How to outsmart and benefit from your laziness

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Channel this feeling in the right direction and make it your ally in the struggle for personal effectiveness.

Many productivity gurus are actually pretty lazy. For example, David Allen, the author of the famous Getting Things Done technique.

I am often asked if I have always been this organized, but I have always been lazy. That's why I got interested in productivity. I wake up thinking about how I can simplify my tasks today. Self-efficiency is the only opportunity to improve something.

David Allen

To stay healthy and productive despite your laziness, pursue this quality before it takes over your entire life.

1. Understand what kind of things you are too lazy to do.
2. Structure your habits about these things.

Consider the limits of your laziness. During what activities do you start to be lazy, and what are given to you without difficulty? For example, are you too lazy to get up early or eat right? Or do you procrastinate, but do not be lazy to work because you love what you do?

When you find your weaknesses, try to structure your life so that laziness helps you. Here are some examples:

• Leave your phone and tablet in another room when reading or working. You will not want to get up behind them, as a result, you will not be distracted by them.
• Take out your sportswear in the evening and put it in a prominent place. It's easier to put it on in the morning than to look for something else. This makes you more likely to exercise.
• Log out of all social media accounts to spend less time on them. Set very long passwords. Then next time you will be too lazy to enter them.
• Uninstall the mail reader application on your phone. Accessing mail through a mobile browser is too inconvenient, so you won't check your inbox as often.
• If you eat everything in front of you, leave vegetables on the table. Eating them will be easier than reheating purchased food.
• On weekends, it is often too lazy to get out of bed. Leave your phone in another room overnight to avoid spending the whole day with it. And you can wake up using a fitness tracker or a regular alarm clock.
• If you are too lazy to go to the gym, enter bonus points for workouts and save them. Then they can be spent on sweets or other delicious promotions.
• If you're too lazy to run, find someone to go jogging with. In this case, going outside is easier than letting the other person down.

Rebuild your habits in this way, and laziness will not stop you, but move you forward.