- The concept of “laziness” is an inadequate way to think about the dynamics underlying someone’s difficulty with motivation, participation, energy, and engagement.
- This is because a person’s “inherent laziness” becomes our explanation for why they disengage from something we believe they “should” be able to engage with. When we use this term we steer ourselves away from curiosity that would help us dig into whatever may be causing someone’s disengagement.
- Calling ourselves or others “lazy” is often a tactic we use to elicit shame or express disapproval when we don’t otherwise understand someone’s disengagement from something we (or they) believe would benefit them.
- Sometimes we say it in the hopes of stirring up motivation, or in the hopes of giving ourselves permission to give up and accept (with some level of resentment) the disengagement of ourselves or others.
- In all my work with my clients over the years I have yet to find a situation where “laziness” was truly an adequate explanation for the complex and addressable dynamics contributing to “laziness”.
- Here are a handful of examples of what may actually be happening for someone when they fall into a pattern we might label as “laziness”. There are more possible examples today’s comments, and many more possibilities out there. See the full content of today’s post for further explanation as to why this concept is damaging and unhelpful.
- Fear can shut down motivation and energy. We can disengage with something even if (on some level) we want to participate in it if it intimidates us, or if it has the potential to embarrass us or leave us feeling like a failure. Sometimes we’re not connected to that fear, and finding the fear can take some digging.
- Hopelessness can shut any and all of us down if it gets too powerful. We don’t believe it will make a difference, or there is a point in our participation so we shut down and disengage.
- We over-use coping mechanisms like distraction or avoidance when we are overwhelmed by a topic or activity we (or others) are “supposed” to engage with (i.e. procrastination). This can often happen if we don’t have strong time management skills or realistic expectations of ourselves and our capacities.
- Sometimes we aren’t interested in the things others (or we ourselves) tell us we “should” be interested in. We can build whole lives around expectations without ever really connecting with our genuine and authentic interests and motivation. This is often the case in “extreme” laziness as someone starts to shut down and pull away from a life they don’t really want to be living.
I consider the concept and term “Lazy” to be unproductive, limiting, and damaging. When we use a term like “Laziness” about ourselves or others we attribute “the problem” to someone’s personality, often leaving them feeling helpless, ashamed, and inadequate. This way of thinking about someone’s disengagement often creates an overwhelming and insurmountable barrier to understanding and addressing the underlying dynamics that create the “lazy” behavior.
When we assign “laziness” to a person or behavior I think it’s a sign we’ve hit an empathic wall with ourselves and others; we’ve given up, gotten frustrated, and so we look for a way to say “it’s out of my hands, it’s who I am (or they are)”. In attributing problems in ourselves or others to concepts like “laziness” we inadvertently miss huge opportunities to understand and address underlying issues because we’ve given up and determined its an issue of willpower.
Often when we use this term it’s a reflection on both our struggles with the situation and our inability to understand why we or others have disengaged from something that logically feels like it makes sense to participate in. It is natural to be frustrated and angry when things don’t make sense to us, but we short-change ourselves, others, and the situation when we think of ourselves and other’s in-terms of laziness. When we assign the lack of engagement to a person’s character or “way of being”, we generally stop getting curious about internal and external factors that may be interfering with someone’s participation.
For most of us “lazy” is a wall. It’s a road to nowhere.
In moments when we are tempted to use the word “lazy”, I would instead encourage us to bring as much curiosity as we can to the situation. If we can accept that someone must have a valid reason for not engaging with a topic, then our mission becomes to search, find, understand, and address that reason. Sometimes we must be relentless in that search, and in our faith that there must be something valid underlying something that otherwise doesn’t make sense.
Comments:
- I mention character assassination in the post. Read this post on fair fighting to learn more about what it is and why to avoid it.
- This post taps into how our lives can be ruled by “shoulds”, To learn more about how to disempower the “shoulds” see my post on acceptance.
- I think of terms like “lazy” in the same way I think of a judgment. I have a whole series on understanding the problems with, identifying and deconstructing judgments.
- Continued examples to help you start getting curious about what may be under “laziness” in yourself or a loved one in your life:
- Sometimes we don’t know how to motivate ourselves. What motivates one person may be different from what motivates another, which means even members of the same family may need to find different tactics to get themselves going on something. If you are stuck try a different motivational tactic.
- Many of us are living day to day with histories of relational trauma that deeply effect motivation and energy. Many people with histories of relational trauma don’t know it.
- Secondary gains are a real thing. Sometimes we are inert because action would mean making a sacrifice or losing something that we otherwise value .
- Sometimes we aren’t listening closely enough to our limits (which are often not where we want them to be) or differentiating between our shoulds and wants.
- Exhaustion and unrealistically high expectations shut us down and interfere with potential. Sometimes the energy or capacity we feel we “should” have is not the energy we actually have. We label ourselves as “lazy” when we don’t meet expectations we hold for ourselves, but sometimes those expectations are the problem themselves. Learn more about how change happens to help with setting realistic expectations for yourself.