If You’re Ambitious but Lazy, This Is for You

So, you’re ambitious.

You got big dreams, you want to be successful,

and ultimately you want to live the life you’ve always imagined.

But there’s a problem: you’re lazy.

You know exactly what you should be doing, yet you don’t do it.

This leads to feelings of guilt because deep down,

you know you’re capable of more.

This guilt builds up over days, weeks,

and months until it turns into acceptance.

Then the New Year arrives, and with it, the same goals from last year.

You start off strong, fueled by motivation and a bit of delusion.

But before you know it, procrastination creeps in like that one

relative who always shows up uninvited.

Your lingering procrastination turns into a daily cycle of laziness,

and before you know it, you’ve labeled yourself as a “lazy person.”

So how do we break this cycle?

The Root Cause: Inertia

There is a lot of advice on the internet,

but the majority of it only addresses the symptoms,

like deleting social media or removing distractions.

While these may help in the short term,

they fail to address the real issue.

The root cause behind procrastination

can be summed up in one word: Inertia.

In physics, inertia is the tendency for objects at rest to stay at rest,

and objects in motion to stay in motion unless acted upon

by an external force.

Getting started on any task, no matter how small,

requires an initial push and some amount of energy

to overcome the resting state of inertia.

This precisely is the issue: we make this initial push so big

and difficult in our minds that instead,

we just avoid the task entirely and distract ourselves with cheap,

dopamine-inducing activities.

To break procrastination, we need to break inertia.

Here are two ways to do this.

1. Reduce the Stakes

Getting started is the most difficult part,

so make this as easy as possible by reducing the stakes

and taking the smallest step forward.

For example, if you tell yourself,

“I need to sit down and complete my 5,000-word essay,”

the inertia is too strong because the stakes are so high.

But instead, if you tell yourself,

“I’m only going to write 50 words,”

the feeling of inertia is much lower.

Now it is pretty easy to get started without needing

to rely on willpower or discipline.

2. The Two-Minute Rule

If you don’t feel like doing the work,

just tell yourself you’ll do it for two minutes

and then stop should you want to.

For example, if you don’t feel like cleaning your room,

put on a song, clean your room, and stop when the music stops.

The best part is that usually, you’ll continue longer than two minutes,

or you’ll end up writing more than 50 words.

This is because objects in motion stay in motion.

Once we get started, we start gaining momentum.

Initially, it’s like pushing a ball uphill,

but once we pass the point of inertia, it’s downhill from there.

That’s why it’s important that the initial push is small and easy.

Conclusion

You can apply these two methods to any area of your

life to overcome procrastination,

whether that’s getting to the gym, working on your side hustle,

or maintaining your relationships.

As Martin Luther King once said:

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”