9 Ways to Overcome Laziness
We can all fall into the trap of laziness, here’s how to get out.
Sometimes we want to do things, like lose weight or open a business, but we can’t bring ourselves to start and stay consistent. That’s what I’d call laziness.
Laziness is like a mental divide between your wants for your future and your wants for today. Your wants for today usually come out on top, and those wants typically aren’t productive.
Here are 9 ways you can crawl out of the laziness pit.
The 9 Ways
1. Get inspiration
We may want to do something, but we’re unsure where to focus our energy. It’s that frustrated feeling you get at the end of the day when you know time has been wasted. If that’s the case, get some inspiration. Read a book, watch a movie, or go outdoors. But don’t mindlessly wonder. Digest everything you see and hear and actively look for a path you’d want to go down.
2. Set goals
Once you have an idea of how you want to spend your time and where you want to go, you must set checkpoints towards your final destination. Let’s use fat loss as an example. Losing 20kg is your final goal, but to get there, you should set smaller goals. Those might look like going to the gym thrice per week or meal-prepping using lean foods. Setting goals is like climbing to a high point to assess the land ahead and creating a route to navigate through the undergrowth.
3. Create a routine
We’re creatures of habit. We like repetition and patterns, that’s the way we’re wired. Unfortunately, it’s easier for that hardwiring to work against us rather than for us. Bad habits are easy to pick up whilst good habits require effort. That isn’t going to change, but you can make the process easier by maintaining a routine. A routine is simply a list of habits. By keeping on top of a routine, you take control of all your daily habits, good and bad. Think of a routine as a rope that’ll pull you out of the pit of laziness.
4. Time management
Everyone who will ever live will likely utter the phrase “I don’t have time”. They might genuinely mean it, but when you dig a little deeper, you find that they sit in front of a TV for 3 hours a day. In reality, it feels like you don’t have time, but the real reason is bad time management, and that’s where a solid routine can help. A routine lets you take control of your time so that it doesn’t feel like time is running away from you. By managing time through a routine you eliminate the “I don’t have time” excuse, giving you one less reason to succumb to laziness.
5. Start small
You can’t climb Mount Everest straight after being a couch potato. You’d start by walking through a park, then going on hikes, and slowly building your way up to tackle the greatest mountain on earth. The same goes for any other aspiration you have. If you want to be less lazy, start by doing the small things. Like taking the rubbish out or doing the dishes. Starting on that path will better equip you with the mental tools you’ll require to tackle the bigger challenges that will come your way.
6. Find your motivation
Some of us find being consistent easy, it’s the start that gets us procrastinating. That’s where motivation can help. Motivation is indeed short-lived and you can’t rely on it in the long run, but it has a purpose. Think of a combustion engine. It needs a spark to get started and then it has no trouble running on its own. That’s what motivation is for us, a mental spark to get our engines running. If forcing yourself to start doesn’t work, maybe you just need to find that one spark that’ll change your life for good.
7. Eliminate distractions
We live in a world full of distractions. TV shows, social media, and games. Whilst some find consuming those beneficial, others, like me, find that they consume us. It makes sense too, why go to the gym or pick up your homework when watching TV feels better and costs (in terms of effort) much less? Eliminating, or at least limiting, those distractions will give you fewer excuses and more reasons to start.
8. Keep a journal
Days, weeks, and months seem to fly by and it can get difficult to keep track of what we’ve done. That’s where journaling prevails. If you had a good day, right down what happened and why. If you had a bad day, right down what happened and why. You can then look back and learn from past experiences. You effectively become your own teacher.
9. Visualise your future self
Who do you want to be? What do they look like? How do they behave? Where are they in the world? Asking yourself those questions helps you pinpoint exactly what changes are to be made in your life. By beginning to act as the person you wish to become, you inevitably become that person. It’s like your future self pulling you out of the hole your past self put you in.
Takeaway
Laziness is all-encompassing, overcoming it requires the same level of grandness. You have to attack laziness from multiple directions at the same time. You shouldn’t only employ one tip from the list above, but multiple. It’s an ongoing battle, the more tools you master, the better the outcome.
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