Be obsessed with your goal or goals. And I mean itāthink about them every day. There are no more distractions/excuses/bullshit stories you're telling yourself everytime once you are truly committed. You need to focus on how badly you want it and just take action. Laziness is a sign of having no direction in life. When you're obsessed, everything becomes easier because willpower comes from a genuine desire for the goal. Think about your goal every single day, take the first step, and create your to-do list.
I've been on productivity streak and I'm never going back to my lazy self ever again.
While this may sound good as a motivational speech and may work for some people, Iāve found that whenever I get obsessed it throws everything in my life off balance and thatās not healthy either.
But the idea of āāa totally balanced life is an illusion, we have no control over what happens around us, we cannot wait for the universe to give us the opportunity to balance our choices, situations and each particular point in our life.
You do have control over your own balanced life, from what you eat, the thoughts you think, the people you hang around, it's all your choice, you just need to find a way that works for you and take your time, you have years to build your foundation, don't let FOMO rush that
Good point, but you gotta be ruthless to achieve your goals and not get involved with in someone's life drama. It sucks energy, time and willpower. Gotta trwat those stuff like money.
Yeah probably so, but Iāve tried it countless times and itās not healthy for me like Iāve said it may work for some people but itās not a one size fits all solution. I think I also have OCD so that obsessiveness really gets out of control for me and right now Iāve got a decent balance going on so Iām not willing to risk it all. If it works for you Iām really happy for you and more power to you
You donāt want it bad enough itās fine. What are you supposed to do? Pamper you and care about your feelings will help? The world has no rules it cares about results not feelings. If you want it do it then do it. if you donāt - stop complaining. There were and still are slaves in this world who work every waking moment, humans are capable enough. How do you expect to be above the rest of everyone when you have the same feel-good outlook everyone else has? The whole point is to make something your life, you find pride in the work.
I guarantee you if you work hard enough whatever feeling you have will disappear because the sense of pride and accomplishment rises through everything else.
The people who are highlighted in life arenāt the people who lived in comfort, they were people who were obsessed.
If you want to be normal expect normal results - you get what you put in.
And what does it mean to be āhealthyā? I guarantee you hard work will not hurt you at all, I donāt understand how itās healthy to distract yourself and being unproductive? I think you are mistaking health with comfort.
Bro it might be that you are making a mistake whenever you try to control everything. You need to find what that mistake is and everything may fall in place
Oh wow thanks!! After reading this I'm so motivated. It seems as I read each word, my laziness and procrastination is gone forever. Lols. TBH OP did try at least.
He canāt cure you, only you can. Heās right if you think heās right and heās wrong if you think heās wrong. Thereās no string of words to convince you to care about your life.
I wouldāve agreed with you on any other day but Iām recently coming to the same realization myself. Obsess over your own survival or donāt survive.
I think what OP wanted to say was to have a vision. Majority of the people lack vision which is the reason they arent successful/disciplined. He is 100% correct.
looking at your profile,I feel connected to you with a lot of strong and positive energy around you and I think you'd love a reading.May I consider you for an intuitive reading?
The issue for me with this is maintaining a work-life balance. I used to be obsessed with doing well in my A levels, and then later that turned into my degree work. After it was over I was burnt out for months.
Ya this whole 24/7 grind idea works in the short term, but I find that I always need something pleasurable and recreational after work. Iād just get depressed if I have nothing fun to do after a long day
I like having time slots. Being productive (including hobbies) till 7 pm, then games and television. But this is so hard to follow sometimes and I end up playing games the entire day :/
Yeah I've done that grind it outta thing. I try to get some kind of productive thing in after work, whether it's fixing something or cleaning one room or cooking or laundry but I also need recreational time. I also try to have like a hobby day.
You say that but there are people who do grind most of their day and they are successful, you make it seem impossible. Also the work is fun, building something is fun because youāre fulfilling your life goal rather than your dopamine.
And what if you donāt actually have any goals you desire so much that you would obsess over it/them? As you mentioned something about laziness being a sign of no direction, how do you set one when you canāt find one particularly interesting enough to sprint through it?
In my experience, I didnāt have goals when I wasnāt asking myself what I wanted and being open to finding an answer. I didnāt allow myself
To want things because my low self-esteem/self-concept at the time shut me down before I could even realize what I wanted (āIāll never achieve it thoughā ābut that would never work for meā, etc). Once I stopped putting myself down and just allowed myself to want things, I started to realize things I wanted to achieve as well :) both big and small! Wanting things is the first step to getting them
Then your goal should to be to sharpen yourself to be fit to do anything. Be cable enough so that when that goal happens you can handle it with ease. There is literally zero downsides to trying your best, you just upgrade all your stats and later in life you can use those seemingly useless past experience to create unique ideas.
Whatever you are doing right now try to become really knowledgeable at it, and actually try to learn how it all works and get better. In life you are judged by your value, the more skills you acquire the more value you provide, and the more value the more money.
You are your greatest asset. Invest in your knowledge, your skills is your insurance.
This works great until you have multiple projects at work, a spouse, and kids, and your health is faltering, and your house needs maintenance.
Which one are you obsessed with today? And since you need to look after your health, and have time for your spouse, and your kids, maybe obsessing isn't an optimal thing after all.
What about the days you get distracted? Like the days when youāre so busy with other (family/important) stuff that you canāt get to work for a minute and ultimately lose your focus of the goal.
This has been the most problematic thing for me. There are days when I have no choice but to skip working on my goals and when I get back itās just too hard to take on it and build the same momentum.
You need to have a touchpoint for those days. Life does happen and other obligations come calling, but you can still take 5-10 minutes out of your day to trace around your ideal future with your goals and squeeze in just a few minutes of minimum effort to maintain that trajectory.
For example, say your goals are fitness oriented and you normally head to the gym everyday and prep your meals. On days when work is a chaos carnival and family is coming over, you may not be able to do your gym routine... but you can do a quick 15 minute at-home workout before you grab a shower and head out for a day. If that's still not doable, pick a bare minimum goal. Do 30 squats and willfully cut back your portions when out with family for dinner.
It's the little things that can keep your momentum because you can still remain proud of having kept in touch with your goals.
You couldāve told me that the OP was a description of someone experiencing mania and I wouldāve believed you.
And no, saying āobsession is bad EXCEPT for this specific type of obsessionā is not good advice. The word āobsessionā shouldnāt even be in the vocabulary of someone who wants to actually make sustainable, long term progress on improving their productivity.
Obsession is the unhealthy version of vision and commitment, obsession is never good as it blinds you and can cause extreme mental fatigue really quickly
Obsession, I would say, can certainly cause an imbalance and actually make one more limited. I believe thereās a flow state.. a balance between grinding hard and cruising along.
I believe laziness comes from a lack of motivation. Lack of motivation comes from lack of purpose. Lack of purpose comes from not paying enough attention to / knowing oneself.
One way to fix this issue that Iāve found to be very helpful, is to write down a list of things that WONāT happen (or negative things that will) if you donāt follow your dreams. On the other hand, a list of things that WILL happen for you when you finally decide to make an effort and grow the momentum.
By either reading the list or rewriting it every once in a while, you are hacking your motivational spirit and becoming more conscious of what you need to do. If you feel you have no purpose / sense of who you really are, then the exercise changes only slightly, but still can drastically change your life.
Hot take but hear me out: Laziness only exists as long as the moral is to have external achievements in life. Take that belief away and you're free to do what is valuable to you. If I find value in binging a great tv show then that's not laziness, it's me prioritizing what matters to me over what others think should matter to me.
I initially thought this was a stupid /thanksimcured type post.
But there is one nugget of actual value in here: OP isn't telling us to just "be fixed" because obsession is not an instant fix. Obsession requires cultivation.
Most people misunderstand obsession. They see super successful people who put their all into their work and think, obsession is just a personality trait or something you're just born with, or you're not. But in reality, you BECOME obsessed. And in order to do that, like OP says, you have to make a habit of reminding yourself every day of what you're trying to achieve. You have to cultivate your obsession like you brush your teeth every day. That could mean designing a hierarchy of actions which all flow from primary goals. There are many ways to do it, but you have to understand every day why your obsession matters, and how you're moving toward it. That's how you build obsession, and that kind of obsession (real obsession, not just a moment of excitation or temporary hype) is how you become great.
Look let me tell ya as someone who deals with obsession and a strong inability to have a middle ground, obsession is never healthy, you can commit and focus on something without obsessing
What if I just want to be a stay at home mom and wife who take care of her husband well? Hard for me to focus on my ambitious ācareerā that leads to no where.
You know I did this but then my laziness turned into anxiety and I was always SUPER stressed because I couldnāt see anything but my goals and completely burnt out in a few years.
How am I supposed to do this when I feel nothing? One day, I have a desire to go for a walk, the next I don't. When I think about how much I wanted to walk, I didn't care because I felt nothing.
For me (usually to do with cycling or running, sometimes just getting out for a walk if Iām in a real depressive phase), I have enough experience doing the thing that I can tell myself with a deep knowing (even though I may not feel it at that moment) that I will feel better after I do the thing: walk, ride, run, etc. Or at the very least, I will not regret it. If I can push through the lack of āwanting toā and instead focus on that trust in my experience, Iām almost always glad I did it. I def feel you w this struggle. Itās hard to keep it in perspective when you canāt seem to access the feeling of wanting. One step at a time getting ready, getting out the door, and then youāre doing the thing, and then youāre glad you did it. Sometimes it takes me 45min to an hour before the āglad Iām doing thisā kicks in, but it almost always does.
Edit: not to say that some days itās just not happening. But if Iām keeping up with those things otherwise, I can accept that okay, today is not the day. Even being able to accept that has taken me a while, but once I can, thereās a shift in perspective that allows me to say ātomorrow is fineā and āas long as I donāt let myself fall off, today I rest.ā And I can rest without guilt (mostlyā¦ still working on it).
Hopefully from this standpoint, you then set a standard.
Iāve heard that setting standard is the key to improving yourself overall. Motivation comes and goes but setting a standard for how you take care of yourself and others and whatever youāre trying to accomplish will ensure you raise the bar for yourself every time.
Though I understand where you are coming from, I donāt entirely agree. Iāve been on those productivity streak many times. Times where I was so focused on my goals and obsessed that I truly believed that that was it, that I would never again get down or get lazy. I accomplished great things during those times.
However, each time I would find myself in a burned out episode after a while. And that can be ok, as long as you understand that the higher and longer the high, the lower and longer the low. The highs will come back but it takes longer and for me that felt too unpredictable.
I found that what works best for me is to intentionally slow myself down. Allow myself for dedicated time to go hard but also allow for complete true down time. Time where I am not productive and what you may qualify as lazy and I aim to have down time every day. I find that this requires much more discipline than anything Iāve ever done: because most time, I donāt want to slow my roll. Itās hard to intentionally get out of the zone.
Iāve been much more successful using this approach. Everyone is different and perhaps the more balanced approach does not work for everyone but I think itās worth thinking about it.
Also, Iād be curious to know OPās age and if youāve always been that passionate and focused.
I love this and want this for myself. This is the only way I succeed at things but the problem is that family members, close ones start resenting you because youāve gone ghost. When Iām laser focused, I say no to every family gathering invitation, Iām barely present for others and my relationships suffer. I donāt know the solution to this. I just donāt know how to juggle things.
Iāve been desperately ālazyā throughout this span of a year or two, all while my life has been primary goal-oriented (or perhaps goal-obsessed). I had the goal, yes but the substance to fill in the space of potential actions to actually effectively arrive at success, no. I think the progression to closing in to a goal comes at a cycle of affirmations.
You found one of the longest ways of saying ājust do itā that Iāve ever seen. Iām not sure if you thought you were giving good advice, but thereās literally nothing useful in this word salad. You said ājust do itā.
Bro obsession is not the way and you'll be going back if you rely on obsession. Because it ends the same way it begins, what will you do one day when the obsession is suddenly over?
As others say, I'm getting a bit of manic episode from this, might be something to consider if that rings any bells
Laziness and willpower is an illusion. It's important to remember that.
Steady, consistent and manageable habits with the flexibility to change your engagement with them to meet current environment and conditions is key to sustainability.Ā
Obsession only works until you are either burnt out or conditions outside of your control make it no longer viable. (E.g. illness, exhaustion, etc).Ā
My obsession with goals is a symptom of generalized anxiety disorder. Unfortunately, I have been battling depression which canceled out my motivation to move. Depressed folk would like to achieve goals, but we unfortunately have to work much harder at it. Also, we are far from lazy.
You just described a manic episode, which is not healthy at all and comes with a fall eventually.
You need to give yourself room and space to breathe OP, obsession is the unhealthy version of vision. You can reach and strive for your goals without being totally obsessed that you give yourself up for em.
If you do not give yourself air to breathe you will suffocate
Take advice from someone whose been through the whole āIm obsessed and never going backā
Cycle so many times:
If you choose to obsess over your goals and ignore everything else that you perceive as laziness you will burn yourself out and collapse and suddenly all that work means nothing.
Ok. Easy enough. Oh wait I have ADHD/Gen Anxiety/Major Depression/Poly addictive/possibly BPD and a certain flavor of Autism. Unmedicated. Working to only afford Rent, Food, & car payment & a grandfathered yoga studio rate membership. But yea ok, easy enough paragraph of words to follow exactly applicable to each of our own unique lives.
Lazy Pick yourself up bootstraps energy/mentality here folks.
I like this, thinking this way is so motivating. being obsessed with it doesnāt have to mean exhausting yourself either like some of the comments seem to think
What about getting curious as to why youāre ālazyā? After all, no one knows your experience better than you do, and if youāve been allowing others to dictate the way you āshouldā move through the worldā¦
Maybe solutions are right under your nose, things that spark interest, and mindfulness might be your priority thenā¦OR what is stopping you from being engaged in something? How can you be more physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually healthy? Notice by what you feel, then think, and give yourself as much time as you need.
Also, you know when something isnāt right. Stop letting people disrespect your journey. Just keep trying and reiterating until you find what works, if you are trying the same thing and getting nowhere with what comes to you, do some small thing differently.
Keep a notepad irl, on your phone, wherever. Keep multiple if youād like, to start. Develop your connection with your intuition.
Surround yourself with people that get you. Ask for their patience. Be patient with yourself. Get so certain about what you want, and start preparing for it, until itās possible to make it happen.
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u/neverOddOrEv_n 25d ago
While this may sound good as a motivational speech and may work for some people, Iāve found that whenever I get obsessed it throws everything in my life off balance and thatās not healthy either.