How to Stop Being Lazy – A Step-by-Step Guide

Everyone faces a time when they feel less productive and less energetic compared to a typical day. It usually happens when we have to deal with a challenge or decision we don’t want to make. In this situation, we lack motivation, become idle, and get sidetracked easily. It is actually laziness.

Being lazy is problematic for everyone. Whether you are a student or a worker, if you are unmotivated or idle, you can’t make operational decisions and fail to achieve your goals.

Ultimately, all your efforts and struggles in your personal and professional life go in vain.

Therefore, everyone must determine the causes of laziness and take steps to overcome them to make their life productive again. Of course, you need the motivation to stop being unmotivated and lazy. But, you should also take several other steps to stop being lazy. 

Keep reading the article, and we will tell you the several psychological and physical causes of laziness in humans. After that, we will discuss comprehensively “How to stop being lazy” We bet you will be able to kill your laziness reaching the end of this article.

Let us go straight to the topic!

Causes of Laziness

Laziness is when you don’t want to do anything and are unwilling to spend your energy on any work. You just want to lie down, relax and wish to live a luxurious life without exerting any physical or mental effort. This laziness diverges you from achieving life goals. 

Many people think that fear, depression, and stress are the only causes of laziness. In reality, many biological and societal factors can also cause inactivity, which we will discuss below!

On google, you will find thousands just discussing the ways to overcome laziness. But, in our opinion, knowing the cause of the problem is the best way to solve it.

Let us see a few causes of laziness first before knowing the methods to overcome laziness and procrastination!

Lack of Motivation

You become unmotivated and lazy when you don’t get the proper appreciation for your efforts. The majority of people become victims of laziness due to this reason.

Fear of responsibility

Most people fear the outcomes of the work and don’t want to take responsibility. In short, they fear failure and don’t show motivation.

Sleeping Pattern

If you are not getting proper sleep, your mind doesn’t work actively, and you remain lazy all day. We recommend you take a 7-9 hours of sleep at a fixed time.

Dehydration

Sometimes, you don’t drink much water required for maintaining physical activities. If your physique doesn’t contribute to your brain, you will automatically become lazy.

Indecisiveness

Sometimes, difficult decisions make you lazy. You overthink the results and can’t make an appropriate decision, and show laziness because of mental tension.

Poor Nutrition

It is one of the major factors that most people ignore. If you ever feel lazy, you should reconsider your nutrition as it boosts your energy level and improves your brain activity.

Dependent Life

When you depend on another person, you usually become lazy because you don’t have any particular responsibilities or life goals.

Biological causes

Several physical issues, such as Thyroid problems, are one of the hidden causes of laziness. If you feel unmotivated, procrastinated, or exhausted, you should get diagnostic testing.

Too Much to do

You often come across situations where you have to do several tasks simultaneously. In this scenario, there is a huge probability that your brain will get sucked and slow down your performance.

Procrastination

Procrastination occurs when you delay your tasks without any reason. Later, you must complete these tasks and the new ones. So, you might get confused and become lazy.

Here, we have discussed all the mental, physical and biological causes of laziness. We recommend you go through each cause one by one and determine which one is making you lazy. If you can assess your reason, we bet you will find a solution in the next few steps.

How to stop being lazy

Now, we have determined all the causes of laziness. We hope many of you have identified your reason for laziness and procrastination. It is the best time to tell you the strategy to cope with this situation effectively.

All the steps we will show in this section are approved by medical and psychological experts worldwide and have proven adequate to overcome laziness in many patients globally.

Let us take these steps to cut your laziness now!

Accept Your Laziness

The first and foremost step to getting rid of laziness is to accept it. You cannot fight it effectively until you take it. The worst situation arises when you remain insistent that you are not lazy.

It is similar to when you don’t want to go to the doctor even knowing you are ill. So, we recommend you be kind to yourself, accept your laziness and prepare yourself for the remedy.

The best method of acceptance is self-talk. It sometimes happens when you talk with yourself and tell your mind that it’s okay to be lazy. Let’s fight the situation instead of being stuck here.

Believe that! After this step, you will be much more motivated to fight against procrastination and laziness.

Understand Your Root Cause

We have already taken much of your time on this step. Once you accept your laziness, you should know your cause and look for a strategy to cope with it efficiently.

It would help if you went to the above section to identify your cause of laziness and then read the article below to find an effective strategy to deal with it.

Make Small and Realistic Goals

The leading cause of laziness is the lack of motivation and progress in your work. Sometimes, your goal is too big, and your slow pace demotivates you. If you put your effort into one big goal, you feel your purpose is unrealistic at some stage of life. How would we have dealt with this situation if we were at your place? To know this, read the paragraph below!

We would break down bigger goals into smaller ones and set some milestones to help us feel more accomplished and motivated to continue our journey.

We would note our achievements in our goal-notebooks and read all our previous successes if we ever feel demotivated at some point. We recommend you do the same for your goals for a better experience.

Make a Plan

Working without a plan is like a blind horse running on closed ground that will hit the wall one moment. Likewise, if you work without a plan, you will surely hit laziness one day or another. Maybe you work harder for the first few days, but we are sure that you will become lazy before long if you are not working strategically. 

We advise you to sit down, take a deep breath, and start breaking problems into smaller, attainable steps. Build a strategy for each step, and estimate time, money, effort, and other factor involved in meeting your short-term goals.

When you face a smaller problem/goal, you will be more confident and consider rebooting again for work.

Don’t Demand Perfection

You have just come out of a long span of laziness, and of course, your work quality won’t be the same as before. Therefore, we recommend you not expect perfection at the initial stages.

We know that you wouldn’t like your work and might be thinking of throwing it away. But believe us! That is not the right decision.

Understand your situation and make up your mind that you’ll improve slowly. If you go for perfection, you will get disheartened at some point and might become a victim of laziness again.

Focus on Your Strengths

If you always consider your flaws and downsides, you will remain disappointed and can’t move forward towards your goal. Therefore, you must revive your strength. How can you do it?

For this purpose, think of the moments when you face any challenging situation in life and reflect on the power you get in that experience. Besides, you can ask your family members or friends to help you identify your strength.

Likewise, recognize your strengths in your fieldwork or career option, and think about how they can help you reach your goal. Try to impart your muscles in different aspects of work, and you will indeed feel greater engagement and productivity in work.

Imagine the consequences

You have gained much motivation and made a new plan with short-term goals to start work again. But have you imagined the outcomes of your dream/plan for yourself and your family? We recommend you sit down and think with closed eyes about how it can benefit you and your loved ones in the future.

We are sure you will get many negative thoughts and fearful questions. Beat the fear at this point. Replace those negative thoughts with positive ones and motivate yourself that all is well. Now, you will work with more energy than ever.

Let us explain this with an example. For example, if you motivate yourself to work 12 hours daily to reach your goal cutting a portion of your social life. Your brain will say that “Don’t do this! Your social life will become worse, and your close ones will leave you.” We are sure that you will get similar thoughts. Now, let us try to replace the positive ones. Tell your brain, “Hey, brain! I am doing well. Why do you not imagine my achievements’ positive impact on my family’s lifestyle? Oh, please, brain, think positively. Let me do it!” 

Unclutter Your Life

If you come up with a situation where you have many tasks in a row, there is a huge probability that you will sit down lazily on your sofa and procrastinate your work. It is because your brain gets confused in so many activities, and ultimately, its performance reduces.

What can you do in this situation? The best practice is to unclutter your brain. Try to list tasks with decreasing priority from top to bottom. First, complete all the tasks that require less than 5 minutes. After that, do all the high-priority chores and then move to low-priority functions if you have time.

Accomplish Your Achievements

The best way to remain motivated is to get the proper appreciation and accomplishment of your achievements. If you achieve something, accomplish it yourself. If you appreciate yourself, you will feel good, and that positive energy will assist you to continue to your next endeavor—even if it is something deadly. Therefore, choose the small task at the beginning of the day, and accomplish your work. Doing this can optimize your work performance for the entire day.

Similarly, another healthy exercise is to celebrate your small victories when you reach your short-term goals. By doing this, you will get much confidence and pride to reinforce yourself for long-term success. Further, you will also experience positive self-talk and increased self-efficiency with this activity.

Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro technique is a very effective and life-changing solution to eliminate laziness and boost productivity. The best part is that almost 2 million people have already used this technique, making themselves more focused, productive, and even more innovative.

This time-management strategy encourages breaks instead of working continuously. Here, you estimate the effort required to complete the task, set a timetable, and motivate yourself to complete the job within a specified period. Furthermore, you put little breaks in your plan after regular intervals. Most Pomodoro experts recommend taking a small gap of 3-4 minutes after 25 minutes of work and a big break of 20 minutes after four such cycles.

Avoid Distractions and Comparisons

When you are lazy, your brain automatically looks around and thinks everyone is working perfectly except you. This comparison distracts you from work and reduces your work efficiency and productivity. Therefore, we advise you to avoid comparing yourself to others to avoid laziness and procrastination.

Several other distractions come in the way of laziness. For example, if you are working on the computer, you might try playing games during work.

Another possibility is that you might open your social media account and start scrolling. You should make your distraction less accessible. You should download some apps to block the distractive sites in working time for the above distractions. 

Get a Working Partner

That point doesn’t seem vital in the first impression but believe us, it positively influences your work efficiency and keeps you motivated. Your partner doesn’t only help you in project management. Instead, it will also impart energy and inspiration to yourself.

What if you don’t find a partner related to your project? We advise you to sit with a family member or a friend while working and show them your work progress. A little appreciation from themselves keeps you motivated for work and increases your productivity.

Sit with Optimistic and Successful People

Optimistic people look at the world differently and try to utilize everything positively. These are the most successful people in the world.

You unintentionally get ready to do it yourself when you hear about their struggles and success stories. You work harder because you become optimistic about success.

In comparison, if you sit with lazy and pessimistic people, you will see the same negative feelings as you have and become more demotivated. So, if you are also sitting among pessimists, change your community as soon as possible.

Take Help

Most people fail because they don’t take help when they get stuck somewhere. It is an appalling attitude, in our opinion. Therefore, we suggest you take assistance from co-workers and seniors in the field if you face any difficulty in your work.

Additionally, asking for help increases your chances of success and connects you with others to encourage and motivate you for work in the future.

Set Alarms

Just like the Pomodoro technique, awareness alarms can be beneficial to get rid of laziness. These alarms remind you of the work you want to do at a specific time.

Suppose you get distracted by games or social media while working. These alarms will remind you to go back to work again. In the end, you will feel your day was more productive. 

How to Overcome Laziness and Procrastination with Healthy Activities?

As we have already discussed in the causes, psychological and several biological factors can also cause laziness. So, you must take some health tips to overcome laziness and procrastination. Let us follow these health guidelines now!

High Nutrient Food

Healthy and nutritious food maintain our energy level and help us to work efficiently. So, we must spend time to realize which food is good for work productivity and which isn’t.

According to medical experts, food higher in proteins maintains a stable blood sugar level and protects us from up and down energy levels throughout the day.

Conversely, we should avoid high-fat and sugary products, as these are hard to digest and cause blood sugar spikes. Let us have examples of foods and drinks suitable for working!

Good For work

  • Eggs
  • Almonds
  • Oats 
  • Chicken breast
  • Milk
  • Lean beef
  • Broccoli
  • Greek Yogurt
  • Solomon
  • Tuna 
  • Bananas

Bad for Work

  • Breakfast cereal
  • Cold drinks
  • Biscuits
  • Sweets
  • Salad dressings
  • Butter
  • Margarine
  • Bread
  • Jams and jellies

Exercise

We are swamped and don’t have enough time for exercise or other physical activity. The worst part is that many think exercise is a waste of time. Don’t you? But, the reality is quite the opposite.

Exercise is the only activity that benefits your physical and mental health simultaneously and assists you in improving your mood, releasing stress, and reducing anxiety and depression.

But don’t worry! If you don’t have time, go to the gym daily or park for running. That’s not a huge problem. There are many stretching exercises that you can perform in your room and even on your working table.

So, whenever you feel lazy, go to your yoga mat and stretch yourself for 5-10 minutes, and boom! You are ready for the work.

Sleep Pattern

Proper sleep significantly helps in maintaining the energy level. If you don’t take enough sleep, you will be idle all day. In comparison, if you sleep more than enough in the day, you will still be inactive and sluggish. Therefore, you must have a balanced sleep pattern.

Experts recommend that sleeping 7-9 hours daily is crucial to start a fresh and energetic day. Further, you must follow a particular sleep pattern. You will ruin your working day if you don’t follow the routine.

A good sleep pattern offers tremendous benefits. A consistent sleep schedule makes your day balanced and energizes you for tasks. It also limits screen time and caffeine, which is very beneficial for health.

Quit Smoking

Smoking not only disturbs your daily activities but also causes many harmful effects on your health. Smokers have a nicotine addiction, and their desire increases whenever they face stress at work.

Therefore, they cannot focus on the task, try to procrastinate, and do nothing productive in the end. Furthermore, smoking causes spikes in blood circulation that reduce your energy level and work efficiency.

Therefore, we recommend you quit smoking as soon as possible to stop being lazy and procrastinating. We know that it can be difficult for you to quit smoking, but you can use nicotine bubbles to help you in the initial stage.

Remain Hydrated

That is the last but handy health tip to avoid laziness and procrastination during work and achieve your goals. When you drink water, your energy level decreases, and your physical structure doesn’t assist your brain. Therefore, we recommend always keeping a water bottle at the working table and taking a sip once an hour.

Laziness is a worse mental state that limits your work efficiency and stops you from reaching your goals. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the reason for your laziness and take proper precautions and exercises to get rid of it as soon as possible.

This article is perfect for you if you are also looking for some remedy to end your sluggishness and procrastination. You can go above and see the causes of laziness and different physical and mental strategies on how to stop being lazy.