Negotiate with yourself, don’t tyrannize yourself.
First off, you can’t always avoid being lazy. That’s something you need to accept. We all have days where we don’t get enough sleep, we have long work days, or we had a lot to deal with and laziness is then a sign. Your body or brain are telling you that you need a little break. It’s important that you negotiate with yourself, instead of tyrannizing yourself.
The problem happens when you constantly feel lazy. And I assume that’s what you’re dealing with here.
Now if you were feeling lazy, what’s the one thing that you can experience that get you out of this laziness loop?
In most cases, laziness is associated with a lack of motivation. If you felt incredibly motivated, the dopamine rush in your neurological system would kick you out of the laziness loop and you’ll feel the urge to be productive.
In some rare cases, you might feel very motivated, but lazy at the same time. If that’s the case, you’re not experiencing laziness. You’re just tired, and you need to breathe some fresh air, relax, and take a break doing something you enjoy.
However, if you believe that the laziness you’re experiencing is associated with a lack of motivation, then by simply fixating your motivation towards a certain goal, you’ll start kicking laziness away bit by bit.
So here are some things you can do to get back on track on control your laziness better:
- Build a daily personal life routine:
I can not emphasize how important this is. Your subconscious brain accounts for 90–95% of your thoughts, emotions and actions. Your conscious brain only accounts for 5–10%. Now the subconscious brain is also known as the habit brain. If your subconscious brain starts working with you, instead of against you, you’ll be able to build up the habit of being productive.
What do I mean by that?
- Have a fixed sleeping schedule. Laziness is often associated with a lack of coordination in your ultradian sleep cycle. Be specific with what time you wake up, and what time you go to bed. Make sure to get 6–8 hours of sleep to be fully refreshed and energized.
- Plan out some habits in your daily life that can energize you and kick you out of the laziness loop. You can try drinking a big cup of water in the morning, meditation or mindfulness exercises, at-home short workouts to boost your energy levels, and one of my favorites, cold showers.
- Set specific time frames where you’re going to be focused on work, and stick to that time so it becomes a routine.
With enough repetition, your habit brain would start associating those behaviors with your daily life, and you will experience a neuroplasticity phenomena where your brain will get rewired into a more motivated and productive state.
- Get yourself motivated:
Oftentimes, by simply feeling motivated, you will automatically shift yourself to a more productive state. The big question would be how to be motivated when you’re feeling lazy… Here’s what I would suggest.
- Find an intrinsic source of motivation. You want to commit yourself to something that touches your self-actualization needs. Motivation linked to those elements tends to increase as the goal is accomplished. Which is the complete opposite when it comes to extrinsic motivation.
- Use the ABC method for sustained motivation. A stands for the optimal daily goal, B stands for the average daily goal, and C stands for the minimal daily goal. Commit yourself to a goal, then break it down into optimal, average and minimal. When you’re feeling lazy, it’s often hard to work on a big task that requires 2–3 hours. But when you have a task that’s 45 minutes long, it gets easier. Even better when the task is 10 minutes long, it becomes even easier and easier to get yourself to it. Once you do, the momentum will help you build up the motivation and kick you out of the laziness loop.
- Build an emergency plan. I know it sounds pretty scary, but it’s not. This tactic can be very effective in fact.
- Build a list of activities that you can do that would get you energized and motivated.
- Whenever you feel lazy, try some of those activities and notice the switch in your physiology and psychology and how it affected the laziness state you were experiencing.
- Repeat and adjust according to what gets you motivated and energized.
Now, its your time to beat laziness and conquer the world!