Laziness Does Not Exist
Laziness Does Not Exist
100% agree.
I would also add our Individualistic and Puritanical culture to the mix of causes. We're told all of your problems are 100% in your control, and that if you're not working 100% of the time that you're a worthless piece of shit that doesn't deserve to live, that no structural issues exist, that there's nothing you can't 100% overcome with enough individual determination. It's so unbelievably toxic and unhealthy, and causes people to not only not have sympathy or empathy for others, but to see empathy as a negative trait, as a weakness.
Your perspective on your problems is 100% yours, not it itself.
Sorta, this kind of thinking can only take you so far before the dissonance destroys your mental health.
Additionally, not everyone believes that just your mental state is yours to control. Many folks justify their own wealth by believing that they deserve everything they have and that people who have less by extension deserve their poverty.
This is pretty interesting. Reminds me of the ADHD posts on here where people get their meds right and are like "I have superpowers now. I just think about doing something and I do it."
I would like to add something else: laziness and relaxation are totally fine as a part of your life. Athletes know that how you recover from training is as important as the training you do. They literally schedule rest days, and rest periods in each day. If you want to do anything well, you have to have time away from it to recover.
Another succinct quote: “The brain learns during the breaks.” Repeating the same thing uninterrupted in order to learn it won’t help.
What this comes down to and what is ultimately the better question, why are so many people unable to sympathizes with others?
Either they think they’re better than everyone else, or they hate themselves and project ?
They're just brainwashed by puritanical, capitalist "work ethic". A lot of people who have nothing and work their way up by engaging with systems that steal their labor, in turn see those systems as good because they're ahead of where they were before, without understanding that those systems intentionally create situations of poverty in order to drive disadvantageous labor participation.
If you’re laying out in the freezing cold, drinking some alcohol may be the only way to warm up and get to sleep
That is a popular myth. The truth is the opposite.
The feeling of warmth is the heat leaving your body and the receptors on your skin are detecting it. Meanwhile your core temperature is going down.
Then perhaps a better phrasing is "may be the only way to feel warm and get to sleep", even if it doesn't actually warm you.
Regardless, it is a bad decision by the homeless person and an example which a better informed author would have left out. Insomnia is less harmful than hypothermia.
It isn't that alcohol doesn't really warm you, it is worse than that. It actually makes your body core colder while giving the illusion of the opposite.
Maybe they do get warm then get the last sleep they'll ever need.
The solution, instead, is to look for what is holding the procrastinator back. If anxiety is the major barrier, the procrastinator actually needs to walk away from the computer/book/word document and engage in a relaxing activity. Being branded “lazy” by other people is likely to lead to the exact opposite behavior.
Often, though, the barrier is that procrastinators have executive functioning challenges — they struggle to divide a large responsibility into a series of discrete, specific, and ordered tasks. Here’s an example of executive functioning in action: I completed my dissertation (from proposal to data collection to final defense) in a little over a year. I was able to write my dissertation pretty easily and quickly because I knew that I had to a) compile research on the topic, b) outline the paper, c) schedule regular writing periods, and d) chip away at the paper, section by section, day by day, according to a schedule I had pre-determined.
Yeah, this matches my experience from when I used to tutor people. They tended to be below grade level and would fall victim to a fear of failure, since their self-esteem has taken hits from struggling with the work, in their mind the failure would be confirmation that they're stupid and would make them not want to try. Getting them to change their mentality resulted in more productive sessions going forward and accomplishing that required addressing the root causes of their anxiety and/or skill deficits.
Fantastic article, and I have the full book on hold at my library now :)
I make high tech stuff but had a 40% attendence rate and was terrible in school. I've always loved learning.
A lot of really good points on this, and I mostly agree. But I do go to university with a guy who is actively lazy: if there's a choice of spending 10 minutes on a task to do it properly or 30 seconds on it to do it shittily, he'll do the 30 second version every damned time because it's "less effort". He's a nightmare on group projects. We don't give him any tasks where it matters if the result is good anymore.
That sounds like a rough person to have to work with, but I think that's more accurately described as a mismatch between values and priorities. He probably feels his time is more valuable than receiving a good grade. Well, either that or the idea of taking longer to create better quality is just undesirable to him for some reason.
I dunno. It's weird. The guy's absolutely convinced he's going to walk into a job after graduation because he "looks the part", like employers are just going to look at his hipster style and not care that his portfolio is a dumpster fire. He's got the laziness of someone who was smart enough to coast through school without putting in any effort, and hasn't woken up to the fact that a degree takes more than that.
I'm lazy as fuck.
love that for you
I just need time to go 10% as fast as it's going now...
this post inspired me to request a very needed deadline extension for the first time
Thanks, this is a great article. It completely tallies with my experience teaching higher ed as well.
I wish I could give this person a hug. Every day feels like a struggle to fit into what I'm supposed to be. It's exhausting for me, and I'm overall doing okay compared to many others. I can't imagine how hard it must be for other people.
I wish more people were understanding, and society didn't put so much strain on everyone.
Related podcast broadcast this week on Radio National Australia https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/latenightlive/is-free-will-an-illusion-/103702968