Accept the Fact That Maybe You’re Just Lazy
Stop using the word “lazy” as a pejorative.
Self-help writers love to reassure us that we’re not lazy. Maybe you’re afraid, and that fear is paralyzing you from action. Maybe you’re understimulated, which leaves you unmotivated. Maybe you’re suffering from the pandemic doldrums, making you exhausted from self-isolation.
Procrastinating my work, as I frequently and lazily do, I read all those stories with a niggling sense of unease. None of them really fit me. I am motivated. I am perfectly stimulated. I’m not particularly afraid. And yet, I frequently prefer not to work even when I can. If I can skip work to instead read, swim, eat or play video games, I will.
I began to worry if I was actually, secretly, horribly lazy. I took a super scientific quiz to determine if I was lazy — featuring questions like “do you prefer a hot, long bath, or a quick shower?” and “how many hours do you sleep on average?” — and received the devastating result:
I wallowed (maybe even lazily) in pity. Then I thought: why is that such a bad thing?
