Laziness Does Not Exist

by Devon Price

The goal of a phishing scam is to get a distracted person to quickly send their log-in info to someone pretending to be their boss or a representative from their bank without a second thought.22 Often, the messages sent by scammers are designed to make the recipients panic, telling them that they’ve been hacked or that their bank account was compromised, and therefore they must e-mail their password to the phisher ASAP. Research shows that when people are distracted or overloaded, they’re less likely to notice that someone is lying to them and worse at evaluating the quality or trustworthiness of information thrown their way.

Exposure to the wrong type of information can actually cause a trauma response.

The Internet, sadly, is rife with opportunities for secondary trauma.

Sadblock filters and hides news articles about triggering or disturbing

All of these tools can easily be toggled on and off, so you can get a brief update on a challenging topic and then hide posts for the rest of the day.

Sometimes the source of the overload isn’t a word or a phrase, it’s a person. I had to “unfollow” Noah for a while because he was posting too many news articles. I’ve also blocked friends who get into constant online arguments, including people I agree with on most issues.

People often worry that blocking a friend or acquaintance is “rude,” the equivalent of giving them the silent treatment in real life.

“I recommend to people that if you have something that really touches you, some issue that really matters to you—maybe it’s climate change, maybe it’s domestic violence—whatever it is, you focus on the one or two things that really touch you, and then get involved with addressing those things.”

See as a communist I kind of end up involved in everything

If a news article has no comment section, the average person will only ever visit that article one time to read it. However, when an article has a comment section below it, the same people may return to that page dozens of times, checking for new comments, replying to people, and maybe even getting swept up in an hours-long Internet fight.

Every time someone returns to the article to leave a new comment, they’re giving the site a new page view. More page views means higher advertising revenue. As a result, most sites have a vested interest in stirring up controversy with outlandish “clickbait” headlines, getting tons of outraged comments

Most people report that they leave comments in order to express how they’re feeling, not to learn from ot...

Active reading is the exact opposite of the frantic doomscrolling so many of us do online. Instead of trying to take in as much information as quickly as you can, you work to slowly and intentionally break down small passages. This increases your odds of meaningfully processing what you’ve read.

Visualize what the text is describing.

Clarify confusing passages and unfamiliar terms.

Question the author’s assumptions and point of view.

Predict what will come next.

Connect the writing to things you already know.

Evaluate the qualities of the writing.

Too much online arguing can actually make a person less willing to open up to someone they disagree with, because it gives them an overly pessimistic view of how those conversations will go.

Your Relationships Should Not Leave You Exhausted

Grace complains about her invasive and undermining mother, Sylvia, pretty much constantly.

When Grace was excited to become second violin in her city’s community orchestra, Sylvia asked when she was going to become first chair.

Sylvia sends Grace tons of unasked-for gifts in the mail,

Sylvia expects constant praise and affirmation of her goodness as a mother,

She’ll bring up a handful of good things she did, like taking the family to Disneyland, and ask me, Wasn’t that a good time? Wasn’t I a good mom to you and your siblings? And if I don’t bend over backward trying to praise her, she’ll get chilly with me or say something totally cruel.”

Her mother and her thirteen-year-old sister appeared unannounced on her doorstep the morning of Grace’s first day of work, saying they’d come to “surprise” her.

She can see I’m not grateful. And so she’s already starting to get pissed.”

Mom decided I was being ungrateful, so she made the whole visit miserable. I had to spend the next, like, three months apologizing to her.” As she’s telling me this story, Grace gets a text from her mom. She shows me the screen and sighs, rolling her eyes.

I watch Grace pace the sidewalk, reassuring her mom that yes, she will be coming home to visit for Thanksgiving, and yes, she really is looking forward to it. She looks visibly pained.

We get so good at ignoring our needs that we can’t even recognize when a relationship is damaging.

Emotional loneliness is so distressing that a child who experiences it will do whatever is necessary to make some kind of connection.… These children may learn to put other people’s needs first as the price of admission to a relationship.

“Once, I told them I had a work conference, when really Stephanie and I went camping.

Her therapist suggested she try disappointing a loved one at least once per week—so

“Some people disappeared on me the second I stopped giving them free rides and going out of my way to be there for them,”

couldn’t pick him up every time he wanted to hang out, and he immediately started taking Lyfts to my house. Just like it was nothing.

A month passed. The counter had gotten so dirty that it was unusable. Tom started prepping his meals on the coffee table in the living room instead.

many women spend all day keeping a running mental log of household responsibilities that need to get done, while the men who live with them seem to be completely unaware that there even is a list that’s forever growing and must be dealt with.

Transgender women, for example, often feel an even more intense pressure to perform domestic labor than cisgender women do. Rebekah explains it this way: If a cisgender woman decides to fight the power and say, Hey, I’m not doing all the household chores anymore, it’s a feminist act.

people go, Oh, you’re so entitled and lazy—you’re acting like a man.

even the smallest expression of displeasure can get them labeled angry or rude.

People of color are also expected to head diversity initiatives, run inclusion committees, and spend time educating their white coworkers about racial bias, typically with no additional compensation.

“I ask them to keep very careful track of how they spend their time, at least for a couple of weeks,” she says, “even if it’s just thirty seconds here, a minute there, so they can see how it all adds up.”

her most exhausted, stressed-out clients spend hours every day doing chores, answering nonurgent messages, updating group calendars, and generally taking care of the needs of other people.

She’ll sit on the patio and read a magazine while he takes twice as long to scrub the bathroom as it would take her. Her inaction might look downright “lazy” to a stranger, but she’s proud of having finally learned to let go a bit.

Every generation of parents finds something new to feel bad about.

From about 1920 until the middle of the twentieth century, psychologists such as John B. Watson warned parents not to cuddle or kiss their children and to limit physical contact to a handshake or a pat on the head.

“By the time you have your second kid, you realize you’ve screwed up a thousand times, and you’re gonna screw up again,” he says. “And each time it happens, it terrifies you less. The world doesn’t end.”

According to developmental psychology, the good-enough parent provides their child with love, shelter, and adequate food; they make mistakes, but nothing that causes their children significant trauma.17 They don’t obsess over society’s ideas of what a parent “should” be doing; instead, they find a balance between their own needs and the unique traits and passions of their child.

“We eat a lot of microwaved chicken tenders in this house, and sometimes I’ll put the kids to bed early without a bath,” he says, laughing. “My mother-in-law would hate to hear that. But my kids are happy, healthy little goblins,

“I used to think spanking was good discipline,” she tells me. “That’s how I was raised. But then I learned all about the research that it’s just bad, it just doesn’t work. My daughter’s twelve now, and we’ve talked about it. I told her, Here’s why I used to think that was okay, and here’s why I stopped.”