Are you a lazy person? If someone were to ask us this question we would answer an automatic, and defiant NO! With a closer look at ourselves and how we live our lives, we are lazier than we think we are. Can this be fixed? Absolutely it can, but we first must recognize it. Laziness is more about our habits and attitudes than about our DNA.
My Experience
Tell me if you’ve had this experience: I was walking behind someone. I wasn’t right up on them, but a decent way behind. As we’re approaching the door to this building, I see them reach over and press the handicap button and wait for the doors to open. This seemed so odd and lazy to me. The person wasn’t handicapped, didn’t have a lot of things they were carrying. It just seemed like they preferred to push the handicap button and not open the door with their hands.
In full transparency, I have my four-year old son push the handicap button on doors to open them. I’m also teaching him to open doors for his mother and little sister. Some doors are still a little heavy for him to open by himself, so he will “push the button,” as he likes to call it.
Watching this person, this able-bodied, healthy, person push the handicap button to open a door made me question myself and others. Are we lazier than we think we are. I believe that we are and that we’ve accepted some aspects of laziness into our lives and chalk them up to us “being the way we are.” Here are three ways that we are lazier than we think.
Don’t be THAT person
- Not planning ahead. Most of us don’t plan ahead. Really plan ahead. We don’t plan our day-to-day. We tend to just have a mental rolodex of things we need to get done. This is lazy because there always seems to be something more important, that we need to take care of right away. If we would plan our day the night before then, we would know what things are vitally important and what can be delegated or can accomplished later.
- Waiting to do the hardest things. Whether at work or in our lives, the things that tend to cause us to be uncomfortable and are the hardest to accomplish we put off until the last moment. Lazy people do this. We want to tackle these things head on. Successful people aren’t afraid to ask for help or guidance along the way either.
- Not investing in yourself. Lazy people settle for the way things are. They settle for being in a unfulfilling marriage, they settle with being unhealthy, they settle with having a mediocre job. Successful people invest in themselves. They want to be the best versions of themselves. The main reason behind it is because they want to do it for themselves. They’re not looking to impress others, but they want to get the most out of life.
In what ways have you been lazy and what are going to do to change that behavior?