100 meters accross a field one by one? Most people would still do this (I would). What about 1000? 1,000,000? At a certain point, perhaps some less exciting goals would begin to seem not worth it. If you had to move 1 million cinder blocks to get a tidy room I imagine you'd have a messy room from that day forward. And who the firck would expect you to clean your room if they knew it would require that much effort? Nobody in their right mind that's who. Something to keep in mind perhaps the next time you see the messy state of someones house and decide to snicker.
What about perceived motivation? I like to think of this as the goal you don't know you have. As we learn and grow, our priorites and the demands of life and our time change what is important to us. We won't always put the same importance on things and nor should we. Therefore you cannot have a goal you don't know how much it will benefit you. For example, you wonder to yourself "why would anyone get up in the morning and go for a run everyday, how can they do it?". While the person out there actually doing it knows that the your life expectency and quality of life increase dramatically with 30m of cardio each day (not science, made up, still probably good for you).Therefore one person is sufficiently motivated the complete the one purely from what they know. Perhaps though the anti-runner also has 3 children. They keep her up each night, one of them is always sick. Her husband is an ass. She has waaaaay less base energy to start her day off, and would probably benefit more from the sleep. Should she David Goggins herself into an injury because "that's what a winner would do?"
"But what if she is capable of it but she doesn't know it cause she won't push herself?"
ahhh...
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** Investing - Timeline, Cleaning fridge, getting distracted with more fun things.
In the previous example the would be a lack of perceived effectivensss (potentially). We've all done this. "I'm going to get up tomorrow and go for a 10km run and then eat healthy all day and I will be a hero and my parents will finally love me. WRONG (trump voice). You roll over and give that snooze the old "like and subscribe" treatment and go back to sleep. Not without wresling with the fact that you're a lazy piece of shit for a little while beforehand, and then for the rest of the day once you finally get up from you likely much needed rest.
This is because you've probably done this or something like this before, and the results didn't do anything for you. You don't believe that the work you're putting in will lead to the outcomes you want. I can speak to this directly as someone who is a fitness enthusiast. I spent many of my former years performing fad diets and workouts that went knowhere and did nothing for me except calous me to the potenital effectivness of a real training and nutrition plan done by people who actually know what they're talking about. Fitness is one of these goals that's very hard because it's hard to see day to day if you're improving or not. This can sometimes make your efforts feel like they're in vain. This is why milestones and SMART goals are so important. Having a acheivable goals that lead to your measurable success mean that you can take incrementals steps, and be assured each time you reach on that you're on the right path.
If you have these and you still don't want to get up to that alarm to run this tells you something very simple. At that time, sleep is more important to you than your running goal. Its easy to say you'll run in the morning at 8pm the night before while your having your inspirational planning phase. But when it's cold as fuck outside and you're bundled up in your warm blanket and half asleep, continuing to sleep is so much easier and more rewarding than a 0.001% step towards your unquantifiable "be healthier" goal. There are a few things that can help here. Make t easier to do the thing you want to. Turn the heating off 10m before you wake up. Put your alarm accross the room so you to get up to turn it off. All the sadistic torture techniques you've likely read and subjected yourself to before. But I emplore you to first understand why you're having such a hard time priorisiting your goal instead of "Gogging" yourself. It could be the case that're your're genuinely overworking yourself. This will not bring you closer to your goals. Perhaps this goal really isn't as important to you as you originally thought? Perhaps your goal is a little ambitious, and you would be more consistent and make more progress by taking smaller steps.
Consistent small steps in the right direction will always destroy strides. Strides will overwork you and destroy your capacity for output. If you overwork yourself, you end up creating a new exciting goals for yourself like "stop being exhausted", "why does my life suck". I'm not saying you cannot push yourself, or that you shouldn't do things you don't feel like in the moment, you absolutley should. But these should be in service of your goals, not in service of proving that you're hard, that you're not lazy. I think there is some merit to pushing yourself and knowing what your limits are and what you're capable of, but it should not be your default gear.
Much as with motivation, you can acutally not be effective at completeing the goal you've set for yourself. You can't build a rocket if you don't know how (or without knowing how sick rockets are and that you might want to build one). This means you defaultly get a new goal if something strikes your interest; learn if this might be something I want to do. Maybe it's bullshit and you don't care. YEET. Perhaps it might be something you find after some reading could be something worthwhile that could improve your life, or that you just enjoy (being fullfilled is a great goal).
Effectivness can also impact how acheiveable a goal might feel. If you currently feel like your work is overwhelming, perhaps you coud reduce your workload, but you could also invest some spare time increaseing your effectivness? You could even do both! Then you get twice as much bang for your buck! You have effectively expanded your...
Capacity is how much X you have to work towards your goal. We all have a capacity for acheiving our goals, be it day to day or at the lifespan level. Everything has a timeline and everything take a certain amount of energy to acheive. We can't do evreything. We each have responsibilities and each persons base capacity can vary WILDLY. For someone with an autoimmune disorder life is just defaulty more difficult. Day to day, some of their capcity is taken away and spent on simply exiting with this disorder. A less severe situation could be that you have an asshole boss. He nitpicks, he complains and he does everything to make your work life harder. He does this 8 hours a day. 1/3 or your time is spent having your capacity reduced that likely in no way contributes to your goals (unless you're a sadist, No judgments here). This is going to impact your ability to do things outside of this. It doesn't mean you're not trying your hardest, because you probably are, just in the wrong places. Instead of putting your head down and pushing through, spending time being kind to yourself and realising that this role is impacting your output capacity and spending some time searching for something better would serve you far better in the long term.
We cannot do everything. You can't be a professional EVERYTHING all at once. It's not possible.
Could you be doing more? Perhaps. But if you do more and you're not sure that the outcomes are things you want this time is likely (not always) wasted.
But what about the kid who doesn't want to clean his room, surely he's just lazy?
I'd argue if he "doesn't want" to tidy up a communal area, he's inconsiderate more than anything. He's cares more about what he's doing than the comfort of the other people in the household. This just comes down to values, and this is just something that comes with maturity.
"Please pick up X, it makes it really hard for others to enjoy this shared space."
__More thinking on this one___
"What about my lazy neighbor, he's one of those pot smoking dole bludgers!"
Unfortunatly this situation is far more depressing than it might seem a first glance. Have you ever considered that this person might not have the confidence or the education to know of, or act on the goals they have for their life. Even if they thought "oh I might like to be a mechanic" they've spent so much of their life being put down and bullied that they genuinley believe that even if they try to get something done, that it's going to fail in some way. So why even try? I'm sure you've experienced this at some point in life. Not feeling like your capable or good enough for a loftier goal. Perhaps they're unaware of what they might be able to do, and unable to look into something. Their capcity it shot, Their effectivness is shot and their motivation is non-existent.
"Living at home, playing games"
No problem with games, if it is genuinely the innate joy of the person doing
Extending the parent suffering at work so they can do whatever they want is immoral
Not knowing what to do, but knowing you want to do something means that it is your responsibiity to set yourself a goal to find something that you like doing and that can bring your innate gift wholy into the world. Sloth at its root is intensitonal ignorace, if you are enlightend, and know deep down that meaningful work will fullfil your soul and you are unsure that you've found it, then failing to "look", to mearly keep your eyes open to the possiblity of improvment is the true sloth. Not trying new things. Not intensionally planning things you enjoy. Not setting goals that you want to acheieve. Getting what life gives you by default when you know it can be better. If you have the ability, you have the responsibility.