Laziness Does Not Exist

by Devon Price

The Laziness Lie is a deep-seated, culturally held belief system that leads many of us to believe the following: Deep down I’m lazy and worthless. I must work incredibly hard, all the time, to overcome my inner laziness. My worth is earned through my productivity. Work is the center of life. Anyone who isn’t accomplished and driven is immoral.

The Laziness Lie has three main tenets. They are: Your worth is your productivity. You cannot trust your own feelings and limits. There is always more you could be doing.

This research became the basis of Pennebaker’s landmark book Writing to Heal: A Guided Journal for Recovering from Trauma & Emotional Upheaval and what he called the “expressive writing” method. Expressive

Maslach also found that avoiding burnout wasn’t just about working less. It had to do with a person’s outlook, and whether their organization rewarded their efforts. Perfectionists were particularly susceptible to burnout, for example, as were people who set unrealistically high goals for themselves. Workplaces where the goals were vague and projects were never completed tended to have more burned-out workers.54 In other words, when work seems like an endless, pointless slog, and workers have no sense of being recognized for all that they do, burnout is far more common.

On the Wild Mind Collective site, she’s shared a series of questions that she uses to determine whether her life is on the right track.65 When am I most in my element? What doesn’t bring me alive? What feels dreadful? What do I find inexhaustibly fascinating? When have I been most happy? Who are the people I want to work with? What do I need to be physically well?

Advocate for Your Autonomy Focus on Quality, Not Hours Spent at Work Break the Work-Life Interference Loop

The Laziness Lie tries to tell us that we must earn our right to be loved, or to even have a place in society, by putting our noses to the grindstone and doing a ton of hard work. The Lie also implies that our intuition cannot be trusted; our cravings for rest must be ignored, our urges for pleasure, tenderness, and love must be written off as signs of weakness. Tobias

In these ways, even the basic act of staying connected with other people has become a craved, achievement-obsessed process. People are constantly vying for attention, likes, followers, and clout. It saps the joy out of almost everything.

Savoring is the process of deeply and presently enjoying a positive experience.6 It occurs at three time points: first, when anticipating an upcoming an event with excitement and optimism; then, when fully appreciating the positive moment as it’s happening; and finally, when looking back on the experience with a sense of reverence or gratitude after it’s over.

This is what our cultural obsession with achievement-hunting has done to us. Even something that ought to be pleasurable, like taking a vacation or winning an award, becomes a new obligation to measure, document, and share with the world via social media.