Many times, what makes it difficult for us to move forward is not so much a lack of time, resources or skills, but just laziness. Those moments in which we know that there are certain responsibilities that we must attend to and that we end up leaving for later are perfect examples of the extent to which we are capable of self-sabotage.
We know that we must do something, we also know that not doing it will have negative consequences, and yet we choose the second option. What happened?
There are certain projects in which everything is a matter of getting started. Unfortunately, the discomfort of getting into it during the first moments can become such an unpleasant idea that we never decide to really get down to work. In these cases, it is common for us to look for all kinds of excuses in order not to recognize where the real problem is: laziness.
Next we will review a series of tips to be clear about how to stop being lazy and attend once and for all to those projects and responsibilities that require our work. To do this, we will modify both our objective habits and our belief systems.
1. Sleep well
This is a fundamental step. No one can put effort into projects that are seen as an “extra” job. if the quality of your sleep has been poor or if you have not gotten enough sleep. In these cases, the normal thing is to do the minimum to get rid of the obligations that must be attended to immediately, and then go to rest or sleep.
So, even if it seems like sleeping is wasting time, think that doing it often can be the difference between losing the entire day or not losing it at all.
2. Determine what exactly you should do
There are times that we rationalize our desire to do nothing by constructing a fiction in which what we must do is such a difficult and convoluted task that it deserves to be attended to at a more suitable time, and not in the present. We take advantage of the ambiguity about what we have to do to invent that it is something very complicated.
For example, if I need to go buy some speakers, I can imagine that I must first spend several hours learning about how these devices work, and then go on to compare the products, choose the store where they give the best offer, and find a time to go buy them that we do well enough to be able to buy other things.
This can be avoided if we determine from the first moment what we should do. The essential, the main thing, with very specific limits. In the case of the previous example, this would be, in case we do not want to spend a lot, researching a small number of speaker models, reading their characteristics and consumer opinions, and going to buy them at a nearby store.
3. Divide your goal into several sub-goals
Something fundamental when it comes to overcoming laziness is to eliminate any possibility of us looking for excuses. For it, It is best to set ourselves very simple tasks that, in a chain, form the path towards the general objective we want to reach. In this way, we achieve two things.
On the one hand, the feeling of “obligation” will be much more powerful, given that the perceived cost of doing such an insignificant action will be much lower. On the other hand, when starting a project or job, we naturally tend to want to complete it. This phenomenon is known as the Zeigarnik effect.
4. Get away from distractions
Turn off the TV, leave the Smartphone hidden and get to work away from the refrigerator. If you have to work on the computer, it’s not a bad idea to ask someone to change your Facebook password or any social network that you use a lot, so that they can give it to you only once you have finished what you want to accomplish.
In short, you must do the right thing to May there be nothing around you that can tempt you with the idea of giving you a reason to neglect your responsibilities. If these distractors can have that effect on your mind, you too can counterattack by making those “powers” disappear, at least for a while.
5. Look back and notice your progress
This is one of the most rewarding parts of overcoming laziness, and it involves stop and think about the fruits of your effort, what you didn’t have before and what you now enjoy. Of course, any effort also has a negative part, but at this moment you should only focus on the positive, since in normal situations we tend to let the bad eclipse the good for the mere fact of being good (even if objectively it is less important).
This is an important stage, because it allows you to associate those actions and thoughts that have led you to move forward, on the one hand, and the positive fruits of those initiatives, on the other. It is thanks to this that although at the beginning it was more difficult to progress, as we obtain results it costs less.
