How To Not Be Lazy
It can often feel like a sin when you’re doing the things you really enjoy doing. For me I typically most feel this way when playing video games, though I do get a lot of enjoyment (and writing ideas!) from them. It’s easy to think you’re not doing enough, but before you think that I’d suggest taking a hard, quantifiable look at how you use your time before you deem yourself as lazy.
One of my favorite ways to track how I use my time on the computer is RescueTime. Every week it sends me a chart to my inbox showing me how well I used my time.
You may feel like you’re lazy because you’re not getting things done that are most important to you. The way you do that is by doing the most important things first everyday. It sounds so simple, but it’s incredibly powerful and took me a long time to get my head around. You lose energy and willpower as the day progresses and your most important activities are shunted to the backseat if you don’t attack them early.
You may have a self-discipline problem. There are ways of increasing your self-discipline via training your willpower. It is a common belief that willpower is fixed, but it has been shown that it can be trained and improved like any other muscle. Check out the The Willpower Instinct for a deeper analysis on the subject. The way you grow your willpower is overcoming it with brute mental force. Don’t want to workout? Do it anyway. Want to eat that luscious donut sitting by the coffee station? Deny yourself the pleasure of having it. That’s the long and short of how to improve your willpower.
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The other reason you may feel lazy is that you’re comparing yourself to hyper achievers. This is often my problem. I look at someone like Gary Vaynerchuk or Elon Musk and feel like a lazy bastard. These guys work 18-20 hours a day. With more time you can get more done, but I remind myself there is a biological cost to operating like this. Eventually biology catches up with you via disease.
I believe that a lack of direction, motivation and an empty schedule can make you feel lazy. If the vast majority of your time is spent on sleep and leisure activities, motivation or the lack of what you consider a worthy pursuit could be your problem. Find a hobby, try something new, broaden your horizons outside of your regular job. I personally find life far more satisfying while trying to hone the edge of multiple subjects simultaneously. Outside of regular full time job I have been focusing on writing novels, option trading, reading, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I know reading looks odd on there, but I do approach it like a job and read at least 30 minutes a day every day.
Be careful who you associate with at work. Most people don’t love their work and that’s fine. Avoid people at the office who spend the day complaining and spreading negativity. That shit is infectious. Even if the work you do is in itself not implicitly fulfilling, learn to like the process for its own sake is a skill that is tough to develop.
Change your habits. If the first thing you do when you get home from work is drop your bags and fire up Netflix, you’re setting yourself up for failure from the beginning. Also if you check email or facebook/twitter/instagram as your first item everyday your wasting your best energy on shit that doesn’t matter.
Social media does not matter. Email can wait. Do something productive first, then “reward” yourself with the dopamine hit of checking facebook and email.
You need to know what you’re going to do with your time. You must have a plan for what you will do with your time. As good ole Ben Franklin says:
“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”
Have a rough idea of what you want to accomplish for that day outside of work. I recommend no more than 2-3 items. E.g. Exercise, tweak facebook ads, watch video on book marketing. The cool thing is that once you’ve completed those “big” items you wanted to get done that day, the rest of the day is gravy. You’ll also feel good about your day when you lay down to rest, knowing you’re moving forward toward your big goals. The other cool thing I’ve found from having a plan as simple is this is that you’ll fly through those few items because you know exactly what you need to do. From anecdotal experience, I see a lot of people floundering around without a clear direction of what they need to get done.
You need specific tasks. For example, let’s say one day you think “The bathroom is gross, it should be cleaned.” Change that to: “Tomorrow after I get home from work I will scrub the toilet, bathroom mirror, and bleach the tub.” Then write it down for your plan the following day and follow the plan.
I believe that lethargy and lack of productivity are simply bad habits that have been carved in your daily routine over time. Habits can change and you just need to create new ones, then it requires very little effort to continue.
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