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Chronic laziness. How to overcome?

Christopher104

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Because what I am doing right now, making a website and finding products is easy
Well for dropshiping on spotify maybe but learning the languages and libraries required is hella challenging.

I realized that I need help. Well, the first step is admitting you have a problem.

See, throughout school days I never studied and just went with the flow and somehow made it through with Bs and As. At my slowlane job, I never lifted much a finger. Well, the first one involved pushing buggies into the store, but there I made it look more like I was working than actually doing work although the management loved me and i didn't complain. The second job didn't teach me much more. I worked security night shifts where I also befriended the management and literally did not do jack shit in 12 hour shifts except for my own stuff.

What I realized is that I always had it easy. I always looked for a path of least resistence. And now, that I am out of university, quit my job and in another country, I have it easy again because I know I have enough to live for the next month and then I have a gig secured that doesn't require much effort for a month that will make me enough to last for the next 4 months.

I hate it. I honestly hate it.

I hate the feeling that everything is coming so easy. I am not satisfied with it. I want something to be hard, but when it is, I flop. That is why I failed at making mobile games because I wanted it easy and was not going to put in the effort to learn 3d, plus that would ensure I slave off.

Does anyone have any tips on building a habit of working my a$$ off? I want it hard? I want to be punished to build endurance.

Because what I am doing right now, making a website and finding products is easy, it does not require much actually effort aside from getting it done, but I always get side tracked because it seems to me easy while in reality that is what is hard.

I am sorry for rambling on, I just felt the need to share. I would appreciate any wonderful insights on how to build a habit for working hard and overcoming laziness. Any suggestions for exercises or anything of any help.

Thank you for reading through what I had to say. I really do appreciate the time people spend on this forum to help others.
Well when it comes to discipline your mind is the enemy and it wants you to suffer 24/7. Society will take advantage of this weakness and
I realized that I need help. Well, the first step is admitting you have a problem.

See, throughout school days I never studied and just went with the flow and somehow made it through with Bs and As. At my slowlane job, I never lifted much a finger. Well, the first one involved pushing buggies into the store, but there I made it look more like I was working than actually doing work although the management loved me and i didn't complain. The second job didn't teach me much more. I worked security night shifts where I also befriended the management and literally did not do jack shit in 12 hour shifts except for my own stuff.

What I realized is that I always had it easy. I always looked for a path of least resistence. And now, that I am out of university, quit my job and in another country, I have it easy again because I know I have enough to live for the next month and then I have a gig secured that doesn't require much effort for a month that will make me enough to last for the next 4 months.

I hate it. I honestly hate it.

I hate the feeling that everything is coming so easy. I am not satisfied with it. I want something to be hard, but when it is, I flop. That is why I failed at making mobile games because I wanted it easy and was not going to put in the effort to learn 3d, plus that would ensure I slave off.

Does anyone have any tips on building a habit of working my a$$ off? I want it hard? I want to be punished to build endurance.

Because what I am doing right now, making a website and finding products is easy, it does not require much actually effort aside from getting it done, but I always get side tracked because it seems to me easy while in reality that is what is hard.

I am sorry for rambling on, I just felt the need to share. I would appreciate any wonderful insights on how to build a habit for working hard and overcoming laziness. Any suggestions for exercises or anything of any help.

Thank you for reading through what I had to say. I really do appreciate the time people spend on this forum to help others.
Let me tell you something that might set you free. You say you want to do something hard right?

The difference between something hard and something easy is the amount of time and mistakes it will take to get a task done. Not to mention the amount of boredom you will endure while doing the task for long periods of time.

Working to become rich isn't fun. Its quite tedious actually. Especially when the honeymoon phase of the new idea wears off. The reality is life isn't meant to be fun most of the time when you're working towards a worthy goal.

Your brain's ability to tolerate dull lifeless moments day in and day out is the key factor in succeeding in the long run. Because discipline is boring.

Think of grinding like going to your day job. It's just something you do because you dont really have an option. You like it sometimes but there will be days when you dont want to step up and do it. But what you want is irrelevant.

This sounds depressing but its helped me get through all of the moments where I wanted to quit. Remember, there is no such thing as burnout. Being mentally tired is a feeling. emotions and money dont mix well.
 
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eTox

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Wow!

5 years later. Here I am...

After failing a sh!t ton of times and eating lots of crap I realized one thing:

"Who the F*ck gives a shit?"

Do you want to overcome laziness?

Do you want to achieve things in life?

Then nobody cares that you are lazy.

The problem is not with you being lazy. The problem is with you being weak.

Think of the Spartans back in the days. Think of the WW2. Do you think people cared? Do you think people really cared that they got tired, etc?

What about the greatest leaders of all time?

Life isn't about it being easy and soft on you.

Life is about eating shit. Life is about you being skinned alive and you saying "thank you", asking for more, and enjoying the process.

The goal is not for it to become simple, easy, etc. It's about it becomes so difficult that you become literally insensitive to the shit that happens around you.

Don't like running?

Go for a F*cking 2 km run. Can't run further? Cry, yell, stumble, but go forward.

You need to get rid of the weakness in you.

It's about doing difficult, unpleasant things and being grateful that you can do them in the first place.

It's about destroying your inner soul and burning yourself inside out.

There is only two outcomes:

You burn down and give up.

Or you become a warrior.

And when you become that soldier of life, then nothing that happens scares or surprises you.

When your highest expectations is eating dog shit every day, enduring pain, forcing upon yourself pure torture then you become free.

When you accept life as unfair, as something that's there to kill you and make you suffer then you become grateful for small things.

And when you're grateful for little things in life and don't care about fancy stuff and pleasures then you become strong.

And when you are strong - you can conquer.

TLDR: study stoic philosophy

Hope this helps someone ;)

Also, this may be too aggressive, and if it is and must be censored then be it <3 That's just my transformation over the years.
 

Speculatooor

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People see laziness as a bad thing. I just see it as a consequence of having no purpose/goals combined with comfort.

The biggest trap there is.

When you have a WHY (especially combined with a F*ck This Event) it is pretty much impossible to be lazy.

I am very lazy with things that I don't care about. I am very obsessed with things that help me achieve my vision.
 

David Fitz

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I realized that I need help. Well, the first step is admitting you have a problem.

See, throughout school days I never studied and just went with the flow and somehow made it through with Bs and As. At my slowlane job, I never lifted much a finger. Well, the first one involved pushing buggies into the store, but there I made it look more like I was working than actually doing work although the management loved me and i didn't complain. The second job didn't teach me much more. I worked security night shifts where I also befriended the management and literally did not do jack shit in 12 hour shifts except for my own stuff.

What I realized is that I always had it easy. I always looked for a path of least resistence. And now, that I am out of university, quit my job and in another country, I have it easy again because I know I have enough to live for the next month and then I have a gig secured that doesn't require much effort for a month that will make me enough to last for the next 4 months.

I hate it. I honestly hate it.

I hate the feeling that everything is coming so easy. I am not satisfied with it. I want something to be hard, but when it is, I flop. That is why I failed at making mobile games because I wanted it easy and was not going to put in the effort to learn 3d, plus that would ensure I slave off.

Does anyone have any tips on building a habit of working my a$$ off? I want it hard? I want to be punished to build endurance.

Because what I am doing right now, making a website and finding products is easy, it does not require much actually effort aside from getting it done, but I always get side tracked because it seems to me easy while in reality that is what is hard.

I am sorry for rambling on, I just felt the need to share. I would appreciate any wonderful insights on how to build a habit for working hard and overcoming laziness. Any suggestions for exercises or anything of any help.

Thank you for reading through what I had to say. I really do appreciate the time people spend on this forum to help others.

Buy this The Time of Your Life ®
 
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eTox

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People see laziness as a bad thing. I just see it as a consequence of having no purpose/goals combined with comfort.

The biggest trap there is.

When you have a WHY (especially combined with a F*ck This Event) it is pretty much impossible to be lazy.

I am very lazy with things that I don't care about. I am very obsessed with things that help me achieve my vision.
Absolutely love this <3
 

WJK

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I realized that I need help. Well, the first step is admitting you have a problem.

See, throughout school days I never studied and just went with the flow and somehow made it through with Bs and As. At my slowlane job, I never lifted much a finger. Well, the first one involved pushing buggies into the store, but there I made it look more like I was working than actually doing work although the management loved me and i didn't complain. The second job didn't teach me much more. I worked security night shifts where I also befriended the management and literally did not do jack shit in 12 hour shifts except for my own stuff.

What I realized is that I always had it easy. I always looked for a path of least resistence. And now, that I am out of university, quit my job and in another country, I have it easy again because I know I have enough to live for the next month and then I have a gig secured that doesn't require much effort for a month that will make me enough to last for the next 4 months.

I hate it. I honestly hate it.

I hate the feeling that everything is coming so easy. I am not satisfied with it. I want something to be hard, but when it is, I flop. That is why I failed at making mobile games because I wanted it easy and was not going to put in the effort to learn 3d, plus that would ensure I slave off.

Does anyone have any tips on building a habit of working my a$$ off? I want it hard? I want to be punished to build endurance.

Because what I am doing right now, making a website and finding products is easy, it does not require much actually effort aside from getting it done, but I always get side tracked because it seems to me easy while in reality that is what is hard.

I am sorry for rambling on, I just felt the need to share. I would appreciate any wonderful insights on how to build a habit for working hard and overcoming laziness. Any suggestions for exercises or anything of any help.

Thank you for reading through what I had to say. I really do appreciate the time people spend on this forum to help others.
You are way too comfortable. You've never been hungry. You've never felt the sting of failing. What comes to mind is "Pride cometh before a fall." Are you willing to fall that far?
 

maximusharrison

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This is an amazing and extremely relevant thread. I think this pandemic has hit every single one of us really hard. It's hard when work is constantly invading our supposed haven or sanctuary at home nowadays. I tend to be the type of person that is highly dependent on my environment to function (i.e. i study at school, work out at the gym, work at the office, etc).

But a few things that helped me break out of the laziness spiral:

*Getting ahead of myself
-> I know, for a fact, that when I wake up, the first thing I do is check my phone. That, in itself, can be a platform for me to be lazy. I'll start by checking my emails, then mindless switch to Facebook/Other social media, and end up wasting a good hour or two. I get ahead of myself by purposefully not charging my phone so that it's drained come morning. While I do my morning rituals, the phones are plugged in–and I'm not.

*Rehydrating a lot
->
I sweat a lot when I drink a ton of water. This forces me to take 2-3 showers a day, which is a very calming and thought-provoking moment of peace in my dailies (if you're not subscribed to the r/showerthoughts subreddit you're missing out) and I know this is common–but more than half of the time, my problems get resolved while thinking in the shower.

Exercise
-> Most of us dread it, but the reality is, once you've forced yourself into the habit of moving about, it's hard to stay still. Plus, it improves you holistically (mind, body, and everything in-between).

Again, this thread is a goldmine. Actually boosted me to be more productive for today. Stay safe everyone.
 

Black_Dragon43

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overcome laziness
Typically laziness is not the problem. Laziness is a symptom. I've never in my life been lazy for the sake of it. I've been lazy as a defense mechanism, to avoid certain feelings. Most often, the feeling that is to be avoided is FEAR, or DISCOMFORT.

Many people also think they're DEPRESSED - but very frequently depression is another cover-up for ANXIETY. Typically anxiety holds you back from doing XYZ, and then you feel like your life is meaningless because you can't do XYZ, and hence you start thinking your problem is depression. But the real problem is the underlying anxiety which prevents you from living the life you desire, and that you COULD be living, if not for the anxiety.

Are depression, anxiety, laziness and so on symptoms themselves of too much comfort, of never being challenged as @WJK says? Probably. I don't imagine Genghis Khan and his ilk dealt with depression, anxiety, and so on, even though they lived in mortal danger day after day.

A lot of psychology tends to be cognitive nowadays, but I think somewhere along the line that is fundamentally wrong-headed, because the problem is not cognitive, as much as it is behavioral. Sure, the anxious person feels anxiety because they associate danger with a certain activity (say cold-calling), and that thought is false (ie, cold calling isn't actually dangerous). So, as per the cognitivists, if we can show him that the thought that cold-calling is dangerous is false, then we can cure him. The problem is that of course, sometimes the activity they're fearing really IS dangerous. But not all people who perceive an activity as dangerous react to it with fear (hence the difference is in BEHAVIOR, not in how they conceptualize it).

And on a deeper level, of course, our way of thinking (focusing on the danger, for example), is also a(n) (internal) behavior, which can be changed.

So in the end it's about learning to behave differently. The other thing to note here, is that we expect behavioral change to be FAST, and if it's not, then we give up. For example, you tried cold-calling today, and you started at the phone for 5 hours and then quit. You begin thinking that you can't do it, and you give up. You don't try again tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow and so on.

Sometimes such phobias and fears take quite a long time to be overcome. So you have to persist. Even the mere fact that you're sitting in front of the phone experiencing the fear, and not making any calls, is already progress. It's called systematic desensitization and it's actually, perhaps, the ONLY technique in psychology that works virtually 100% of the time when performed (and this is not a joke... there's actual data to back this up, more data, in fact, than for any other psychological intervention). For you, sitting in front of the phone to cold-call is degree 6/10 intensity for fear (where 10 is full-blown panic attack). Some people can't even do that. They need to start by THINKING about cold-calling, and getting habituated with that anxiety. So day after day, you sit thinking about cold-calling until you no longer feel anxious - you can also try relaxation techniques while doing it. Then you up it, and actually do it in front of the phone. Then you dial the number but don't call. And so on. In effect, what you're doing is that you're training yourself, like you'd train a RAT to react with relaxation to the feared stimuli (thoughts about cold-calling), rather than with fear. It takes practice, and repetition.

It works, but you must expose yourself to the fear gradually. And I feel that in the modern world we no longer understand what gradually means. It may take you 1 month to truly be free of your cold-calling anxiety for life. Not 1, 2 days. But you have to keep going even though it may look to you like you're not making progress, or the progress is insignificant.
 
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MJ DeMarco

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Thread upgraded to NOTABLE.

As many echoed, laziness is more of a symptom than a problem.

Good times create weak men/women.
Comfort creates weak lazy/apathetic men/women.
 
D

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Also, it can be a matter of low dopamine.

In the following interview, Timothy Denvi says that without Adderall he just sits on the couch watching movies:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm60lW7UodU


I have never taken any of those drugs but I know the effect of dopamine. It's powerful.

It's enough to get you into the feedback loop. Then you are set.

There are a lot of people that have always been comfortable and they made a fortune. Michael Singer for instance. He never forced himself to learn to program. It came to him.

At the same time when covid hit I was without a job. ZERO. It was the best period of my life. I felt free. My dopamine skyrocketed and I started working 6 AM-1 AM every day without even feeling it.

Then the job started to slowly come back, and I knew it: the feeling disappeared. I lost the momentum. On top of that, Facebook deleted all the precious data I had acquired (deleted my account basically). I was getting sales, but FB broke the feedback loop. I couldn't start anymore for a matter of finances and also not sustainability of the business model itself.

This leads me to another question: can laziness be a symptom signaling to you that you are doing the wrong thing?
 
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Antifragile

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This leads me to another question: can laziness be a symptom signaling to you that you are doing the wrong thing?

what an excellent question!

the answer isn’t likely to be simple. Just like pain is a signal and a feeling. Signal that whatever you are doing better not last too long, brain is protective of you. Laziness means something, but what?
All my life I keep hearing people say the same thing to me “you are so driven, I wish I had your energy and motivation” and the irony is I see myself as lazy. I constantly do less than I could. If I can find a way to make 2x the money in half the time, I’ll do just that. But when I watch Netflix, I always feel like I’m being a shit, unproductive! I should be learning something or doing something. Every day starts at zero for me, and I’m never fully satisfied with what I accomplish! I do feel I’m lazy… Not chronic laziness as described in OP, just a different perspective on this topic. How do you define “lazy” should drive how you view what it means when you really are being “lazy”.
In training for races, any athlete will know that there is a fine line between what people call “overtraining” and quitting too soon because you feel “tired” lol. Anyone who races knows you can push way past what you think you can, but sometimes it’s the wrong thing to do! Same with “lazy” - but not chronic (I think). You can’t and probably shouldn’t max out on your effort on all things all the time. Yet, life is so short and so much to get done…

I’ve rambled long enough! Thanks for reading ;)
 
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Jemmalee

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I realized that I need help. Well, the first step is admitting you have a problem.

See, throughout school days I never studied and just went with the flow and somehow made it through with Bs and As. At my slowlane job, I never lifted much a finger. Well, the first one involved pushing buggies into the store, but there I made it look more like I was working than actually doing work although the management loved me and i didn't complain. The second job didn't teach me much more. I worked security night shifts where I also befriended the management and literally did not do jack shit in 12 hour shifts except for my own stuff.

What I realized is that I always had it easy. I always looked for a path of least resistence. And now, that I am out of university, quit my job and in another country, I have it easy again because I know I have enough to live for the next month and then I have a gig secured that doesn't require much effort for a month that will make me enough to last for the next 4 months.

I hate it. I honestly hate it.

I hate the feeling that everything is coming so easy. I am not satisfied with it. I want something to be hard, but when it is, I flop. That is why I failed at making mobile games because I wanted it easy and was not going to put in the effort to learn 3d, plus that would ensure I slave off.

Does anyone have any tips on building a habit of working my a$$ off? I want it hard? I want to be punished to build endurance.

Because what I am doing right now, making a website and finding products is easy, it does not require much actually effort aside from getting it done, but I always get side tracked because it seems to me easy while in reality that is what is hard.

I am sorry for rambling on, I just felt the need to share. I would appreciate any wonderful insights on how to build a habit for working hard and overcoming laziness. Any suggestions for exercises or anything of any help.

Thank you for reading through what I had to say. I really do appreciate the time people spend on this forum to help others.

sounds like there’s a possibility you have ADHD.
(Not a professional diagnosis )

Myself, having ADHD… the reason things are never hard is because we learn new skills extremely quickly than the average.

the reason we befriend our bosses is because we cannot submit ourselves to authority figures, we don’t get it.

you are not lazy.

Do you find, that when something really really interests you, you can go all in for 3 hours straight without even eating or drinking or taking a break?

Do you feel indecisive on which path you want to take?

Welcome to an ADHD brain.

born entrepreneurship is the only way that’s right for us BUT you HAVE to be interested in your topic, or we will fail.
 

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