Laziness is a big problem all of us had to deal with in our lives, at one point or another.

There are few people on planet earth, like Elon Musk, who don’t understand what laziness really is, but these are the extremely unusual. Most “regular” humans, though, have to overcome their own laziness from time to time. It’s simply part of life, regardless of how strong your work ethic is or how naturally hard-worker you are.

Once you understand that you are not the only one who suffers from laziness, you automatically feel better about yourself, since it’s not you the problem, but everyone’s else problem as well. And your unpleasant responsibility is to find a way to rise above it, which is completely possible and I’ll show you exactly how in this specific article.

For me, personally, laziness has been a huge obstacle that prevented me from pursuing things I truly wanted to achieve, especially when I was aimless and had no purpose in my early twenties.

To be honest, laziness does make sense to me. On the surface, it seems like a great deal one has with their mind. What do I mean by that?

Without a solid reason to get things done, I don’t see why would one get up off their ass, especially if one experiences a life of comfort. Life is hard anyway, so why would I work to get things done when I can simply be lazy and experience less pain. 

This is a good question. You might be surprised at how simple the answer is.

The mind is a liar. It is a complete delusion. Being lazy seems like the ultimate strategy to minimize pain, yet this perspective is flawed and incorrect.

You have two kinds of pain:

• Pain of discipline (Present pain)
• Pain of regret (Future pain)

Our mind cannot see the future so he tricks us into believing only the present pain of discipline, which he can refer to, exists. By not taking into consideration the future pain of regret, you become lazy and think that strategy will minimize the pain long-run.

But nothing is further from the truth.

In this article, I am going to give you 7 Proven Strategies that Will Instantly Help You Overcome Laziness (If You’ll Apply them, obviously)

Let’s start:

#1) Don’t Let The Perfect Be The Enemy of The Good

This has been a life-changer for me. Once I realized that our mind tricks us, I started to figure out patterns that secretly destroy my dreams. I’ve found that concept to be so true, in many areas of life, not only with laziness.

Sometimes, we feel like for us to take action the outcome MUST worth it.

When we think that way, we simply won’t sacrifice our time and energy unless we are SURE our strategy will lead to a satisfying outcome. But the point is that it is another trick of the mind. It is pure deception. Just think about the alternative – being lazy – isn’t that sacrifice of time and energy as well, that will for sure, undoubtedly – will lead you to nowhere?

Not only nowhere, but will harm you in many senses. If you don’t move forward – you move backward. Any moment you are not moving forward, you spent wrongly. Any moment you didn’t do something productive, you missed an opportunity to make yourself a better person, hence having a more fulfilling life, which is something we all want after all, isn’t it?

So my conclusion is that we must take action even if the outcome is not promised to be perfect.

It’s better to have something good than nothing. Don’t aim for perfection.

You can have a vision that is an ideal or perfect, but day-to-day goals must not be perfection in order for you to start working towards them. Perfection overwhelms us since we feel incapable of achieving it, and for a good reason, we simply can’t. The logic behind perfect VISION, though, is a never-ending reason to work forward.

Don’t confuse vision with day-to-day goals on a practical level. Vision can be a perfect future, goals must be concrete and achievable.

So I’ll summarize for you this point in one sentence:

If you don’t have the tools, time or energy to make it happen in a perfect way, then… DO IT ANYWAY!

#2) Start small, Don’t Worry about anything else

Start with just a small step forward toward your goal. It’s important to not think while doing so.

An integral part of this strategy is the part of not worrying about the big picture. Start small, and focus 100% on the small task you need to accomplish at this particular moment of time. Treat it as if it’s the whole project.

Need to read a book? Treat the first chapter as if it’s the whole book. Literally, don’t worry about the other chapters and don’t even think about the fact that they’re “waiting” you.

By doing so, you will find it 10x easier to actually read, and from there, it will be even more easy to continue to the next chapter. Just a mental trick. Do it, and let me know if it’s not working for you because it worked well for me and for millions of others.

The problem with thinking too much (when trying to start small):

While you think you start to analyze and ask questions that will lead to nothing helpful but massive self-doubt, such as: “Well, If I do that, will it really benefit me long-term?” and the answer is very predictable “Not sure… Maybe I should try something else that is more beneficial..” and so on and so forth.

It’s a never-ending cycle of procrastination. Sometimes, we just need to start small and close the door between our mind and our body. Just let your body do what it needs to do. Ignore your mind.

Once you start taking small steps, you start building momentum, the more momentum you have, the more unstoppable you are.

#3) Visualize The Awesome Benefits: How can Overcoming Laziness Improve your life tremendously?

In addition to being aware of the negative consequences, aka pain of regret that we just talked, close your eyes and think for a few minutes about how amazing your life will be if you will be able to get things done even if you don’t feel like doing it.

Imagine the happiness that might come from freedom as a result of your discipline.

Discipline equals freedom.

Freedom goes hand in hand with happiness. Don’t you want to be both free and happy?

By not being lazy you kill 2 birds in one stone.

*When you visualize, I allow you to exaggerate with details and describe the future as vividly and positively as possible. One caveat: If you suffer from laziness that is caused by the opposite, meaning by an over-positive, unrealistic state of mind – I recommend you to read this, before visualizing.

#4) Remove distractions

Life is hard anyway, so why make it harder when you have the goal of beating laziness by playing with fire? If someone is alcoholic, let’s say, do you really think he can work properly when a bottle of whiskey is in front of him? Of course not.

Now being addicted to alcohol is not very far or different from being addicted to modern distractions, in the sense that it prevents you from focusing on things that truly matter to you, without you even realize it.

The best things to do is to remove the distraction from eyesight or block the ability to access stimuli from any kind of distraction that might not be helpful for reaching your current goals in life.

Your willpower is limited, don’t make it harder by testing yourself in the face of the temptation. Simply reduce the risk and you’ll find that the energy you used to put in order to fight the temptation now can be used in another direction, hopefully, a direction that is aligned with your goals.

#5) Have a plan, preferably written – and check it constantly

When you don’t have a plan, it’s easier to be lazy. Since laziness in some sense is the default of being. Doing nothing requires zero explanation from a logical point of view. The question that is needed to be asked is – “Why would one even do something in the first place?”

Well, the answer is not trivial. The answer is rooted in one’s purpose in life. Which is quite abstract and undefined, isn’t it? What’s my purpose?

Writing before going to bed each day, what your tasks are for the next day is a big laziness-killer.

It makes the next day more clear and predictable. When you know what you have to do, preferably when you can access a written piece of a to-do list that tells you what you have to do – it’s easier to take action.

Some of the energy that is spent, unfortunately without giving us nothing in return, is the energy to think what should I do now.

When you have what you need to do written in front of you-you have more time and mental energy to get to work on it.

#6) Take care of your physical health – diet, exercise & sleep

Reduce gluten, sugar, dairy (if it has a negative impact on you).

Sleep as much as you need in a dark room without interruption and preferably at the same time every day, so you won’t mess up your circadian rhythm and therefore your hormones.

Body and mind are deeply interconnected, probably more deeply than you can perceive.

This is another angle to approach the problem, laziness. Since body and mind are connected, and laziness seems to come from the mind, it is another useful strategy to attack the problem from the body’s perspective.

Optimizing your body makes it easier for you to make the right decisions throughout the day, hence you reduce the chance of deciding to be lazy…

..Which leads me to the last point…

#7) Understand that Laziness is just a Decision

I remember a morning I found it extremely difficult to get out of bed.

There might be several reasons for that, not only one but regardless of which reason was behind my hard time getting out of bed, I wanted to figure out a way to ACTUALLY GET UP OFF MY ASS.

So I was lying there, without energy, trying to think of ways to manipulate the mind to get out of bed in spite of the extremely lazy state of mind I had.

Guess what, I simply sent a command through the nervous system to my ass to push me out of bed, and to my surprise – it happened!

I was amazed by how easy it is to make a decision and stick to something. We often make it so complicated.

You must practice sending commands to your body when you’re fatigue only to understand on a deeper level my point here. It is really a choice. We can make things happen even if we don’t “feel” like doing so. We really can. You won’t understand until you’ll experience it by yourself. And after you do – remember that feeling and continue to do so.

For some reasons, we listen to our mind, that is telling us to continue doing nothing, or in that case – staying in bed. But – we have the choice in any given moment, to just get out of bed. It’s simple. It really is.

All you have to do is to DECIDE. Just decide. Say to yourself “Ok, I am going to do it” and just do it. I am not promoting Nike at all. It’s just the way it is.

It is astonishing that we need to be taught to make decisions, don’t we have free choice in this world?

Don’t we feel like we are in control most of the time? Well, we are. It’s just a delusion that our mind wants us to believe we aren’t capable of doing something. It’s our responsibility to make a decision against our mind and get out of bed or start the project we always wanted to start.

When you understand that it is only a decision, you stop seeking advice, you stop blaming the system, you stop viewing at laziness as a problem and start seeing how the only thing that kept you lazy is YOU.

If you start to make decisions laziness is not a problem anymore. If it continues to be a problem, then you haven’t made the decision yet. Read that article again, and focus on that specific strategy, which on purpose is last in order.

I know it sounds too good to be true, but try it. You have to address it with the right mindset, with a profound understanding of how controllable your circumstances are, of how strongly you can impact your life and what happens to you. It really all comes together when you deeply understand that.

All you have to do is to make a decision.

That’s it.

I am sure you did understand that on an emotional level in several points in your life. The mistake you made was to break the momentum for some temporary pleasure. The next time you take life to your hands, don’t ruin it again by breaking the momentum you’ve reached, instead – take advantage of that feeling of momentum and keep going with your head up.

 

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Until next time,

Gal.