Lazy people make excuses to take any real action in their lives.

Lazy people are also the first to give up when the going gets tough.

It’s not possible…

I just don’t have the right mindset…

I haven’t got the time…

These are some of the most common excuses behind the lazy mindset.

Let’s understand what makes an individual accustomed to a sluggish lifestyle.

WHY AM I SO LAZY?

Every hardworking individual on the planet has had their share of lazy days. It’s inherently a passive trait for us as our ancestors were all about conserving energy.

It’s easier to sleep than to workout at the gym. It’s easier to order in fast food than it’s to make your own food. It’s easier to accept failure than it’s to climb the ladder of success.

All these choices demonstrate how humans sacrifice their health and professional goals to accept the convenient road of inactivity.

Evolution of Laziness in Humans

To understand why we become lazy, it’s critical to understand how laziness developed in the first place.

According to Psychology Today, laziness is the product of the modern world. In pre-historic times, laziness would have meant the difference between life and death.

Nomadic humans were forced to scavenge for their daily food. They had to survive the harsh conditions of the climate and had to fight off predators.

In short, their energy was a precious resource that was used only for practical reasons like hunting, foraging, and survival.

Do you think a lazy person could survive in such perilous conditions?

The modern world is a place of convenience. Food is obtained via contemporary means like food delivery services and supermarkets.

Harsh conditions are made easier with the help of electronics like Air conditioners in summers and heaters in winters.

With advancement to technology, every decade we’re exposed to more forms of convenience.

And the reason behind the birth of laziness – Convenience.

Being Lazy is Hardwired to Our Brains from Birth

With no immediate danger to our lives and with the boom of the industrial world, our bodies and minds are given the utmost luxury with very little exertion required.

A research conducted by the University of British Columbia demonstrates that due to modern lifestyle changes, human beings conserve more and more energy causing babies to be born with a direct link to laziness from the time they are born.

The study showed that easier tasks were quickly performed by the participants while the longer tasks would be performed at a slower pace due to a lack of interest in the brain.

Let’s take the following example to demonstrate laziness in everyday life.

You’ve decided to start a home business and you’ve laid down the groundwork and you’ve finalized the duration. It takes a total of 5-weeks of work to complete.

You’ve created a daily schedule to abide by and this is important to get things going to establish your professional routine.

However, this is how the mind of a lazy person works from the inside.

Week 1: You take things nice and slow. After all, there is plenty of time left to finish your business. You focus on less important tasks like watching tv and spending time browsing the internet.

Week 2: Things are moving slower than ever, but it doesn’t affect you. You convince yourself that your business doesn’t require 5-weeks but 3 weeks of work instead. Hence, the entire week is best spent in idling away.

Week 3: It’s the halfway mark and things start to get messy. You begin to feel guilty about wasting two weeks of your time. It’s time to push things forward. But where do you even begin? The motivation you had at the start of week 1 is no longer present. You spend the week playing blames games with yourself.

Week 4: You begin to search for motivational videos and read inspirational articles to get your positive energy flowing. You decide this week is best spent in trying to reflect on your professional mistakes. You hope an answer will come to you and you’ll be an improved person by the end of the week.

Week 5: It’s the ultimatum. It’s now or never. You begin to skim through all your work logs and conclude that it’s impossible to complete your project and you’ll need to set up a new deadline of 5-weeks.

Unfortunately, the 5-weeks’ time limit stretches for years and the lazy person never gets any work done.

IS LAZINESS A DISEASE OR A MENTAL DISORDER?

Dr. Emmanuel Stamatakis and Dr. Richard Weller have written an in-depth report in the ‘British Journal of Sports Medicine’ about laziness being an actual disease.

They have proposed to the World Health Organization to term ‘Laziness’ as a full-fledged life-threatening disease and classify it as such.

Their argument is that due to laziness, many individuals face the problem of obesity and hence, face life-threatening diseases related to the heart and body.

Laziness also contributes to another illness known as ‘Chronic Fatigue Syndrome’.

This illness creates persistent fatigue in its sufferer to the point where they are unable to perform regular activities like taking a shower or changing their clothes.

Unfortunately, today people view laziness as a mental disorder and not a serious illness that is life-threatening to us.

While laziness itself doesn’t cause fatal consequences to the individual, the side effects such as lost-time, depression, obesity, exhaustion are far more severe.

To answer the question – Laziness is a mental disorder that becomes a disease if left untreated inside an individual to grow.

If every person in a country refused to contribute or go to work, the country would stop to function.

This causes food supply and other emergency services to stop, all because everyone decided to be lazy at the same time.

Do you understand just how dangerous laziness is when everyone contributes to it?

8 COMMON EXCUSES THAT LAZY PEOPLE GIVE TO AVOID WORKING AND HOW TO SOLVE THEM

“Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.” ― Tchaikovsky

Just like you can’t have the cake and eat it too, you can’t have results and excuses co-existing together.

The inability to create their dreams into reality is what enables the lazy person from achieving his success.

The following excuses are some of the most familiar excuses used by people who don’t want to get work done.

1. “I just don’t have the time”

This excuse is so overused that it’s practically a cliché.

It’s on the lips of the lazy individual before the question is even asked.

Every person in the world is given the same 24 hours and that applies to every lazy individual too.

If you have the time to watch television or browse social media during your spare time, then you certainly have the time to get your goals in order without excuses.

Solution

Time management is how you solve the problem of not finding enough time during the day to complete your tasks.

Utilizing time management applications such as Trello allow you to organize every hour of your day in exactly the way you want.

These applications remind you of various reminders to keep you organized and plan your goals.

An example of how you could plan your day could be as follows.

  • 6:30 am – Rise and Shine
  • 6:45 am – Light workout
  • 7:15 am – Prepare a schedule for the day
  • 7:30 am – Read the morning news and make coffee
  • 7:45 am – Head for the shower
  • 8:00 am – Breakfast
  • 8:15 am – Begin your work phase
  • 12:00 pm – Work phase 1 ends – Lunchtime
  • 12:30 pm – Work phase 2 begins
  • 6:30 pm – Work phase 2 ends – Head home
  • 7:15 pm – Relaxation
  • 8:00 pm – Work on creating YouTube videos for own channel
  • 8:30 pm – Supper
  • 9:00 pm – Finish last-minute work tasks and prepare for bed
  • 10:00 pm – Bedtime

A sample schedule like the above should give you an idea on how to manage your time at exactly the given time frame. With a timely routine, your time will be well accounted for throughout the day with very little time for less priority-based tasks.

2.  “I don’t have the money for this”

Do you think money is the only route to success?

If that were true, then famous personalities such as Oprah Winfrey, JK Rowling, Jim Carrey, and Mariah Carey would remain poor. But they aren’t.

And even if they were born into a life of poverty, they made it their life goal to stop being lazy and create success out of opportunities.

Opportunities are only gained when you create them. And lazy people seldom create them.

That’s why lazy individuals never see any success in their life and are usually found struggling for financial freedom.

Solution

The modern world is filled with infinite possibilities. While technology is the bane of an active lifestyle, it can also be used to transform your financial position.

People can find jobs at the comfort of their home by heading over to job portals and finding open positions listed in their specific field.

3. “There’s no way I’m going to make it in life”

Is it any wonder that a lazy person lacks ambition in life?

It’s often easier to sit back comfortably and play a situation in your mind and come out with your own result. It takes will power to act in real life.

What is the one thing that causes lazy people to give up after a single failure?

The complete lack of ‘Persistence’. When someone can’t persevere and push through a difficult situation, they automatically give up and accept defeat. A lazy person does so without trying. Excuses such as –

What’s the point really?

Rich people have taken up all the opportunities, there’s nothing left for us in the world.

Why bother if I won’t succeed? I’d rather not try at all.

If these thoughts race through your mind. It’s important to realize that successful people are rich because of their hard work and smart mentality.

It’s the lazy people that end up poor due to not wanting to earn their own spotlight.

Solution

The root problem of solving this issue is to stop thinking failure as an obstacle but consider it as a window of opportunity. Take for example – as a kid when you first tried to ride your bicycle, you couldn’t find your balance during the first few tries and would fall off the bike. It took practice to finally ride the cycle without training wheels.

Will power is a bicycle, the first few tries are the hardest but once you settle in, It’s the greatest feeling of your life to get off the couch of laziness and be one with a positive mindset.

4. ‘I’ll wash the dishes tomorrow”

Putting things until a later date is a lazy mind finding an escape to answer today’s problems.

Whether it’s unwashed dishes in your kitchen sink or underlying problems that require an immediate solution, we often find our way to wriggle our way past the obstacles hoping to avoid them entirely.

Unfortunately, just like how dishes pile up by the sink, our problems aren’t magically erased when we go to bed, we carry them with us to the next day.

Solution

Ask yourself a personal question – what makes washing dishes so difficult?

Is it the act itself?

Is it because you’ll never stop washing dishes for as long as you live?

If the act of moving yourself to the kitchen and standing for a few minutes while you rinse your dishes feels problematic, then solving your own problems will be a never-ending cycle.

Here’s a quick strategy to convince your mind to get yourself to the kitchen sink and wash dishes without a fuss every day, leaving you with a clean and spotless sink every night.

  • Every time you finish your food, convince yourself to immediately wash the dish
  • Your laziness only gets worse when you give it time
  • Don’t let your mind overthink the situation, it creates excuses to get you to avoid the action of completing it.
  • Instead of thinking, use the power of ‘Now’. Every time you tell yourself to wash the dishes interrupt every thought process with the word ‘Now’. Tell yourself ‘Now’ and push yourself to finish the job out of sheer willpower.

This strategy eliminates any thoughts from entering your mind and instead replaces it with action. Say ‘Now’ to mow your lawn, clean your room, fold your laundry, and of course, the dishes too.

5. ‘I’m going to treat myself to pizza night as I don’t feel like cooking today’

Do you find yourself with plenty of food available in your home but still decide to order out?

In a study by ULCA psychology, evidence was shown that junk food contributed to the overall laziness of human beings.

Due to the lack of nutrition and a diet heavy in carbohydrates and sugar, people are addicted to consuming fast foods to increase their internal dopamine levels temporarily.

It feels good to consume a cheesy burger but once the dopamine begins to fade, we start to feel guilty and remorseful.

It’s no wonder obesity is linked to laziness.

We humans rarely adapt to change in a positive way and prefer to indulge ourselves in the same lifestyle whether it’s healthy or a lazy one.

Solution

What would it take you to get yourself to the kitchen and cook yourself a healthy meal?

The answer is a little bit of willpower and a complete change in diet. Instead of eating sugar-rich foods, choose healthier and lighter meals. Binge eating makes your stomach fuller and causes you to feel drowsy and thus, lazy all day.

We are what we eat and hence when we change our food habits to healthier alternatives, we automatically replace laziness with energy.

  • Diet rich in fiber keeps the stomach from digesting too quickly and releases the nutrition in intervals
  • Vitamin supplements are available over the counter and are beneficial when you aren’t consuming enough according to the daily recommendation of the FDA
  • Wake up early and enjoy a walk during the sunrise for getting the adrenaline pump going

6. ‘I have no goal in life, it’s just too complicated to figure out what I was meant for’

Aimlessness is bound to get boring after the same repetitive life. Lazy people don’t aspire or have any goals to look forward to every day.

It doesn’t matter what time they wake up or what time they go to bed. Whether they eat on the couch or whether they wear the same dress for a week.

With no direction, lazy individuals spend most of their time daydreaming and asleep.

Their decision-making ability is non-existent and there are no warning signs of life to keep them alert.

Solution

The first step in writing your goals can be the most difficult one yet. Whenever you sit to write down, your mind prevents you from continuing forward.

This is when you must stand out for yourself and promise yourself that you will write 3 things that you’ve always wanted to do in life – traveling, career, hobby, healthy life, sports, lifestyle changes, etc.

It can be anything you’ve always wanted to do as a child or an adult. Doesn’t matter.

Once you’ve got your passion, you’re all set to work towards it. Working on a passion is like watching sand fill up at the bottom of the hourglass.

It takes a full minute, but it most certainly fills up. Your efforts must be concentrated in the same way with consistency.

For example – your passion is Photography.

Make a list of simple milestones like the following in your diary.

  • Day 1 – Take 4 pictures of the interiors of my house with my smartphone camera
  • Day 2 – Take 5 pictures of 5 different variety of trees in my vicinity
  • Day 3 – Take 10 pictures of 10 different variety of animals
  • Day 4 – Take 2 high-quality pictures of 2 of your friends or family members
  • Day 5 – Take a photography class online

When you create undemanding goals like this, you enter a world of creativity and lose track that you were once the same lazy person that was in love with his or her couch.

7. ‘ I can’t read books they are extremely boring and it’s hard to concentrate’

Lazy individuals seldom spend their time reading because if they did, they wouldn’t be lazy anymore. There is a world of knowledge to be found in books.

Whether fiction or non-fiction, reading books is always a good habit.

One of the main reasons lazy people stop before turning their first page is because reading requires concentration. Attention is extremely hard to come by when you’re feeling tired all day.

Solution

The very mention of the word ‘Book’ causes many readers to yawn unknowingly. That’s because our brains are wired to feel bored when there is physical activity or concentration involved.

That’s why there are ways around this to get into the lazy brain without being too obvious.

  • Audiobooks are a great alternative, close your eyes and listen to the reader without the need for your eyes to concentrate. A good audiobook app is Audible.
  • While books are filled with black and white print and can seem boring to someone starting to read, there are always magazines with pictures to start out with.
  • Newspapers are an exceptional source of information from around the world. Start reading the headlines every day to get a habit going.

Information is available in various forms without having to read a book the traditional way.

Everyone is different and maybe the way you consume your knowledge is distinct from the next person. Hence, try what works and fits for your lifestyle.

8. ‘I simply can’t get myself to exercise, it’s too tiring. What if I break my back?’

If lazy people exercised, they wouldn’t be tagged with it.

Physical activity works as a counter to laziness and requires effort on the individual’s part to perform.

When you’ve spent much of your time on the couch, walking to your kitchen can seem like an effort, let alone running out the door.

Human beings were made to exert energy as it’s proven by our ancestors who were natural hunters. The lazy man is a product of the modern-day world. ‘Survival of the Fittest’ clearly doesn’t affect our lethargic habits.

Solution

Yes! Exercise is hard and it’s excruciatingly difficult the first week.

But after your first week, it starts to go downhill from thereon.

Getting out into the open will keep your heart rate at a peak, when you perform physical activity, you immediately begin to sweat, and dopamine levels are naturally released into your bloodstream.

To get the blood an extra pump, here are a few ways to get out of bed.

  • An alarm is an extremely annoying device for a lazy person, chances are you’ve broken one already. Hold back on the aggression and set a time to run every now and then. Ignore the snooze button and head for the showers.
  • No one said you had to run to break a sweat. A light 15-minute walk every day gets your blood moving to all corners of your body. You won’t feel all cramped up as you do when lazing around.
  • Hydration is a good idea when heading out. Replenishing your water levels is recommended and keeps you active and focused.
  • Heck, exercise at home with your favorite idiot box by watching a few workout regimens and follow the instructions given out by instructors and perform them in unison.

CONCLUSION

The only core difference between a successful person and a lazy person is  — Self-belief.

Lazy individuals often turn down opportunities to have fun in a social circle in order to lie home in bed.

Successful people are spirited beings that take time to engage in opportunities and welcome every day as a start of something new.

When in doubt, self-belief is all you require to get yourself up and moving.

8 Common Excuses & Their Solutions That Lazy People Make to Excuse Themselves from Working

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