You aren't lazy. You just need to slow down

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/24/1039676445/laziness-does-not-exist-devon-price

by kitschyred • 4 years ago

9 2 4 years ago

solarmist• 4 years ago

A direct example of this is avoidance of work.

Almost every time I am avoiding something, a problem, a task, or even a person, I’ve found that it's because there's some missing or unsolved prerequisite. That or a reason it’s worth doing in the first place.

Since I have been observing this I have yet to find an exception.

Similarly when giving tasks to others and finding them not done I’m able to trace it to the same reasons.

jerojero• 4 years ago

You know, I have thought similarly of my dogs... I don't really require anything of them other than their love which they are more than willing to give. But we are not dogs (or chinchillas), we are much more greedy and we have very complex material needs and these require huge amounts of complex work.

At the same time though what the author says also rings very true, the whole system might be giving us way more than we actually need and it tries to make us believe (and it really succeeds) that we actually do need these things. It's important of being conscious about what our actual needs are. A personal example for me, I got drunk the other day and dropped my phone... the screen cracked (I had actually bought screen protectors for it twice but they were two times the wrong size, I thought I would probably be fine) but it is still entirely functional. It doesn't really interfere too much... I tried to look for screen replacements and they were expensive and also hard to get so I thought "I need a new phone". In the time that my new phone is taking to get here I've sort of realised that... yeah the screen is broken but I don't really need this new phone. What is it in me that sort of makes me uncomfortable with this slightly subpar experience?

These are needs that animals don't have, for a dog, most of the time food is food. They don't need a 3 star michelin restaurant meal to feel happy... and really, neither do we. It's become very difficult for me, at least, to be happy with good enough and I'm always trying to chase perfect. And I think this is a cultural issue.

I think culturally we like to say we think "good enough is good enough" but in reality we go "only perfection is good enough". The only thing that I took from my previous work experience was something our boss said: perfect is the enemy of good. It has been extremely difficult for me to admit to myself that I can be happy with less, I struggle everyday with this thought and a lot of it stems from comparisons with others, advertisement, hustle culture, etc.

Many aspects of society are not really designed for "good enough"; for example, I like coding but I'm not sure I like coding 8 hours a day 5 days a week. I think I like working maybe half of that but it is really difficult to find work that suits that! Why? Because if you don't want to work so much then maybe there's something wrong with you, maybe you're not hungry enough for it and so maybe you're not going to do a good enough (read: the best you have to give) job.

Finally, maybe we don't really have to compare ourselves with our pets but a much more realistic comparison is our families. Our kids, brothers, sisters. I think most people in healthy families acknowledge the limitations and the particularities of their family members and families are supposed to be supportive and caring. But that's kind of where it stops: the "others" are not your families, they're competition. Is what we are taught and is how society has been built.

You aren't lazy. You just need to slow down

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