I am Always Late

This time, my friends, let’s look closer at the main problem of the majority of us, Her Majesty Laziness. Nowadays, there are quite a lot of various techniques and strategies to assist people in fighting against laziness. They are available online or in a specialized literature. Once upon a time, while surfing on the Internet, I came across one interesting and very easy tactic to overcome my laziness. This technique really worked for me, and the most important fact is: it actually does not require any special state of mind, excessive enthusiasm or will power, any special preparation or knowledge. The tool I want you to try is something that can be easily done even by the laziest person on earth.

However, let me begin with talking about several myths connected with our laziness. To be proper, two of the myths, which do not allow many people understand better their laziness and start their battle against it. Here we go: it is supposed that laziness is an ineradicable personal trait. This is not true, because laziness is actually a special behavioral pattern, a habit, which certainly can be changed. Another myth is connected with the definition of laziness. We usually think that “Laziness is a condition when I am not doing anything“. This is so very wrong, because when we are lazing, we can be eating, watching a TV, listening to music, talking on the phone, playing a PC game, reading books, etc. etc. All of those are actions, and real laziness is the condition, when those activities start taking 6-12 hours a day and affecting our life. Therefore, laziness means being involved in quite useless activities (to some extent) for very long time.

Now, let’s get closer to the point. The tactic we are going to test has a certain mission: in order to beat laziness we can try not doing anything. Let’s suppose that you have something urgent or important to do, but you feel lazy to do that. It’s ok. First of all, let’s apply the strategy we were talking about before, and make a plan. You should schedule your activity, so take a piece of paper and write down on it, when you are going to start doing the task and for how long you are going to be busy with it. For example, “Today from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.” or “Tomorrow from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.” The most probably, when the mentioned time has come, you start feeling lazy again. What actually do you need to do to fight with it?

Ok: when the scheduled time came, give up doing what you were doing before, get up from your place and stand in the middle of the room (standing is better than sitting or laying down, I hope you understand why!). Do not do anything and just go with the flow of your thoughts, until you start feeling like you are ready to start doing the task you planned to do. Not doing anything and just standing still is quite unpleasant and hard, so it will eventually come to your mind that you need to start doing your task. So, take your time for choosing from two alternatives: the thing you need to do, or doing nothing, From my own experience, I can tell you that the longest it took me to stand and wait for the inspiration to come, was 5 minutes. Hint: do not think about how complicated and long the task can be, just think about doing the first step. It’s like pressing “Start” button on your computer: find the way to begin, and it will be easier to proceed.

You can apply the same tactic in the situation, when you start feeling lazy in the middle of doing you task or assignment. Go back to the room and stand still doing nothing for a while. Believe me, very soon you will feel like being back to your task. This technique is applicable for any sort of tasks or activities, in any situation. And it’s advantage is: there is no need in making extra efforts or persuading yourself that you need to start working on something. Moreover, do not try to control your thoughts and just go with the flow. Most probably, inspiration and motivation will come soon. Good luck!

1. When you need to do something that is really important, you usually try to escape from doing that by finding something else to do that is not less important. Moreover, you start truly believing that new tasks are really more topical than the one you don’t want to do. If this situation is typical for you, you have to start working on increasing your motivation and boosting your self-control.

2. Our laziness likes the words “here” and “now”. Chronic lazy people rarely think about tomorrow and about their future, they mostly live in the present and care only about today. Also, they always give promises to themselves to start a new life, to do this and that, etc. etc… But tomorrow everything repeats again and again. If you can not do anything about your laziness, I can offer you, for example, to lay a bet with someone that you can do something special, something great and newsworthy. Maybe, this trick will open new horizons for you….

3. Do you know that our laziness needs some creephole or crawlway to sneak in on you? It can not come up at any time and any place. For example, if you are hungry for two days, you laziness will not stop you from looking for a meal. Or, if you have an exam tomorrow, you will most probably feel anxious and look through some textbooks or notes. Therefore, in order to win the fight against laziness, you need to set up very ambitious goals and give your laziness no chances to find that crawlway to approach you.

4. Many specialists tend to suppose that our laziness is an acquired individual trait that depends on the way our parents educate and bring us up.  However, if you were not lucky with proper education and training in your childhood, you can open your way to changing yourself. It is difficult, but if you really want to get better and achieve more success in your life, you must do everything possible and learn to struggle against the stream of laziness.

5. Always remember that laziness is very infectious. If you join a group or a company where everybody is lazy, there is no doubt that soon you will get buried in sloth, too. Try to do everything possible to avoid such groups and never model your conduct on lazy people.

6. If you are not an irresponsible teenager anymore, but your obscene laziness still overrules you, so you mostly do what you want and not what you need to do, you must have unconscious unpleasant impulses in your mind: hidden feelings of guilt and remorse. And, whether you want this or not, there is a certain war of motifs in your mind that results in growing feeling of uncertainty, discontent or unfulfilled opportunities. Do not let this all hang out, cos’ these things can cause certain psychological problems and traumas…