CONQUER LAZINESS WITH THESE LIFE CHANGING TIPS
By Joy Onovo
“You cannot spend your life regretting your lack of action. It is better to attempt and fail than not attempting at all. A year from now, you may wish you had started today” – Karen Lamb
Laziness is never a thing to be proud of. Someone is tagged lazy when they have frequent periods of less energy and lack of motivation. Or just a complete refusal to expend energy for a given task.
One of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself is the gift of self-discipline. A disciplined person is never seen as lazy because she gets things done at the right time without procrastination and without aversion.
Anyone can change and become more productive. Once there is a willingness for change, then change toward the right direction is possible.
A lazy person is often avoided by people especially when there is a need for team work. No one wants to be associated with a lazy person especially when team effort is needed. A lazy person will be seen to drag the team back, and no one wants to deal with that.
If you are reading this article, chances are that you are fed up of the effects of being lazy, or you are looking for ways to increase productivity and improve your over-all output in life.
With the increasing advent of distracting activities and technologies that might work against your progress, one may find it quite difficult to stay on course and maximize time.
Before we fully delve into how we can tackle this problem of laziness, we must first uncover the root cause of laziness.
Ask yourself this simple question, “Why am I Lazy?”
It will set you thinking as to what could be the real reason or cause of the laziness.
It is pertinent to be as truthful and honest as you can be.
Discovering the root cause of laziness is the first step to conquer laziness.
Some may say that acceptance is the first step to solving the problem, but I believe that you reading this article and looking for solutions is already acceptance and we need not bother about that.
Procrastination and laziness are said to be two peas in a pod. The presence of one give rise to the other. The causes of laziness can be as a result of lack of self-worth, depression, poor dieting habits, lack of inspiration or poor routine habits.
When you might have uncovered the root cause of laziness, the next step is to nip the cause in the bud.
Just like a symptom to a diseases, laziness is the symptom to an underlying cause.
You need to know what you are up against instead of fighting blindly.
No one is born lazy and no one is born hardworking. We all build and harness our habits during the course of our lives either from life experiences or opportunities.
Just as laziness can come from an underlying cause, it also has implications.
Laziness is not entirely a thing to loathe, it is the implication and resulting outcomes of laziness that we dread.
A lazy person tends to procrastinate a lot and an implication of procrastination is unfinished or un-attempted projects here and there, which can lead to disastrous outcomes.
OVERCOME LAZINESS WITH THESE LIFE TRANSFORMING STRATEGIES
Here are steps or ways you can take to approach or overcome laziness.
1. ELIMINATE THE ROOT CAUSE OF YOUR LAZINESS
We already touched on this a bit in the introduction. You can’t fight laziness when you have not discovered the root cause of it. Find out the cause of either your low energy or your lack of motivation to work.
After you might have uncovered the origin of your laziness, the obvious thing to do is to eliminate and totally annihilate it. For someone whose root cause is depression, it is not as easy as writing on paper. You should seek help and if possible, go for therapy.
If your reason for being lazy is your lack of self-worth, start by learning how to build your self-esteem and self-worth.
You can read this article on how to build your self-worth even if no one thought you how to.
If the root cause is as a result of environmental conditions, you can create an enabling environment or remove yourself from places that does not fuel your motivation or better still start by creating a conducive and favourable environment that will motivate you to get up and work.
2. FIND A MOTIVATION FOR CHANGE
Using my case as an instance, my motivation was to break generational patterns. I knew quite well that anyone who would carve a new path for her family and generations to come need not to be lazy. This desire for change fueled my motivation and I started actively looking for ways to be more productive and overcome laziness.
Find something that can motivate you to get up and work. Always put your motivation somewhere visible to serve as a reminder. For some people, their motivation is their kids, for others, their motivation is freedom to live the live that they want. This is why mood boards are very important. They are called mood boards for a reason because they create the mood for how we will react or act to lead us to our goals.
You can start by creating your own mood boards and put it somewhere accessible like your phone’s wall paper, your desktop screen, or as hard copy on your work space. Just something to motivate you.
3. START WITH THE SMALL TASK
What did they say about a journey of a thousand mile again?… it begins with a step. Some projects may seem like an uphill task when you look at it as a whole.
Carrying out simple small tasks like laying your bed every morning and having a bath has already set you up for productivity for the day. Personally, I found that brushing my teeth and doing my morning stretch immediately I wake up motivates me to go out and conquer my day.
I already feel motivated to smash the other tasks on my to do list when I do these two simple activities.
It is the little things that makes up the big stuff.
If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.
4. FOCUS ON ONE THING AT A TIME
For someone like me who has lacked motivation and focus for a long time, one of my pieces of evidence for laziness were unfinished tasks littered here and there, and if at all finished were badly completed because of over procrastinating till the deadline.
The effects of unfinished task led to no completion of any and I dove down more into the abyss of low motivation. I’m sure this is a relatable case for some of you. This is a common pattern in lazy people. Lazy people often lack focus and can easily be distracted with the slightest diversion.
Having that in mind, you can hold on to a cause like a bull dog and stay on it till it is finished. Make up your mind to finish whatever task or project you set out to do.
Decide to finish this task even before you commence.
Moods and feelings are often one of the culprit of unfinished task. For example, when you are in a mood to start working on a project, you find this burst of motivation and you are on with it. Few hours later, the motivation dies down and you abandon it for the next interest.
This off and on burst of motivation can work to your disadvantage if you do not know how to navigate.
If you are one who acts once there is a burst of energy, and immediately drops the project in search for the next high, the simple solution is to make up your mind before any project, to complete it motivated or unmotivated.
The completion of one project should be the gateway to another. Discipline yourself enough to start something and see that it is completed before you get on to the next one.
Just as you are accountable to a boss, be accountable to yourself. This can be so difficult to do, but with practice comes improvement.
5. DON’T GIVE UP ON YOURSELF
Understand that when you start working towards conquering laziness, you are bound to fail at one point or another.
The greatest mistake you will do when trying to overcome laziness is to give up on your efforts. You will not always get it in one go.
Even disciplined people have moments when they are low on motivation and simply do not want to do any work. The only difference is that they somehow still pick themselves up and continue with the tempo.
This should be how you overcome periods of low motivation. Have in mind that these times will come, and don’t see it as a de-motivation factor, rather work through it, forgive yourself for slacking and find your motivation to keep going.
Keep going friend, you’ve got this!
Any one can train themselves to be disciplined. Just as you train a muscle to bulk up, so can you train your self-discipline muscle and starve the laziness muscle.
I hope these points were helpful.
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