Posted by john on September 9th, 2006 — Posted in The Pain of Laziness
I disagree with Fred Gratzon, in his article “Laziness is a Good Thing,” who said, “If someone is lucky enough to be blessed with the gift of laziness, he or she should definitely enjoy it and exploit it. It is a quality to be coddled, nurtured, and developed. If correctly utilized, laziness is a one way ticket to great success.”
Fred’s reasoning is that being lazy gives you incentive to want to find ways of doing things that are faster, easier, cheaper, and more efficient.
However, where his reasoning is incorrect is when it comes to actually implementing these better ways of doing things.
You see, you still have to do something. It is only by taking action that you can reach your goals.
Laziness is a terrible thing for those who suffer from it. When you wake up in the morning with zero motivation and no energy to get anything started, it’s an incredibly depressing feeling.
Just a few minor examples:
- You can’t have a delicious meal because it requires energy to cook the ingredients and follow the recipe.
- You can’t make your bed, wash your clothes, or clean your floors because you lack the motivation (and you feel bad about it). Your house is filthy, and you feel too tired to straighten it up.
- You have less money than all the people you know, since they’re able to work a full day while you can’t.
- If you’ve got a job, you call in sick too often and just generally shirk on the job. People know you as “the lazy guy you can’t depend on.”
- If you’re in school, you can’t do a good job on your homework or maintain your focus to study.
When you’re lazy, you can’t get anything accomplished because you can’t keep your focus, you can’t make yourself care enough about it, and you have trouble paying attention to what you need to.
Imagine a life where you had no energy to do anything.
It’s depressing and miserable.
Nobody enjoys being lazy. People find happiness in working and accomplishing things. University researchers in fact have “found that working hard to reach a target was more fulfilling,” adding, “From our research the people who were most active got the most joy. It may sound tempting to relax on a beach, but if you do it for too long it stops being satisfying.” (See the BBC story “Why hard work makes people happy.”)
By the way, even though I’m not a fan of being lazy, Fred’s blog, The Lazy Way to Success, is highly interesting and informative and I recommend it. You’ll learn such things as entrepreneurship, how to get rich, and how to overcome obstacles.
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Posted by john on September 8th, 2006 — Posted in Cures For Laziness
Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, didn’t create his documentaries for the money, but instead because of his lifelong passion for animals. He was “a dedicated naturalist who was actively committed to highlighting the plight of threatened species, and championing the cause of conservation. Steve Irwin was a special person whose energy and enthusiasm encouraged a whole new audience to better understand and become involved in conservation and science.” (Source: Time.com’s Obituary of Irwin)
That, then, is one cure for laziness:
Discover Something You Love Doing…
And Then Become Obsessed With It.
Steve Irwin was completely genuine. He truly cared about what he did. An Australian newspaper last April revealed that Irwin quietly lobbied the Australian government to cancel plans to make a crocodile hunting industry for tourists in the Northern Territory. He wasn’t motivated by fame — only to help the crocs that he loved. (The only way the newspaper discovered it was from Freedom of Information requests.)
Irwin made millions, but lived in a modest house and drove an old jeep. He plowed most of his earnings into his Australia Zoo, the Wildlife Warriors organization he founded, and toward buying up tracts of land solely for nature conservation. Of course, there isn’t anything wrong with being motivated by money, but there’s nothing remarkable about it either. And wouldn’t be better to make money doing something you love, rather than something you have to endure?
Steve Irwin said, “My belief is that what comes across on the television is a capture of my enthusiasm and my passion for wildlife.”
If there’s something for you and me to learn from the example of the Crocodile Hunter, it is to pick a cause to live for, above and beyond just making money. What is something you could become obsessed with?
That way you’ll enjoy your work — and imagine, if you could wake up every day with just 10% of the passion that Irwin had, then any laziness you may have been feeling will simply vanish… since you’ll have something to live for and get excited about.
Question: As an excercise, let’s try this. Let’s say you’ve made enough money to live off your investments for the rest of your life. What would you then do with the extra money you make? Would you put it into buying up land for conservation? Would you donate it to cancer research? To college scholarships? To something else?
Post your comment to let me know!
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Posted by john on September 7th, 2006 — Posted in The Pain of Laziness
I have had trouble for much of my life with laziness, and if you’re reading this site, I bet you’re having that trouble yourself.
The goal of this site is to overcome laziness so that you (and I) can become productive and achieve what we want in life. We’ll examine the pain that being lazy causes, the happiness it prevents us from feeling, and achievements it robs from us.
And then we’ll eradicate the laziness.
In time, as you read and apply what you learn, and then you’re no longer lazy, the sky will be the limit.
“Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all easy; and he that riseth late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night; while laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him.”
- Benjamin Franklin (Source: CoreCharacter: Idleness Is The Beginning Of All Vices)
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