We’re all lazy to some extent. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s natural. However, most of the time, it’s those exact moments of laziness that make us overindulge on our bad habits.
- When we feel motivated, it’s quite easy to do the things we want to do, even if we find them difficult otherwise.
- But when we’re feeling stressed, tired, lazy or when we’ve had a long day, we don’t quite posses that enthusiasm to do something that requires effort.
- This is why on those lazy days, we usually do whatever is most convenient or easy, whatever that might be.
- And generally that’s our default behavior.
Inconvenience can dictate our actions.
- When it comes down to it, most of the activities aren’t that difficult to do, they just require a little more effort for you to get started.
- But once you do start and get settled in, it’s always very easy to continue, even if you don’t necessarily find the activity as fun.
Usually the most difficult part of any behavior is getting started. And the more activation energy an activity requires, the less likely you are to start, especially if you’re feeling tired or lazy.
- Activation energy is the amount of effort you need to exert, before you can begin something.
- If you’re able to lower the activation energy required to begin a certain behavior, your chances of doing what you want to do, increase exponentially.
- And this is especially important because, even if you enjoy doing something, but there’s a lot of friction in the way before you can begin, you’re more likely to skip it and go do something easier instead.
Our surroundings are a huge contributing factor when it comes to our behavior.
- Lessen the barriers between activities you want to do more often, by making it more convenient for yourself to do them.
- While on the flip side, increase the obstacles between activities you want to stop participating in, by making them more difficult to start.
Re-source: Reexamine
to examine something again especially from a different point of view
Instead of accepting all of our behaviors as defaults, we should re-examine the ones that are not serving us.
- Just like we can change our ringtone from a default setting, we can also adjust our behavior.
Think about your own situation and see where you can make some changes.
- Make your behavior more intentional, rather than default.
- The point is to become aware of your default behaviors and be in control of them, rather than being left at the mercy of whatever is most convenient in the moment.
Examine your surroundings and think about where you could add or reduce 20 seconds of activation energy.
- The 20 second Rule (See more on video below)
- This strategy can be applied to pretty much any behavior you want to change.
- Of course, 20 seconds is just a suggestion and not an absolute number.
Remember, starting is always the most difficult part. So make your desired actions easy to start, while making your unwanted actions difficult.
- This will allow you to become the master of your own behavior.
craving and resource from “Use Laziness To Your Advantage – The 20 Second Rule” by Better Than Yesterday