¶ Practical Self-Discipline
Practical Self-Discipline: Become a Relentless Goal-Achieving and Temptation-Busting Machine (A Guide for Procrastinators, Slackers, and Couch Potatoes) (Live a Disciplined Life Book 5) By Peter Hollins, narrated by russell newton. Chapter 1. Stop Being So “Lazy”|. Lazy. There is so much concealed in such a small word, isn’t there? Have you ever had a day where no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t force yourself to do the tasks you wanted to or were meant to?
Maybe you had a day spent wasting time online or watching Tv, knowing that assignments, important phone calls, or chores were waiting for you, and yet you just couldn’t get any of it done. It may have felt like you were moving in slow motion or just that you had no will to activate your brain from a mode of sloth and sleep. It’s a normal feeling, but as with everything, moderation is key.
“I’m just feeling lazy” has become a standard way of explaining this inability to find any willpower, passion, or perseverance for a task. But what does it really mean, and does it actually help us understand what’s going on in these apathetic moments and help us overcome them? The trouble with “lazy” is that it doesn’t accurately describe the phenomenon we’re talking about—and it certainly doesn’t offer a clue on how to be better.
“Lazy” is a harsh value judgment, and worse than that, it fundamentally misunderstands a particular pattern of behavior. Using “lazy” is lazy, funnily enough. In the chapters that follow, we’ll be looking at this “laziness,” not with condemnation but curiosity. What’s really happening when we put off tasks? How can we realistically get better—other than self-berating and writing off sluggishness as an unchangeable personality trait?
What is the root cause of this inability to do, and how can we train our brains to move past it or at least not make it our default course of action? Why does it feel so damned difficult to lift a single finger sometimes? But in this first chapter we’re going to be taking a different approach entirely. Firstly, we’ll dismantle the idea of laziness altogether. It doesn’t exist.
It’s an excuse, and as with 99% of excuses, it is a false construction designed to make ourselves feel better (a strong assertion that makes itself obvious only in hindsight, usually). What does exist, however, are barriers to our action. If you look at a person lounging around in front of the Tv in the middle of a weekday in their pajamas, while work piles up around them, you might call them lazy. After all, doesn’t this schlub have things to do?
People are, at the most basic level, actually quite rational creatures, and they behave as they do for a reason. So when a person’s behavior doesn’t make sense at first glance (i.e., you can’t see the reason), it pays to look deeper. To the environmental context. To the barriers. To the invisible obstacles that, once understood, perfectly explain their behavior.
If this is starting to sound more like a psychology book, then the goal is achieved, because any problems we have with self-discipline, self-esteem, self-anything begin with our mindsets and the way we see and observe the world around us. We almost never have external problems; we only have problems of mindset, judgment, and expectation. Consider procrastination. We all love to heap moral blame, onto ourselves or others, for not doing what we should be doing.
The way we talk about procrastination is to condemn it as almost a sin, as a personal weakness. But people are rational and logical actors. So what are we missing? Most of us can see that sinning isn’t really the motivation—after all, people procrastinate on tasks they set for themselves, on activities they care deeply about. So what’s going on? If it’s not a moral problem, it’s an emotional and organizational one. Why do people procrastinate?
As far back as 1978, researchers Bem and Funder were showing that situational constraints are a far better predictor of behavior than static personality traits. This means that we are more likely to be products of our environments and emotional states, rather than simply having unproductive or lazy personalities.
¶ Barriers, Not Laziness.
Barriers, Not Laziness. Let’s consider some reasons that people actually procrastinate, act lazy, and turn away from self-discipline. It’s time to shine a light into your brain instead of giving you techniques that may or may not work (though we will certainly get to those at the appropriate time). People procrastinate because they’re afraid.
If you associate ending a task with being appraised negatively, or having the result found to be not good enough, it makes perfect sense that you’d avoid ever reaching the end of that task. Some people work extremely hard on a project only to slow right down and hit a block when only 5% of it remains to be done. It’s the safe option, really.
Others will work themselves into a paralysis—their perfectionism and intolerance for potential failure leaving them unable to even take the first step, lest it’s the wrong one. Again, it’s safer to remain incomplete than to face a potentially negative judgment, which can have massive detriments to self-esteem.
So right off the bat, we have an explanation for procrastination that’s the opposite of common knowledge - in fact, a person may procrastinate more if the task is special to them, since more is at stake. You can be motivated, you can have the desire, you can even have financial incentive and a serious time limit—but if your mind has perceived a threat in the task being completed, you can bet it’ll do its best to squirm away from that task no matter what.
To support this notion, a 2017 study by Leary et al. showed that self-compassionate people were more likely to take responsibility for their goals than those who self-criticized. This means that the harsher people are on themselves, the more they are going to avoid action and appear to be lazy. Importantly, judgments in the form of calling yourself “lazy” or piling on guilt will only make things worse. What will make things better and people more likely to act? Anything that relieves anxiety.
The paradox is then that “self-discipline” can stem from actively stepping away from a task that’s causing you anxiety. Can you reframe things? Can you become aware of exactly what thoughts are causing you to pull back? It might be as simple as giving yourself permission to do things “badly” or to ease off some of the pressure you’ve put on yourself. Remind yourself that it’s okay to feel afraid but that you can do it and that you will be okay, no matter the outcome of this particular task.
Look closely at your fears. Face them, and speak them out loud or write them in a journal. You may procrastinate writing your book because deep down you’re petrified people will think it’s bad and won’t read it. Sink even deeper into the fear and you may uncover deep feelings of shame or beliefs that you’re a “bad” person. This causes anxiety, and anxiety always causes a “fight-or-flight” response—i.e., procrastination and bailing on the plan for your day of productive work.
Instead, understand your fears and know them well. Actually, it’s not that difficult to find, and you may not need a therapist to help you get to the root of maladaptive thoughts. You really just need honesty in speaking out loud the feelings and emotions that you want to avoid. For example, is it really the end of the world if you earn a little criticism for this task? Is it really true that failing once or twice means you’re not a good human being worthy of love?
Should it really act as a confirmation about some of the worst fears you have about yourself? Perhaps an alternative - isn’t it possible to try again, or even worse, can you imagine that your fears are unfounded and that you may even succeed? For some people, facing their fears leads them to an unexpected culprit behind their procrastination—the fear of success! Fear is often at the root of so much procrastination and avoidance behavior.
For some of us, we don’t exactly have the thought, “If I complete this task, I’ll do poorly and feel bad,” but it’s more something like, “I can’t be 100% certain about how this will turn out, and I’d rather not risk it." Fearing the unknown is present in all of us, to some extent, but it may be more debilitating in those with extreme procrastination problems. It can be the sheer newness and uncertainty of a task at hand that proves frightening and hence becomes something to avoid and put off.
This can happen if we’ve unconsciously told ourselves that unknown = threatening. Uncertainty can cause anxiety, and rather than court potential catastrophe, a person may choose to put off a potential conclusion instead of facing an unknown outcome. So even if the status quo is quite painful in itself, it’s still known and familiar, and clinging to it is preferable to risking something new.
This fear can understandably mix with feelings of low confidence and efficacy (“something unpleasant might happen, and I won’t be able to handle it”), exhaustion (“I’m too tired to think about something new or different right now”), or fear of success (“If I succeed, everything might change and I don’t know if I want that.”) This kind of thinking can take on an obsessive quality, where people make “rules” to mediate some of the anxiety of an overwhelming task.
For example, someone might procrastinate going to the doctor because what they discover there might be too much to handle, so they try to reduce uncertainty by “researching” their symptoms extensively so they can feel reassured. If you recognize this in yourself, the first step is to bring these fears out into the light and start facing them, alone or with a therapist. Where you can, try to “rest” these fears and beliefs to gradually start dismantling them.
To illustrate this testing, a woman might find that her procrastination and laziness in speaking up at her workplace comes down to a handful of fears like the above—“I can’t be sure people won’t judge me harshly”; “If my boss sees me mess up, I’ll be fired”; “If I do too well they may ask even more of me or criticize me for being too arrogant…” Realizing that these thoughts are the root of her “laziness,” the woman then starts to unpick them by doing a series of
“tests” to prove to herself that she’s wrong. She might speak up in a meeting, submit smaller tasks when she’s feeling unsure and gauging the reaction, or giving herself the chance to notice others in the office who are not fired or chastised simply for being wrong occasionally. Gradually, she reprograms her beliefs and removes the main obstacle to working productively and efficiently. People procrastinate because they have a fixed mindset.
“I’m not going to try that new task because I’ve just never been good at similar tasks." “I don’t want to go back to university because I’m too old." “I’ve always been this lazy; it’s just the way I am." Carol Dweck’s now-famous concept of “fixed” versus “growth” mindsets can tell us a lot about procrastination. A fixed mindset is the belief that intelligence and ability are set at birth and are broadly unchangeable. They’re part of the personality, or constitutional.
This means there’s very little point in trying to change them! A very negative side effect of this belief is the idea that success, if it comes, is natural and that if you’re meant to do something well, you ought to do so immediately and with ease. Someone may try a new hobby, find it quite difficult, and throw their hands up and quit, because they believe that they simply weren’t born with the requisite intelligence to do it.
What’s more, they have a low tolerance for being a beginner—they don’t want to look like they’re unintelligent or make mistakes. So they avoid or procrastinate or fail to take action at all. The more adaptive and useful mindset is seeing life as a work in progress and the brain as a fluid, trainable thing. This “growth” mindset means that intelligence and ability are developed deliberately, with consistent, slow practice that improves skill in increments.
This way, a person is never surprised to make mistakes as they learn—in fact they expect it. They are comfortable with being a beginner, because they understand that mastery is a process. If they begin a task and are not immediately rewarded, they don’t quit or procrastinate—they take it in stride and carry on. If you find yourself with thoughts that hint at a fixed mindset when it comes to the tasks you’re avoiding, it may be time to reframe a little.
Train yourself to completely forget about the big goal at the end. Focus only on the smaller tasks in the interim. Try to detach your ego from the outcome. Remind yourself that trying and failing is normal and proof that you’re learning! It may even help to try focusing on the process instead of the outcome. Plan to do a number of hours, say, rather than assign yourself an impossible and lofty goal at the outset.
As a practical example, a poor goal would be “do well on my assignment” whereas a better one could be “try my hardest on my assignment." The latter is less ego- and goal-centered and is more reasonably under your control. Finally, learn to laugh at yourself a little—sometimes “finished is better than perfect”! Someone might feel that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” and as a result procrastinates on all those “new tricks."
For example, despite being asked repeatedly to go to therapy with his partner, he may refuse, believing that it’s just not in his nature to talk about his feelings.
Here, as with many cases of procrastination, it can pay to ask sincerely, “What am I really trying to accomplish right now?” and “Why is what I’m trying to do important to me?" Realizing that, deep down, protecting and maintaining his relationship is worth more than momentarily feeling right, he may have the impetus to push past beliefs that nothing will change or he’ll look stupid trying. Reconnecting with this deeper purpose can bring clarity and inspire action.
If this rings true for you, ask yourself if momentarily protecting your ego or avoiding the slight embarrassment of failing or being wrong is worth passing up on your dreams and goals. Do you keep a big bank of embarrassing memories of all the times people around you looked a little silly? If not, then don’t expect that others will remember your slip-ups either! People procrastinate because they have low self-confidence.
According to Dr. Lisa Saulsman and the Center for Clinical Interventions, it’s natural that people shy away from tasks that might expose any weakness or flaw. If you think that you’re generally not that great, you might avoid all situations where you have to apply yourself, be appraised or rated, or have your work looked at by others. The belief that we are fundamentally up to the tasks life throws our way is the root of high self-esteem.
If this doesn’t sound like you, you may have automatically assumed you’ll fail and now are procrastinating on the task because you “know” that doing it will expose your weaknesses to others and be painful for you. If self-belief is low enough, people may stop themselves even from wanting to set goals for themselves, convinced in advance they’d only fail. Unfortunately, this means they never give themselves the opportunity to prove themselves wrong, making this attitude somewhat self-fulfilling.
People with severely low confidence will avoid challenging or pushing themselves and cringe away from criticism or failure. What better way to avoid failure entirely than to not even try in the first place? Someone could start to challenge these limiting beliefs, however, by gently encouraging themselves to take small steps to prove themselves wrong.
Sometimes, even deliberately courting a negative outcome can be strangely liberating—a person deathly afraid of sharing their art may suddenly realize they don’t actually care so much once they get their first dreaded negative reaction. If you have low self-esteem, it may help to journal down all the ways you’ve survived and overcome adversity in the past already. Try to find evidence for a new narrative—one in which you are capable and able to deal with what life throws your way.
People procrastinate because the task is confusing or overwhelming. Often, the barrier is simply that although the alarm bells are blaring in your head—get this done!—you’re not at all clear about how to do that or what steps to take first. So you turn up to the task filled with the desire and motivation to do good work, but you’re confused and have no direction. The thing looks overwhelming. Immediately, your anxiety goes up and your sense of efficacy and confidence goes right down.
Though such a problem isn’t strictly emotional to start with, it soon leaves you with a bunch of unpleasant feelings that can make you spiral out of control. It’s an organizational problem, and this is not something that is ever strictly taught, is it? Here, the solution is not emotional so much as practical and executive. It’s all about carefully dividing tasks up into smaller tasks and completing them in an orderly fashion.
Procrastination can happen when there is a lack of organization in the way a task is approached. Sorting through a task step by step can give you a sense of control and order and give you clear, concrete work to do every time you sit down to tackle it. Here, “laziness” tells a very different story about someone’s thought process. A complicated work presentation you need to compile within two weeks can look overwhelming and lead you to procrastinate.
Instead of reprimanding yourself for being lazy, though, simply take a deep breath and break the thing down. Ask yourself, “What is the one thing I need to do to start moving again?" Just one thing - what you can do in the next five minutes, for example.
Identify separate tasks of researching data, compiling a graph or two, finding images, writing some descriptive text, getting someone to look over the slideshow, adding a list of references or further reading, etc. Don’t worry if you don’t have a 100% clear picture before you begin. Only aim to make it a little clearer and understand your very next step. Focus on what needs to happen instead of the big picture.
Now, you can relax and let your field of attention shrink down to a more manageable single task, one at a time. Set aside some time and work on just one aspect. Adjust as you go. Feeling confused or overwhelmed is not a cause for alarm—it’s simply a little bell inviting you to stop for a moment, reorient yourself to your goals and values, and remember what you were ultimately trying to achieve. What is unnecessary and can be eliminated? What is the core and what is peripheral?
Center yourself and wait a moment. Sometimes giving confusion a little time is all that’s needed to gain some clarity and an idea of what your next step should be. People procrastinate because they’re mentally or physically unwell. Emotional barriers (like fear of failure or not being good enough) and executive barriers (not knowing how to break an overwhelming task down systematically) are two of the most common reasons for the “laziness” that is procrastination.
But there are other barriers too—some of them even invisible to the person themselves. Again, “laziness” takes on a whole different meaning when we can view it through an alternative lens. We might find that we, or others around us, aren’t lazy at all. Untreated anxiety, depression or other mental illness, Adhd, undiagnosed autism, stress, or trauma can hinder the many cognitive processes that need to take place to complete a task. Low confidence and self-esteem can lead to self-sabotage.
Physiologically, it’s obvious that work is more difficult to stick with if a person is sleep-deprived, undernourished, ill, or uncomfortable. Ask if you’re avoiding the task or are just tired, hungry, thirsty, too hot or cold, etc. On this note, it’s worth taking a moment to separate “lazy” from “tired." Sometimes “I don’t have the energy” is actually just code for “I have the energy, but I don’t want to spend it on this." You may find an overachiever calling their genuine exhaustion “laziness."
The socially accepted response to fatigue is to fight against it - drink coffee, push through, and stop whining. But what if we were to force an elite athlete to act in this manner? We would hopefully recognize that rest and recovery are part of the winning equation to be able to push even harder—why should it be any different with our mental energy? You may find your body forcing you to take a break if you won’t heed its polite request for a rest!
Here’s where self-condemnation and blame enter again and have a disastrous effect. We fear inactivity, rest, or quiet contemplation, and so we browbeat ourselves into doing more when we’re tired—or at least making sure we don’t actively enjoy our downtime by piling on guilt when we stop! A little self-awareness and compassion can make the difference. Take a nap and note your feelings toward the task when you’re refreshed and rested.
Give yourself permission to take a walk and do something else, and see if your motivation returns in time. Be honest about whether you’re giving yourself adequate time to sleep and rest. We are not machines, and treating our bodies like they’re not allowed to rest can have dire consequences—not to mention making us less productive anyway. As an example, someone might find they repeatedly have to force themselves through a new project.
They stop and ask, “Is this the most important thing I should be doing right now?” and discover that, in fact, their priority at that moment is not the project but their own rest and well-being. By simply changing your focus from judgment to curiosity, you can start to look at laziness with compassion and empathy and start finding real ways around it. Laziness will seem like a symptom of a bigger problem—one that can always be solved.
Finally, it’s worth noting something else that’s seldom mentioned - if you’re avoiding a task you’ve told yourself you want to do or should do, take a closer look. You might discover that you don’t in fact want to do it or that your motivations are external and superficial. In this case your avoidance is really a sign that the task is not something you’re truly aligned with.
You don’t care, you’re apathetic, and you would rather clean the bathroom for the fifth time than devote your time to this thing. While this isn’t always helpful information, don’t ignore this warning sign about what you care or are passionate about. It seems obvious when you say it deliberately - nobody is intrinsically a failure or wants to be lazy or weak-willed or apathetic. We don’t want to view ourselves that way, and we will engage in mental acrobatics to avoid it.
We all have a desire to work meaningfully toward goals that are important to us. If you find yourself feeling lazy, it’s almost always a question of removing the barriers and identifying what is actually keeping you from motion. Once the barriers are removed, it then becomes a lot easier to realistically develop self-discipline. It’s just about setting yourself up for success rather than continually butting your head against a wall that you cannot identify.
Self-discipline, it’s been said, is choosing between what you want now and what you want most. There is always an opportunity cost, but in truth, the opportunities you are foregoing by acting disciplined aren’t very large—comfort, security, safety, television, gaming, junk food, and so on. Pushing ourselves through our fears, limitations, and bad habits takes energy and is uncomfortable, but is mere discomfort what you will allow to keep you from what you want most?
Takeaways - •When we label ourselves or others as lazy, are we really doing ourselves justice, or is there more to that simple and overused term? What can we learn about simple laziness to defeat it and perhaps set ourselves up for success? •Laziness is not so much of a cause as it is a symptom of emotional or organizational issues that are present within our mindsets.
It’s helpful to view these shortcomings as a series of cause-and-effect actions, because the reasons that we are not acting and not exercising self-discipline are more complex than you might realize. We’re not lazy; we have many psychological barriers that keep us firmly rooted in place.
Take it easy on yourself, because nothing is as simple as “I don’t want to do it, so I won’t!" •The main causes for so-called laziness include fear of judgment and negative emotion, fixed mindsets that make action feel useless, organizational issues that keep you confused and spiraling, and physical or mental deficiencies such as sleep, rest, nutrition, illness, and lack of alignment.
It’s not so much that we need to cure these issues, because that is a tall task without dedicated introspection, but if we are more aware of what drives us to act (or not), then we stand a chance of addressing it on a consistent basis. You may never truly overcome all of those issues, but for our purposes, breaking inertia is the goal. •In the end, whether we are being “lazy” or not, we are putting what we want at the current moment over what we want the most.
We are getting distracted by shiny objects and temporary moments of gratification. And yet, what are we prioritizing at the current moment besides comfort and safety? Are those powerful enough motivators for you to stand between what you want the most? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.
This has been Practical Self-Discipline: Become a Relentless Goal-Achieving and Temptation-Busting Machine (A Guide for Procrastinators, Slackers, and Couch Potatoes) (Live a Disciplined Life Book 5) By Peter Hollins, narrated by russell newton.