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Most of us spend the majority of our days feeling tired, overwhelmed, and disappointed in ourselves, certain we’ve come up short.
I learned at an early age to tie my self-worth to how productive I was.
When those kids were still young, they received some support, and some sympathy. But the longer they struggled, the less patience and compassion they got. Eventually people stopped talking about those students’ needs or limitations. Instead, the conversation became about how lazy they were. Once someone was deemed lazy, they were much likelier to get yelled at than they were to be helped.
Then there were dozens and dozens of my students, each of whom had been told at some point in school that they weren’t doing enough to get ahead—that they were “lazy,” and therefore not deserving of happiness or success.
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.
When we feel unmotivated, directionless, or “lazy,” it’s because our bodies and minds are screaming for some peace and quiet.
It’s not evil to have limitations and to need breaks. Feeling tired or unmotivated is not a threat to our self-worth.
The word “lazy” is almost always used with a tone of moral judgment and condemnation. When we call someone “lazy,” we don’t simply mean they lack energy; we’re implying that there’s something terribly wrong or lacking with them, that they deserve all the bad things that come their way as a result.
The people we’ve been taught to judge for “not trying hard enough” are almost invariably the people fighting valiantly against the greatest number of unseen barriers and challenges.
Most of us tend to hold ourselves to ridiculously high standards. We feel that we should be doing more, resting less often, and having fewer needs. We think our personal challenges—such as depression, childcare needs, anxiety, trauma, lower back pain, or simply being human—aren’t good enough excuses for having limits and being tired.
We have all been lied to about laziness. Our culture has us convinced that success requires nothing more than willpower, that pushing ourselves to the point of collapse is morally superior to taking it easy. We’ve been taught that any limitation is a sign of laziness, and therefore undeserving of love or comfort. This is the Laziness Lie, and it’s all around us, making us judgmental, stressed, and overextended, all while convincing us that we’re actually doing too little.
The Laziness Lie is a belief system that says hard work is morally superior to relaxation, that people who aren’t productive have less innate value than productive people.
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.
When a TV show depicts a disabled person somehow “overcoming” their disability through sheer willpower rather than by receiving the accommodations they deserve, the Laziness Lie grows a bit stronger.
When we talk to children and teenagers about the future, we ask them what they want to do—in other words, what kind of value they want to contribute to society and to an employer.
As adults, we define people by their jobs—he’s an actor, she’s a mortician—categorizing them based on the labor they provide to others.
When we don’t have work to do, it can feel like we don’t have a reason to live.
Our economic system and culture have taught us that having needs makes us weak, and that limits are negotiable. We learn to neglect ourselves and see health as a resource we can trade for money or accomplishments.
The Laziness Lie tells us that we’re all at risk of becoming slothful and unaccomplished, and that every sign of weakness is suspect.
The Laziness Lie encourages us to aspire to an impossible level of productivity. It sets us up to expect full, eight-hour workdays of unbroken focus, followed by evenings filled with exercise, Instagram-worthy home-cooked meals, and admirable side projects.
you win a massive award or hit some other life-changing milestone, the Laziness Lie will smile politely and say, “That’s very nice. But what do you plan to do next?”
we’re also discouraged from resting on our laurels when we do accomplish something great. No level of success grants a person the social permission to stop and catch their breath. We’re forever left wondering What’s next? What else?
The word “lazy” first appeared in English around 1540; even back then, it was used in a judgmental way to mean someone who disliked work or effort.12 Many etymologists believe it came from either the Middle Low German lasich, which meant “feeble” or “weak,”13 or from the Old English lesu, which meant “false” or “evil.”14 These two origins illustrate the odd doublespeak at work whenever we call someone lazy. When we say someone is lazy, we’re saying they’re incapable of completing a task due to (physical or mental) weakness, but we’re also claiming that their lack of ability somehow makes them
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These exploited groups were also taught that working hard without complaint was virtuous, and that desiring free time was morally suspect.
The wealthy and highly educated began to claim that poor whites also couldn’t be trusted with “idle” time. In fact, too many breaks could make a person antisocial.25 Propaganda from that time often claimed that if the working poor weren’t kept busy, they would resort to crime and drug use, and society would run amok.
In the 1950s and beyond, Evangelical preachers promoted a similar idea with the Prosperity Doctrine, which claimed that if a person devoted their life to serving Jesus, they would be rewarded with bountiful job opportunities, wealth, and success.28
one of the most prevalent legends in American culture became the tale of the single-minded, hardworking man who had created his own success and changed society through sheer force of will.29
Much like the parents I’ve seen discouraging their children from giving money to homeless people, many Americans believe that generosity, compassion, and mutual aid is “wasted” on the lazy.
This teaches viewers that our skills and talents don’t really belong to us; they exist to be used. If we don’t gladly give our time, our talents, and even our lives to others, we aren’t heroic or good.
It’s easy for a teacher to mistake exhaustion for apathy or lack of motivation,
Digital technology and social media fill our spare time with e-mails from coworkers, stressful notifications about appointments we’ve forgotten, and guilt-ridden messages about what our bodies, homes, and lives ought to look like. Digital work tools have made it possible for many of us to work from home, but rather than making our lives easier, this has created the pressure to be constantly available to our employers. We get our news from phone apps and social media sites rather than printed papers, making it harder than ever to get away from upsetting images and distressing information. Even
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They’ll admit to me that yes, of course other people who are judged for being “lazy” are actually very hardworking. And yes, a lot of the time seemingly nonproductive people are dealing with tons of legitimate barriers and challenges—but, they insist to me, they’re nothing like those people. They’re just lazy because there’s something deeply wrong with them. They’re somehow lazier and more awful than anyone in the world.
A professional world like Michael’s creates an arms race of busyness, with each person vying for a limited number of opportunities and social media eyeballs. Each artist has to snatch up as many jobs as they can get, because they have no way of knowing what the future will hold. At the same time, they have to build a public reputation for themselves as relevant and cool. Since every person is broadcasting an image of themselves as successful, dedicated, and popular, it can be hard to keep track of where you fall in the hierarchy. And because of all this, it’s dangerously easy to feel like no
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The Laziness Lie has tried to convince us that our desires for rest and relaxation make us terrible people. It’s made us believe that having no motivation is shameful and must be avoided at all costs. In reality, our feelings of tiredness and idleness can help save us by signaling to us that we’re desperately in need of some downtime.
“Wasting time” is a basic human need. Once we accept that, we can stop fearing our inner “laziness” and begin to build healthy, happy, well-balanced lives.
three types of people who tend to get pigeonholed as “lazy” in our society: depressed people, procrastinators, and apathetic people who don’t see the point in caring about work or school.
Because depression doesn’t harm the body in a visible, obvious way, many people fail to understand why a depressed person lacks the energy to get things done.
The first thing to realize is that fighting depression is a full-time job. Depressed people sleep a lot because their brains get tired from fighting negative thoughts and feelings all day.6 Depressed people also have lower quality of sleep, meaning they get less energy from eight hours of rest than a nondepressed person does. When you’re severely depressed—particularly if you’re suicidal—sleep can be the only escape from misery you have. In a very real way, the apparent “laziness” of depressed people is a sign that their bodies and minds are protecting them and working to help them heal.
It’s hard to take a large job and break it down into small steps when your brain is struggling to function. A person’s memory gets worse when they experience depression, as does their ability to pay attention and filter information.
When a person procrastinates, it’s typically because they’re paralyzed in some way: by anxiety, by confusion about how to get started on a big, complicated project, or both.
Procrastinators often get caught in a cycle of perfectionism, anxiety, distraction, and failure. Because they care a great deal about doing well, they hold themselves to an impossibly high standard. They want to do “perfect” work, but their early attempts are far from perfect, so they get discouraged and anxious. As time passes and the deadline approaches, they become even more nervous and concerned about failure.
The good news is that it’s possible for a chronic procrastinator to break out of that cycle. With help and encouragement, a procrastinator can be taught to divide large responsibilities into small microtasks, each with their own very short-term deadlines. Something as big and vague as “write a ten-page paper” can be paralyzing, but “write two paragraphs per day” can be manageable. This, combined with treatment for their anxiety, can help procrastinators become far more productive, reliable, and confident in their abilities.12
So, when I see that somebody doesn’t care about a particular goal—whether it’s becoming financially independent, finishing a degree, or even voting—I find myself wondering, Why does this activity seem pointless to them?
Sometimes people become apathetic because of depression or trauma.13 Other times, people turn to apathy after repeatedly being disenfranchised. Psychologists call this “learned helplessness,” and we see it in victims of abuse, people who have been incarcerated, and families that have experienced generations of poverty and racism.14 When you lose power over your own life, you don’t have much reason to stay energized and motivated.15 So, you protect yourself emotionally by checking out and giving up.
Feelings of laziness are often a sign that someone hasn’t been managing the demands of their day-to-day life in an optimal way.
Yet for Leo and for many other people with ADHD, the exact opposite is the case. It’s very common for people with ADHD to overcommit to a variety of things they’re passionate about, and then run quickly and dramatically out of steam because they haven’t realistically budgeted their time.
The seemingly “bad” behaviors we tend to judge as laziness are really powerful signals that something in our lives needs to change.
Moments of insight and creativity don’t come by trying to force them—they require a period of mental inactivity.
With a less stress-addled, run-down mind, she was able to come up with a game plan for how to advocate for herself better and to fix several key sources of dysfunction in her work.
With a rejuvenated, relaxed mind, we can see new solutions to old problems and find new reserves of strength we didn’t know we had.
