How to stop being lazy and start projects: 5 tips

Many times, what keeps us away from our goals are not difficulties, but excuses.

Many times, what keeps us from moving forward is not so much a lack of time, resources or skills, but simply laziness. simply laziness.. Those moments when we know that there are certain responsibilities that we must attend to and we end up leaving them for later are perfect examples of the extent to which we are capable of self-sabotage.

We know we must do something, we also know that not doing it will have negative consequences, and yet we choose the second option. What happened?

Several tips to stop being lazy

There are certain projects in which everything is a matter of getting started. Unfortunately, the discomfort of getting down to it during the first moments can be such an unpleasant idea that we never decide to get down to the real work. In these cases, we often look for all kinds of excuses so as not to recognize where the real problem lies: laziness.

We will now review a series of tips to get clear on how to stop being lazy and attend once and for all those projects and responsibilities that require our work. To do this, we will modify both our objective habits and our belief systems.

1. Sleep well

This is a fundamental step. No one can put effort into projects that are seen as "extra" work if sleep quality has been poor. if the quality of sleep has been poor or if you have not had enough sleep.. In these cases, the normal thing to do is to do the minimum to get rid of the obligations that must be attended to immediately, and then go to rest or sleep.

So, although it may seem to you that sleeping is a waste of time, think that doing it often can be the difference between losing the whole day or not losing it.

2. Determine what exactly it is that you should do.

Sometimes we rationalize our desire to do nothing by constructing a fiction in which what we must do is such a difficult and convoluted task that it deserves to be taken care of at a more suitable time, and not in the present. We take advantage of the ambiguity about what we have to do to invent that it is something very complicated. invent that it is something very complicated.

For example, if I need to go shopping for speakers, I can imagine spending several hours first learning about how these devices work, then going on to compare products, choosing the store where they give the best deal, and finding a time to go shopping that works well enough for us to be able to buy other things.

This can be avoided if we determine at the outset what it is that we should be doing.. The essential, the main thing, with very specific limits. In the case of the previous example, this would be, in case we don't want to spend a lot, research on a small number of speaker models, read their features and consumer reviews, and go to buy them in a nearby store.

3. Divide your objective into several sub-objectives

A fundamental part of overcoming laziness is to eliminate any possibility of making excuses. To do so, the best thing to do is to set ourselves very simple tasks that, in a chain, form the path towards the general objective we want to reach. In this way, we achieve two things.

On the one hand, the feeling of "obligation" will be much stronger, since the perceived cost of doing such an insignificant action will be much lower. On the other hand, when we start a project or work, we naturally tend to want to complete it. This phenomenon is known as the Zeigarnik effect.

4. Stay away from distractions

Turn off the TV, leave your smartphone tucked away and get to work away from the fridge. If you have to work on the computer, it is not a bad idea to ask someone to change the password of Facebook or any social network you use a lot, so that you only get it once you have finished what you want to accomplish.

In short, you should do the right thing so that that there is nothing around you that can tempt you. with the idea of giving you a reason to neglect your responsibilities. If these distractors can have that effect on your mind, you can also fight back by making those "powers" disappear, at least for a while.

5. Look back at your progress.

This is one of the most rewarding parts of overcoming laziness. stopping to think about the fruits of your efforts, the things you didn't have beforewhat you didn't have before and what you now enjoy. Of course, any effort also has a negative side, but at this point you should focus only on the positive, since in normal situations we tend to let the bad overshadow the good just because it is good (even if objectively it is less important).

This is an important stage, because it allows you to associate those actions and thoughts that have led you to move forward, on the one hand, and the positive fruits of those initiatives, on the other. It is thanks to this that although at the beginning it was more difficult to make progress, as we get results it is less difficult.