How to Overcome Laziness & Do You Respect Yourself?

How to Overcome Laziness

Laziness is the enemy of productivity. If we were lazy, there is no way we could accomplish meaningful things. We may procrastinate doing things, or even if we do them we may do them only half heartedly. There is no way we can produce high quality results that way.

So we need to overcome laziness. While I can’t say that I’ve been completely successful in overcoming it, I’m happy with my progress. Here are some tips I find useful to overcome laziness.

1. Exercise: You could feel lazy if you do not have enough energy to do your activities. Exercising is a good way to increase your energy level so that you feel energized and alert throughout day.

2. Have a good rest: Not having enough rest could also make you lazy. How can you feel enthusiastic if you are sleepy? So make sure that you have good rest.

3. Set a minimum time limit to get started: The most difficult thing is to get started – the rest will be easier. So set a small amount of time, like 15 minutes or even 5 minutes, and decide to work on the task until the time is up. After that, it would be easier to decide to continue.

4. Create a sense of urgency: This is among the most effective ways to defeat laziness. If you have a sense of urgency, it will be much easier to get up and do what you need to do. One way to create a sense of urgency is by setting a deadline. You can read more about it on my article about sense of urgency.
5. Look at the benefits: One reason we become lazy is because we only see the difficulties of the tasks ahead without thinking about the benefits we will get when we finish them. So focus your mind on the benefits instead of the difficulties

6. Set a reward for yourself: If the benefits are too far in the future, they might not be strong enough to motivate you to act now. In such cases, you can give yourself a more immediate reward. You may allow yourself to eat your favorite meal or watch a movie as your reward for completing the tasks.  
             
7. Think about what will happen if you don’t do it: While thinking about the benefits can motivate you, thinking about the disadvantages if you do not do the tasks can also motivate you. What are the consequences if you do not do what you are supposed to do?

8. Find partners: Partners can motivate you to overcome laziness. While inner motivation is the best, sometimes we also need motivation from the outside.

9. Aim to minimize idle time: Make it your resolution to minimize idle time. Try to be in the state of doing as often as possible. If you have this mindset, it will be easier to overcome laziness.

10. Divide the task into manageable chunks: We could be lazy if we feel overwhelmed by the scale of the task. In such cases, divide the task into manageable chunks, and then tackle them one by one. Remember, the way to eat an elephant is by taking one small bite at a time.

11. Decide what the next physical action is: We may procrastinate because we are not sure what to do next. So look at the task and decide what the next physical action is. Once you know exactly what to do, it will be easier to start.

12. Do one thing at a time: It may seem obvious, but we could be lazy because we try to do more than one thing at a time. That makes us feel overwhelmed. So select just one thing at a time, do it, and ignore the rest.

13. Challenge yourself: Make the tasks fun by turning them into a challenge. Can you accomplish those tasks? Many people can, so why can’t you?

14. Write down your progress: You will be more motivated if you can easily see the effect of laziness. One way to do that is by tracking your progress daily. Put a mark whenever you complete a task. Laziness will give you an empty sheet, and you can easily see how bad it is.

15. Watch other people’s progress: Knowing how far behind you are compared to other people could also motivate you. Watch good performers in your field and let their performance inspire you.

Do You Respect Yourself?

Well, we all want to be respected by others but most of us take it for granted without doing much effort for that. If you look around and find the successful people, you will notice that they are very much likable and people certainly have positive impression about them and they are respected by others in whatever profession they are. 

Important Measure of Success: In fact respect of others is one of the most important measures of success. It has been noted that the successful people really work very hard to earn the respect of others. The others do not mean only the people outside of home but it starts from the home itself. We must try to earn the respect of our parents, the respect of our spouses and children, then the respect of our peers and colleagues, and the respect of mankind at large. The best example is of course our Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).

Respect Yourself: To be successful, it is very important that we shall respect ourselves first and we shall feel good about ourselves, our thoughts, our actions and our professions. And it has been proven that we truly respect ourselves when we feel that we are respected by others, and we shall go to great lengths to earn and keep that respect. When we feel that someone respects us for who we are and what we have accomplished, we tend to be more open to that person's influence.

Here are four methods which can be used to increase the respect you get from people:

1. Increase your competence. People respect ability and skill, as long as you are noticeably good. This means trying to be a jack-of-all-trades doesn’t work. Concentrate your efforts. Choose a useful ability and hone yourself into the Mozart of that ability. If the skill is used at your job, your increasing competence may bring you a new pay level too. Work on improving your ability whenever you can. Become a master in whatever you do and love that.

2. Use good manners. Without using please and thank you and would you mind, without saying hi to people and learning their names and interests, you will not earn people’s respect. Even if you’re competent, you will be resented rather than admired. People do not like and respect the arrogance. Unfortunately most of us in our community lack such mannerism.

3. Speak up rather than smolder. Do it with good manners, but speak. It takes courage to speak up, and people know that and respect it. But when you speak up, make requests rather than simply complaining. Don’t say what you don’t like about what’s already been done; say what you’d like to see in the future. And think it through beforehand so you say it well. But in the process make it sure that you don’t criticize the people but criticize politely about the method if you don't like.

4. Keep your word. Be careful about what you promise or what promises you imply. Be very clear with others about what they can expect from you and clear and careful with yourself about what you can expect from yourself. And then do everything you can to never disappoint. Keep your word. Think of your word as sacred and treat it so. It produces one of the finest experiences known to humankind: trust. People will learn they can count on you, and you will learn you can count on yourself.

Don’t worry about whether or not people like you. Concentrate on competence and good manners and saying what you need to say with smile, and you’ll get more than liking. You’ll get even more than respect from others. You’ll earn the reward that might matter more than any other: You’ll respect yourself to be a successful individual.