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Laziness Can Indicate Success

Sometimes I still have lazy days where I get next to no productive work done at all. It used to bug the hell out of me but lately I’ve taken a different perspective on things and I have come to see that laziness does indicate some good things.

My life changed deeply when I realised that the reason most people struggle against themselves so much is because they seek to go against very deep instinctive behaviours that evolved to protect us and to keep us alive. By understanding our survival responses and how they protect us by thwarting us from doing impossible or improbable things we can turn things around and work in harmony with them. You can read the full outcome of that realisation and its consequences for understanding how the mind works in this whitepaper: how-to-operate-your-brain-perfectly

In countries with advanced economies most of us are fortunate enough not to live in desperate circumstances of survival where life can hang in the balance with alarming frequency. Generally speaking, we make great and strenuous efforts when we feel under threat and desperate. If we have managed our lives sufficiently well that we have a safe environment to live in, shelter, water, food, warmth, entertainment and so on then, from a survival point of view, we are bang on-track and doing marvellously well. The absolute need to do more is not a practical necessity and whilst our higher consciousness might be wrestling with bigger desires our body and the rest of our nervous system is not. It is quite content to kick-back and take things easy. From a survival point of view that extends the success that you have currently created. It takes advantage of excellent circumstances and it actually discourages doing more because that entails burning up resources and taking higher risks. Evolution has created us as beings that favour a low-risk approach. Normally, only desperate circumstances favour taking a high-risk. If we want to we can artificially create desperation either in good ways that benefit us, or in bad ways that bring ruination.

Feeling lazy can indicate that large areas of your life are more-or-less under control and that your basic needs are well-catered for. As with many characteristics, when taken to their extreme, they can have opposite outcomes (e.g. persistence taken to extremes can become obstinacy in the face of reality). With laziness the extreme outcome is high-effectiveness and productivity because you seek to get the maximum gain with the least amount of effort. If you can achieve this state then I applaud that because increased productivity is basically what has lifted humankind from hand-to-mouth existence to the wonderfully elevated levels of material wealth and technological benefit that we receive today. The basic formula for getting wealthy is to leverage your time and resources through increased productive gains.

So sometimes, feeling lazy is an indicator of success. Revel in that for a moment – you deserve it! However, if you feel ill-at-ease when loafing around it might well come from the fact that actually you are procrastinating and that’s a very bad thing because it indicates inner conflict from attempting to do things that you don’t currently have the capability to fulfil. Doing the impossible quickly makes us feel bad so guard carefully against that. This link takes you to an article that goes into more detail about dealing effectively with procrastination.