“I’ll just do that thing tomorrow,” said an overly-optimistic you, 5 days ago. Famous last words, right? Because, spoiler alert: You still haven’t done the thing!
In all fairness, you probably had good intentions. Life can be incredibly hectic, and sometimes it feels easier to put less important tasks on the back burner for a day or two. But in some cases, “a day or two” can snowball into a week or two… which can then avalanche into a year or two.
Now, you’re here, searching for wisdom on how to stop being lazy and feeling unmotivated.
The good news is, if you’re searching for how to overcome laziness, you’ve already taken the first step. In this blog, we’re diving into everything you need to know about laziness. We’re covering how laziness affects your life, why you might be feeling unmotivated and ways to stop being lazy.
How Laziness Affects Your Life
Every person on this planet has a bad habit (or habits) they would like to quit. From negative self-talk to laziness and procrastination, there’s probably something that your life would be better off without. Giving in to these bad habits is like giving in to the temptation to eat a whole tub of ice cream in one sitting: It might feel good at the time, but it definitely won’t feel good tomorrow.
That’s how laziness and procrastination work, right? You put off whatever feels time-consuming, difficult or stressful until the next day. But once the next day comes, your momentary escape from responsibilities leads to even more stress. You ultimately feel bad, guilty or frustrated for procrastinating on tasks, which makes you even less likely to get them done.
The more you shrug off your responsibilities, the more they pile up. And as your to-do list keeps growing, the more frustrated you feel—which makes the comfort and bliss of procrastination even more alluring. Sound familiar yet?
This is the vicious procrastination cycle. And it’s a cycle that only you can break. If you don’t, laziness will eventually take a toll on your life, both personally and professionally. You will stunt your growth and never live up to your full potential. You will never get around to achieving the goals you set for yourself, even the ones that you know could make you a happier person.
Over time, laziness and a lack of motivation can impact your self-esteem, confidence and momentum in life and business. For the sake of your long-term mental health, you must learn where that lazy attitude is stemming from.
Why You Need to Discover the Root Source of Laziness
Remember, laziness is a cycle. Every cycle has to start somewhere. If you’re prone to procrastinate the day away, especially when it comes to your career or personal development, take a step back and ask yourself why. Why do you keep putting off responsibilities? Why do you avoid completing your tasks? Ask yourself the following questions:
Are you passionate about what you do?
Are you happy with your current life?
If the answer to either of these questions is no, it can explain why you’ve been feeling unmotivated. Motivation is hard to come by without passion. Overcoming laziness isn’t about memorizing time management techniques or limiting your distractions. If you’re not passionate about your job or lifestyle, you won’t be motivated to succeed. Instead, the answer is to find what truly makes you happy!
If you’re not satisfied with where you are in life right now, it’s up to you to change that.Your laziness, procrastination and other bad habits won’t change until you do. So, ask yourself: What’s your dream job? What’s your ultimate goal in life? Find your passions and follow them with your whole heart.
You might not be able to achieve your goals overnight. However, once you recognize success-halting patterns, you can begin to take steps in the right direction. With your passions guiding you, you can renew your motivation and work on kicking laziness to the curb.
How to Stop Being Lazy and Unmotivated with 15 Success Habits
If you’re not happy with where you stand in life right now, resist the urge to sit on your butt and let life pass you by. Instead, go out there and create the life you deserve! Take it from Dean Graziosi, who said, “By shifting certain habits in your life, you will allow abundance and prosperity to flow to you in ways that might seem impossible at this moment.”
Learn how to stop being lazy, improve your motivation and invite abundance into your life with these 15 success habits.
1. Be Kind to Yourself
It’s common to beat yourself up when you feel you’ve been acting lazy or feeling unmotivated. In fact, it can be tempting to act extra hard on yourself in hopes that your negative self-talk will push you to take action. While that might work sometimes, more often than not, negative thoughts just lead to feelings of guilt, frustration and failure. And where does that take you except back to the couch?
When you beat yourself up over bad habits, you ultimately make yourself feel even more unmotivated. You might ask yourself if the task is even worth it, or worse, if you’re even worth it. But of course you’re worth it! And it’s time you treat yourself with the same kindness you would grant other people.
To start changing your habits for the better, begin with how you treat yourself. This is not to say that you should make excuses for your laziness or procrastination. Rather, you must allow yourself to change your situation—without any unnecessary negativity involved. It’s crucial to maintain a positive mindset to implement these healthy habits.
2. Find Your “Why” and Remind Yourself Daily
A lack of motivation often stems from a lack of purpose. If you feel like you’ve lost sight of your purpose, reconnect with your “why.” Your “why” is what pushed you to research tips to reduce your laziness in the first place. It’s what’s driving you to accomplish your goals and make a better life for yourself. Your “why” is your greater purpose in life.
Right now, your “why” is buried beneath hours of laziness and procrastination.You must find your “why” and remind yourself what you’re working towards long-term. Maybe you want financial freedom or a better life for those you love. Whatever your unique “why” is, use it as fuel when you begin to feel unmotivated. And the next time laziness strikes, remind yourself of why you need to keep moving forward.
3. Practice Positive Self-Talk with Affirmations
After a few days of neglecting your to-do list, it can be tempting to give in to negative self-talk. You might feel silly for letting work pile up or be angry with yourself for losing sight of your “why.” You might even call yourself some less-than-nice names and beat yourself up over it. But like we mentioned in Habit #1, the first trick to feeling more motivated is to be kind to yourself!
Fortunately, you can help change your internal conversations from grim to great using positive self-talk. Positive self-talk can be a massive motivator to get yourself out of bed and ready to take on the day. One of the best ways to use self-talk to get into a positive mindset is with daily affirmations.
Affirmations are short statements you repeat to yourself each day, such as “I will be productive” or “I will not give in to bad habits.” You can say them out loud, chant them to yourself or write them down in your journal. When you fully believe in your affirmations, you begin to take them as facts. That will help to silence the negative thoughts causing your lack of motivation.
Try confidence affirmations to bulk up your self-esteem when you begin to lose steam during the day. Or select one of these abundance affirmations to get into a money-making mindset and resist being lazy. No matter which affirmations you choose, keep your positive self-talk alive by believing in them (and yourself) 100%.
4. Create a Morning Routine that Primes You for Success
When the screech of your alarm clock interrupts the warmth of your bed, lazy tendencies and a lack of motivation can follow close behind. After all, can’t you just hit that snooze button and tackle your to-do list tomorrow? No! Ditch those bad habits with a morning routine that primes you for success.
There’s no one-size-fits-all to morning routines. What gets you excited for the day ahead may not be the same as what excites someone else. The trick is to find what works best for you. Like Dean says about his ‘Win Every Day’ morning routine, “Don’t think of it as a ritual or a chore. Think of your morning routine differently… as setting up your day with next-level confidence.”
Gain that confidence by mapping out an action plan at the start of each day. Maybe that means silencing your phone notifications or not checking your email first thing in the morning, so you can spend that time focusing on your affirmations. Or maybe you can start your day like Dean, with a green drink and a healthy dose of exercise.
It doesn’t matter how you set up your morning routine. Just choose whatever makes you feel good and prepares you for the day ahead, and you’ll start the day on the right foot.
5. Redefine Your Daily Schedule
With your “next-level confidence” morning routine in hand, it’s time to work out the remaining kinks in your daily schedule. If you’re searching for how to stop being lazy, there’s a good chance your schedule doesn’t benefit you as much as it could. Maybe you don’t stick to it very often, or maybe you don’t have a daily schedule at all.
This is a problem. Without an established schedule, important tasks tend to get put off until the next day… and the next day, and the day after that.
Improve your time management skills by establishing a basic daily schedule. Ask yourself when you’re most productive—whether it’s early in the morning or later in the afternoon—and schedule your tasks around that. Block your time, so you wind up at your desk or in front of your computer when you feel most productive. This way, it won’t feel like pulling teeth when it’s time to get work done.
Also, be sure to map out times for lunch, breaks and family time. It’s easy to feel lazy or unmotivated if you skip meals or don’t take time to rest. So pencil in breaks and tend to your needs! This ensures you can be ready to rock and roll when it’s time to work.
6. Get What Matters Most Done First
Something most people don’t talk about is how intimidating it can be to accomplish important tasks. They’re the first things you think about in the morning and your last thoughts before bed, yet you’re still unmotivated to get them done. You become so wrapped up in where to finally begin that it seems easier to not even start the task altogether.
If there’s one important task hanging over your head right now, make it a point to get it done first thing in the morning. When you do what matters most first, you set a positive tone for the rest of your day—even the rest of your week! That small win will keep you motivated to stay on a productive path.
It’s also important to remember that completing all of your crucial responsibilities first means you won’t end up burning the midnight oil to finish lingering tasks. By better using the early hours of your day, you can do whatever you wish with your evening hours. So, if you start feeling lazy around 4 PM, you can close your computer with confidence.
7. Break Large Tasks into Small Goals
While we’re on the topic of doing what matters most first, it’s also key to learn how to break large tasks into more manageable tasks. Large tasks will always appear intimidating on the surface. But by breaking large important tasks into smaller tasks, you create actionable goals that you can make headway on each day.
Think of it this way: One of the most important tips for goal-setting is to make your goals reasonable. This means you should be able to logically complete your goal in a fair time frame. For example, it’s not reasonable to expect yourself to complete a 40-page report in one day. In fact, a goal that unreasonable can cause you to lose motivation and choose laziness instead.
Instead, break that large report into smaller chunks you can chip away at each day. By turning that monstrous task into smaller tasks, you won’t feel overwhelmed and resort to procrastinating. Smaller tasks allow for more wins throughout the week, which can motivate you to stop being lazy once and for all.
8. Allow for Short Breaks
The reality is, no one can be all work, all the time. When you schedule a full workday from 9 to 5 with no breaks in between, you set yourself up for failure. Instead, set more manageable standards for yourself by allowing short breaks throughout the day.
As you establish your goals for the day, remember to pencil in some breathing time. For instance, set a recurring 10-minute break you can use to fill your water bottle, grab a snack or check your email. If you prefer, you can use those minutes to bask in your laziness and do nothing at all! Then, once the 10-minute break is over, be prepared to jump back into work focused and ready to execute on your goals.
9. Limit Distractions with Awareness Alarms
How often does laziness lead to hours scrolling on social media or browsing your Amazon wish list? If we had to guess, feeling unmotivated has caused an unplanned Netflix-binge more often than you’d like to admit. When you feel lazy and unmotivated, you look for any excuse to delay working—and those excuses often come in the form of distractions.
To tackle this issue, you must first learn which distractions cause you to procrastinate. Then, eliminate your access to those things. For example, turn off your phone’s notifications or use site or app blockers to limit your access to social media. For an additional boost, set “awareness alarms” throughout your workday.
Awareness alarms work just like regular alarms. The only catch is that instead of ringing at one set time, they go off randomly throughout the day. The purpose of these alarms is for you to become more aware of where you dedicate your time as you work.
When an awareness alarm goes off, pause and notice what you’re doing in that moment. Are you on social media, or are you working? Is what you’re doing productive? Over time, you’ll learn to avoid the distractions that have been adding to your laziness.
10. Gamify Your Tasks and Give Yourself Rewards
We’re all kids at heart, right? And kids love games! So, when you feel lazy or unmotivated, challenge yourself to turn your most tedious tasks into games. Take completing paperwork, for example. Paperwork isn’t fun. But what if you created a scoring system that rewarded you for completing the paperwork as quickly as possible?
If you finish your first task in a half-hour, you can take a 10-minute break. If you complete two tasks in 40 minutes, you can order your favorite meal for dinner or treat yourself to a personal coffee date.
Regardless of whatever reward or game style you choose, make it a point to create unique challenges that push you to see your tasks through a different lens. This can make even the dull, small things an enjoyable part of your day.
11. Get Rid of Clutter (Physically and Mentally)
A messy desk. A cluttered home. A brain overwhelmed with thoughts. When your life is too jam-packed with things, you just want to shut down and be lazy for the day. Resist the temptation to give in to laziness by decluttering your physical and mental spaces.
Begin with your physical space. What items on your desk or in your work area no longer serve you? Which items do nothing but clutter up your space? Organize the essential items, like paperwork and computer supplies, and put them somewhere tidy but out of immediate focus. Then, gather the outdated or unnecessary items, and toss them in the trash can.
Next, move along to your mental space. For this step, it’s helpful to have your journal or a piece of paper and a pen on hand. Then, ask yourself some honest questions. What’s been weighing heavily on your mind? What’s been distracting you or making you feel lazy? Write these out in your journal. Sometimes, just getting these ideas out of your head and onto paper can be enough to give you some relief.
12. Dismiss the Fear of Failure…
One of the biggest causes of laziness is a fear of failure. The thought of messing up or embarrassing yourself can hold you back from truly pursuing your dreams. But do you think one of the habits of successful people is to stay in their comfort zone? No! Successful people push past their fears to face failure head-on.
The fear of failure is simply a roadblock to productivity. If you let it, it will keep you stuck in the same spot. Instead, look at failure as a positive. Frame failure as a lesson and watch how much you can learn and grow. When you embrace failure and the lessons that come with it, you become one step closer to making your dream a reality.
13. …And the Need for Perfection
When you let go of the fear of failure, you also need to let go of the need to be a perfectionist. You’re setting yourself up for disaster if your two options in life are: 1) Do everything perfectly, or 2) Never do anything at all.
When you find yourself feeling this way, something in your mindset needs to shift. In life, everyone needs to start somewhere. Not taking the first step to your goals because you will only settle for perfection means you will never make headway on your dreams. In the long run, your desire for perfectionism will ultimately stunt your growth.
Ask yourself where this need for perfection stems from. Are you comparing your life to someone else’s? If so, stop! You have your purpose, and they have theirs. Do you think they do everything perfectly every time? Of course not! Again, failure is a lesson. As long as you stay true to your passions in life, you will always be on the perfect path.
14. Surround Yourself with Motivated People
Successful people surround themselves with successful people. That’s because successful people are motivated and passionate, and they encourage their friends to be the same. On the flip side, lazy people tend to surround themselves with other lazy people. That’s because it’s easier to fit in with other unmotivated people who won’t criticize you for not following your dream.
A word to the wise: Lazy people are not the people to surround yourself with long-term. Allowing these people into your life will negatively impact your motivation—because if they’re not trying either, why should you? Instead, put yourself in a motivated headspace with like-minded peers. Seek out motivational podcasts, books and forums to create a support system that will hold you accountable for your goals.
15. Take Care of Your Personal Needs (Sleep, Exercise & Self-Care)
There is no finish line for self-improvement. You should always push yourself to be the best version of yourself you can be. And in order to be your best self, you need to take care of your personal needs. Never underestimate the importance of proper sleep, good meals, exercise and self-care.
Even more, never think it’s lazy for you to call it quits after working 10+ hours on end. Stopping work late at night to finally get some rest isn’t lazy—it’s human! Always take care of your body and your mind, and listen when they truly need a break. The rest will fall into place with hard work and a good mindset.
Stop Being Lazy Today—Like, Actually TODAY!
Now is the time to start making actionable changes in your life. And by “now,” we mean RIGHT NOW, today! It takes a bit of self-discipline, but it will be worth it in the end. So, stop succumbing to laziness and pursue your dreams! You have the time; you just need to seize it! The next time you feel your laziness creeping in, use one (or 5!) of these 15 tips to spark your passion and stop feeling unmotivated.
Text Dean your favorite tip to overcome laziness at 480-400-9019.
Your text will go straight to his personal cell—and he can’t wait to hear from you!
