Laziness
How many times have you thrown your Saturday morning plans out the window in favor of an extra two hours of sleep? How many New Year's resolutions do you carry over year to year? How many brilliant ideas never stand a fighting chance because you're too absorbed by the online and flat-screen worlds?
The feeble battle cry,
"I'll get around to it"
is a phrase our ancestors likely never uttered. Their focus was survival in the here and now. Our focus is how to make the here and now as comfortable as possible. And because our basic needs are relatively easily met, we have the luxury and burden of fretting, dreaming, and procrastinating about future actions, while doing very little.
Today we have abundant sources of energy and few directly compelling motivators. Most of us are not parched or hunted by homicidal predators. Enter ego concerns, predinner martinis, window-shopping, and the mixed blessing of long-term planning.
Our ancestors encountered little delay between desire and action. Feeling thirsty meant looking for water, feeling hungry meant looking for food, and feeling amorous meant looking for mates. Our behavior required little or no self-talk.
As a psychotherapist points out, laziness emerged only when planning for the future became possible.
"Once there was some reason to continue working even though your immediate needs were satisfied, some people turned out to be more future oriented than others. Some people continued to work when they weren't hungry or cold or thirsty. And those people called others lazy."
Laziness by definition is not uncomfortable, it is simply an unwillingness to expend energy. But laziness in an environment where we could be highly productive is a recipe for discomfort.
Our evolutionarily novel environment allows for grandiose plans and dreams, but these very opportunities can feel overwhelming. Once we've generated a goal, we believe that we've got to do something about it. We're torn between competing desires, I want to accomplish this idealized plan, but it must not be too hard. In fact, I need it to be easy.
That's where procrastination comes in. We put off a task because we think it is too difficult, our bias is to fool ourselves into thinking we'll do it tomorrow. Some psychologists even allege that procrastination has been deemed a problem only since the Industrial Revolution, when scheduling demands drastically increased.
Accomplishing practically anything today means overcoming the need for instant gratification and questioning the idea that a task will be excessively painful. The rewards of getting what you want in the long run make the present moment hassles worth enduring. Of course, you risk an infinite regress in getting lazy about fighting laziness. Not to worry, you can start work at any time.
Psychology Today
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