How to overcome laziness? Are we all victims of this built-in survival feature? Does it demand high efforts?
Or is it much simpler to tackle this issue than you think right now?
Why are we lazy and what makes laziness a survival tool?
Less energy you are burning, longer you’ll last.
We are all inherently lazy. Our own brains make sure of that. Because the primary function of your brain is to keep you alive using minimal resources.
Did you know, for example, that a complex thinking process uses 30% of your entire energy potentials? That’s why you feel some unexplainable, immediate exhaustion the moment you lay your eyes on some complex riddle.
Luckily, our developed frontal lobe and neocortical regions allow us to overrule these primitive instincts even when there’s no real need for the action. Instead of just sleeping around between meals, drinks, and sex, we’ll be active doing something other than biting and barking, unlike lions and other predators for example.
How to overcome laziness with what you have right now?
The drive for that, essentially unneeded action is yet another built-in feature that separates us from the other mammals. It’s another perk of our developed brains – extreme sense for competitiveness.
That sense of competitiveness in human beings far exceeds the known display of raw violence in animals. The violence that is common in establishing a higher social ranking.
And it’s exactly this feature that creates extremely successful people.
Approximately 20% of the population is competitive. In 2% of the entire human population, this drive is almost pathological, which, subsequently, enables them to stay on the top of the food chain. It’s those 150–170 million people (~2%) that own 86% of everything this planet has to offer.
You can thus, say that 80% of the entire human population has real chronic issues with moving their asses, not really knowing how to overcome laziness to boost their productivity.
However, we now know that it is possible to “train your will” same as you are training your muscles.
It’s even easier than bodybuilding since there’s no need for extra weights or excess use of energy.
When our neuronal network falls into the state of dissonance, we are using willpower to “restore the system.” It’s the state (dissonance) that exists in the event of having two opposite ideas of the same weight in the same moment. Something we know as the choice – any choice.
You are sitting in front of the TV, enjoying your movie. Suddenly, the anxiety kicks in for seemingly no good reason. You become restless. Still, you are not moving from the couch. There is a struggle in your mind. Should you turn it off or make up an excuse and postpone the productive activity that needs to be done? The choice is wreaking havoc on your neuronal network.
In 80% of all situations, you will postpone. “There’s more than enough time,” you’ll keep saying to yourself. You can keep watching the movie. But in 20% of situations, you’ll turn that damn thing off and do what has to be done.
It’s the power of will that will force you to move from the couch and do something useful.
Now you only need to change the ratio!
How to overcome laziness?
If we set ourselves a simple goal, say, learning the money management, our behavior will change radically.
This new habit will successfully erase the series of bad ones and establish the new, good ones. Same is happening with strict diet regimes or any other activity that requires the power of will.
But for that goal to even exist, there has to be a reason or a motivation. It’s that motivation that acts as the main drive.
For example, people in debt start feeling better after they stop dwelling over their misfortune and devote to better money management. Obese people drop weight and manage their money better once they decide to appear more attractive to other people.
It’s just the matter of personal choice. You may or may not allow laziness to determine the quality of your life. It’s up to you. Because you have the weapon to fight laziness. It’s called the willpower. The one thing that separates you from the rest of the animals on this beautiful planet.
Just pick the activity that requires the willpower and keep doing it until you develop a habit. Ultimately, you’ll change the ratio in your favor.