Ways to Fight and Overcome Laziness
The following guide to fight laziness shows you ways to overcome laziness effective and gives you important tips that help you thereby. Well, everyone of us knows this feeling: we have a lot of work to do but a momentary feeling of laziness, or even a habitual state of pure laziness prevents us from getting motivated to perform our tasks. We do not feel energized and just don´t want to do particular activities, either because we lack the inspiration or are not encouraged enough to start working. However, laziness hinders us to do our work, but what is even worse: laziness reduces our whole life-experience, as we pursue by far less hobbies and spare time activities than we would, if we weren´t lazy. Let´s not allow laziness to reduce the quality of our lives!
It is time to get energized again and start to fight laziness, dilatoriness, inertia and inactivity until we are able to overcome laziness. Here is the good news: laziness can be defeated, if we make some changes in our mindsets towards laziness. Laziness can occur in different ways and has a lot of different (evil) facets. Here are some forms of laziness and ways to overcome them:
1. Lack of willpower:
One of the most common types of laziness is simply caused by a lack of willpower. Even though we know exactly how important a specific task for us can be, we still don´t have the willpower to get started. This type of laziness is experienced by students (“too lazy to study, even though I know this exam is important”), people that want to lose weight and many more.
How to overcome the “lack of willpower” laziness?
The secret to overcome this type of laziness is to get started, plain and simple. Start performing the tasks you have to do and get the job done that needs to be done. Something that helps you thereby is to find an “easy introduction” into the task by starting with some simple work that helps you to get started. Trust me, I´m speaking out of my own experience when I say that it is often ten times harder to get started than actually getting the job done. Once you were able to overcome this barrier you will notice that the task wasn´t the problem, but your lack of willpower that made you become lazy.
2. Lack of motivation:
Another very common type of laziness is caused by a lack of motivation to get things done and/or achieve something. A lack of motivation can have several reasons, such as not having proper goals and aims, having no purpose in life or when people do not know how to get motivated effectively.
How to fight laziness that is caused by a lack of motivation?
Get motivated! Increase your motivation! The most effective way to fight a lack of motivation is by knowing some excellent motivation techniques that help you to increase your motivation and to keep it on a high level. I highly recommend you to read the following articles, that provide you some excellent motivation methods that are easy to integrate into your life (such as music) and show you some really advanced techniques that will boost your motivation:
- Ultimate Motivation Techniques
- The secret to peak motivation
3. Mindsets and attitudes:
In our life we develop all kinds of different mindsets and attitudes towards our life and towards laziness. Some people associate laziness with failure whereas others associate laziness with pure pleasure and as a protective mechanism to avoid additional work or fears. Sigmund Freud argued that laziness is a proper way for human beings to find pleasure, as they take pleasure from not doing anything (for further references see: Beyond the pleasure principle). The so calledintuitive laziness is a protective mechanism that gets applied by people that were at some point in their life too lazy to perform a task, which ultimately turned out to be unnecessary. These people have build the (negative) attitude that laziness can help them to save time, which might work in some cases but is counterproductive in the long term. The second way laziness is used as a protective mechanism is when it comes to fear, such as the fear to fail, the fear of being responsible, etc.
How to fight negative attitudes that cause laziness?
The very first step to fight laziness that was caused by negative mindsets is to realize that a specific attitude or mindset is wrong or non-helpful for you. You need to realize that procrastinating work is not the right solution to avoid unnecessary tasks as well as the fact that you cannot run away from your fears.
4. Procrastination:
Procrastination can be seen as a form of laziness as well, as postponing tasks has a lot to do with the laziness to actually do something. People postpone things for several reasons, one of them is laziness. Procrastination and laziness have in common that different excuses prevent us from starting to do what we need to do or what we would like to do.
How to fight procrastination?
First off, the habit of procrastinating or postponing things reduces our chances of accomplishment. Plain spoken: it takes our chance to achieve whatever we desire to reach. In order to overcome procrastination it is very helpful to split tasks, which look at first glance impossible or very difficult, into sub tasks that you can perform one after the other and that help you to get started.
These were four of the most common causes for laziness and ways to overcome these sorts of laziness. In the following you will find some more detailed tips to fight laziness:
How to overcome laziness?
· Simple things first: As I already mentioned it is important to get started with the task you want to perform in order to fight laziness effective. An effective trick that helps you doing so is to start with the simple things first that will slowly but surely break your inner resistance.
· Step-by-step: Breaking down tasks into small steps helps us to reduce the pressure of deadlines and will keep us motivated to perform these tasks one after the other in a relaxed way. Once you have completed one sub task you can tell yourself that you´re on a roll and that you will soon have finished the next sub tasks as well.
· Make a to-do-list: Sometimes we find ourselves in chaotic situations with a pile of work where we have lost track of all the work that needs to be done. A to-do-list can help us in these situations to regain the overview, but even more important: it allows us to realize that it often looks like more work than it actually is. When you create your to-do-list make sure to arrange the tasks from the easiest one to the more difficult one, which helps you to start with the simple things first.
· Visualize the benefits of a task/activity: Every time I feel lazy or lack motivation to perform a task I visualize for some seconds how it would feel to just start the work that needs to be done in a very enthusiastic way. I visualize the benefits that I could receive when I have accomplished a given task, which helps me to become energized and motivated again. Furthermore, it helps to beat the inner resistance that was hindering me to get involved with my tasks.
· Remove distractions: I noticed that distractions were often the source for my laziness and the sole reason I became lazy from one moment to the other. It made me realize that I was attracted by the distractions (TV, internet, etc.) as my primary task that I should have done seemed boring. Whatever it is that distracts you (and I´m sure you know exactly what is distracting you when you have to study, work or need to get things done) remove it! Make sure that once you have started with one of your tasks you will not get distracted from it by any means. All these distractions might seem tempting but they make it more difficult for you to get back to your work.
· Reward yourself: Every time you managed to overcome laziness and managed to successfully accomplish a task you should reward yourself, as this will help you to associate positive feelings about making efforts to get things done. Just make sure to adapt the reward to the efforts you made (small efforts & small tasks = little reward and vice versa).
Feel free to leave an response what helps YOU to overcome laziness!
Your view, comments and thanks are most welcomed.
- By Bhavin Pathak
CAclubindia
