How To Prevent Yourself From Being Lazy And Unproductive
If you want to understand how to stop yourself from being lazy, you’ll love this article.
So you want to stop being such a lazy loser? Good choice. This article will show you how. But it’s up to YOU to change. When you change, your life will change. You’ll be better and so will your circumstances.
Humans are naturally pretty lazy. We want the most benefit for the smallest amount of effort. We want instant gratification. Unfortunately, success takes effort. That’s the way it works. You reap what you sow.
This text is short and to the point. No fluff. Sure, I could make it three times as long and drag it out but I know that time is our most precious asset.
How To Prevent Yourself From Being Lazy
You’ve Got To Really Want It
You must truly want it. Not kinda want it. Not think it would be nice, but to truly want it. Do you want to change? Keep reading.
The first step to living the life you want to live is making the decision to. You must commit yourself to the process of building the life you want to lead. In order to do this, you first must know what the life you want looks like.
What do you want? Who do you want to be? What experiences do you want to have? These are important questions you need to spend the time to answer.
One exercise to determine what you want is to imagine what your ideal day would consist of. Answer questions like:
- What time would you wake up?
- Where would you be?
- What’s the very first thing you would do?
- Who would you spend time with?
- What do you want to accomplish?
Find Your Why(s)
After you determine what it’s that you want to be, do, and have, you must find your why(s). In order to constantly put in the efforts essential to get what you want, you must know the reasons why you want what you do.
Not knowing your why(s) is guaranteed to hold you back. You’ll start stuff and never finish. You’ll lose your motivation and energy part way through a project and provide up. Not being solid on your reasons for doing something will virtually inevitably bring you down. Figuring out your whys is key to your success.
In order to find your why(s), you must start asking yourself questions and get to know yourself. Once you really start to get to know yourself, you might be surprised at what you find out. Among other things, our ability to lie to ourselves can really mess us up. You must start being honest with yourself.
Find out what makes you tick. Take personality and psychometric tests. Ask people who know you well questions like what they think your strengths are. Dig deep and get to know yourself better.
Alright, now, ask yourself, “What’s important to me?” Write out your answers. Think about why you want to succeed. To live large? To take care of a loved one? To contribute to charity? To prove someone wrong or right?
When you find your why, you find your motivation. Whenever you hit an obstacle, get in a slump, or feel like quitting, you can look at your why to help you keep moving forward. The concept of the Golden Circle is a helpful concept when thinking about your why. Google it and you’ll learn more about the power of why.
Goal Setting
Learning to set goals and achieve them is a surefire path to success. You can’t hit a target you can’t see and you need to have specific goals in order to accomplish what you want in life.
You can’t just keep your goals in your head. You need to write them down and review them often. You should be looking at your list of goals every day for motivation and clarification. That way, you can all the time ask yourself, “Is what I’m doing right now bringing me closer to my goals?” Then, if the answer is yes, keep it up. If the answer is no, you possibly shouldn’t be doing it.
A good goal setting method is S.M.A.R.T. goals. The smart acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. Your goals need to be specific so you know precisely what you’re going for. You need to be capable to measure your goals so that you can see your progress and adjust accordingly.
You want to make your goals large enough to pull you forward but at the same time they must be realistically attainable. Your goals must have a time frame in which you are to accomplish them, as a deadline will help you working towards your goals and help you measure your progress.
Habit > Willpower
Science has shown us that our willpower is a finite resource. It takes precious resources to make every decision and even more to use willpower. Each day you have a small amount of willpower available to you. Learning to use this little bit of willpower to build habits (that don’t require willpower, they’re automatic) is key to your success.
Schedules, routines, and rituals are powerful ways to change. Creating these will help you build better habits and a better life. Time management is critical as time is our most precious resource. Everyone gets the same amount of time in a day, from beggars to billionaires. It’s what you do with the time that you have that matters.
Creating and optimizing your daily schedules and routines is critical for your success. The most successful people are virtually all the time the ones that spend their time the best (1). It’s beyond the scope of this short guide to walk you through creating your ideal schedule, but it’s something you can experiment with and tweak on your own or using resources like the internet.
An important thing to remember is that no matter how busy you are, you possibly have time that you can be using to better yourself and your life. Even if you must cut out or cut back on something like watching television or playing video games, there’s time that you can be using better. When you start optimizing your daily routines, you’ll start discovering just how much time you can be using to improve your life rather than wasting it.
When you are creating your schedule, don’t forget to allow yourself enough time for sleep, play, and relaxation. Getting enough quality sleep is among the most vital things you can do to maintain your health and sanity.
When you start getting shit done frequently, you’ll find that you possibly sleep a lot better at night and can enjoy your free time far more and without guilt.
Preparing for what’s coming when you’re making changes to your life and habits will help you succeed in making the changes last. Each habit will take 30 days or so to actually lock in and become automatic. Knowing this and what will likely occur during these initial 30 days will help you fight the resistance to change that we all suffer from.
The 30 days naturally fall into three ten-day periods. The first ten days is generally the toughest part. You will struggle to make yourself do your new habit each day. Use your finite amount of willpower each day to be sure you keep up with your new habit.
The next 10-day phase is fighting resistance. You’ll begin to get a little more used to your new habit but still need to fight your natural resistance. It will get easier and ultimately be automatic. Keep this in mind.
The last of the phases is less complicated than the first two. You’ve got some momentum going now and don’t want to mess that up. You’re much closer to the prize of a new habit. There will still be some struggling, but you’re really on your way to the end goal of doing your habit automatically.
Knowing yourself and what’s likely to come is important when you’re beginning to build better habits and a better life.
The Pareto Principle
Using the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, will drastically change how productive and effective you are. If you haven’t heard of the rule, it says that 80% of your results come from 20% of your actions. In order to use the 80/20 rule, you need to analyze and determine what 20% of your efforts are causing 80% of your results and focus your energies on that 20% output.
Pomodoro Technique
One of my favourite tools is the Pomodoro Technique. It’s a straightforward way to focus on a task and get a lot done.
To use the Pomodoro Technique, you settle on a task that you’re going to work on, then you set a timer for 25 minutes. Focus all your mental energies on doing the task for those 25 minutes. After the timer goes off, take a five minute break. This let’s you reset and prevents burnout. Then, you can do another Pomodoro. After doing four Pomodoros, take a longer break, around 15-30 minutes.
Pretty easy, right? This tool is invaluable. You’ll find yourself getting a shit ton done and with far less mental anguish. Just be sure that you set yourself up to be distraction free (2) so that you can get into that optimal state called the flow state.
Take Action
Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Those are your new kick ass tools and techniques to help you stop being lazy and procrastinating. This guide is short and to the point so that you can take these tips and implement them right away. You CAN change for the better and learning is the first step. Take what you’ve learned, take action, and punch procrastination in the face!
