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S3 E49: Why You Don’t Have to Worry About Being Lazy

Rebecca Hass

If you’re worried that indulging in too much self care might push you into laziness, this episode is for you. I offer up some reflection questions to help you see what’s underneath this fear, and ways to intentionally balance rest vs. “doing”. Listen in to learn how you can reframe the concept of laziness to resist perfectionism and be more self-compassionate.

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TRANSCRIPT

Hello, everyone, welcome to Episode 49 of Being A Whole Person. 

Today we're gonna talk about laziness, and about how I think this is kind of a flawed concept that's often used against us, and that we often use against ourselves. Fun fact, I am recording this podcast with the cat on my lap, because he insists on being here with me at my desk. There's no room for him on the desk, so he's squeezed between me and the desk, on my lap, which is appropriate, because Rusty the cat doesn't believe in laziness either. 

Before I get into it, my usual quick plug for: please rate and review the podcast. I just realized that I don't have any reviews for the podcast since season three started, which is, if you're new here, when I shifted the focus of the podcast. I had a cohost for the first two seasons, and we had a different theme for the show. So even just a couple sentences is totally great. I would be so appreciative if you write a little review on Apple podcasts. Thank you so much in advance if you do that. 

So, I get this question a lot in many of my self care workshops, Build Your Seasonal Self Care Survival Kit, which I've done quarterly for the last year: How do I know what is enough self care? And what is too much? Sometimes people say the actual word, like, “What if I'm just being lazy?” but sometimes they don't, but I think that's still the undertone behind it. 

In the last workshop I did, my short answer was, if you're worried about being lazy, you're probably not lazy. I want to revise that. I need to take it even further, because I don't think laziness is actually a helpful concept. I don't think it's helpful for us to think of ourselves as lazy either. Most often, the term “lazy” is used to put others down, or to put ourselves down, which is not compassionate, not helpful. It's used as a tool of capitalism wrapped up in all those messages that want to make us feel like we should always be doing something, we should always be productive. Making laziness seem bad, and like a moral flaw, helps all of that. 

It's also used to put down people for not having accomplished something yet in their lives, when there are definitely other societal and systemic factors, lack of privilege, things like that standing in the way. There's a really great blog post that my friend Audrey Holst wrote - she was a guest on a previous episode, which I'll link to in the show notes. She wrote a blog post about laziness, which links to this article by Devon Price that gets into some of the more psychological aspects of laziness. It's a really great read, I highly recommend you check that out to learn more about the roots of laziness. 

There are so many ways that laziness as a vilified concept has made its way into our subconscious, through religion, through having a farming culture, where you needed to work in order to eat, then Western post industrial culture and the emphasis on production, and then productivity on a more personal level, and of course, capitalism. So yeah, there's a lot that makes us think this way. 

But, as you know, as a creative person, work does not always look a certain way. What if you were lying down all day, but you're also working, that looks like rest and laziness and work at the same time? What if you're collecting ideas by reading or absorbing inspiration, which is definitely an important part of the creative process? We all know that the creative process is not linear, and that often we hit roadblocks, and that having downtime - or at least time where our brains get to do more of an automatic activity - that is an essential part of the process. 

When you think you're being lazy, because you're resting, probably one of two things are happening. Either you're tired and in need of rest, and rest can look lots of different ways. It might mean that you're in need of a break, or just a shift in focus from the activity that you had been doing. Or maybe you're just not interested in doing the thing you're feeling obligated to do. 

There are so many reasons why you might feel obligated to do something. It might be for money or income. It might be to fulfill others' expectations. It might be to fulfill what you think other people's expectations are, even though they're not. It might be knowing it will further your career or get you closer to goals that you're hoping to achieve. 

I'm not listing these and saying, “obligated to do something”, saying that none of these reasons are valid, because many of them are valid. But, just a little nudge to check in with yourself, examine those obligation feelings, just to see if that thing you're trying to do is just a “should”, or if it's something that's really important to you. Or, at least, if it's not something that's really important to you intrinsically, it serves a real purpose in your life. 

You also might be feeling unmotivated, because you have legitimate mental health concerns, like, depression steals your motivation. Or maybe you have some undiagnosed physical concerns too, that are something you need to examine, and see how you can actually get more energy, looking at your health. 

This “laziness” (I'm using air quotes here) can also be used intentionally as a form of prioritization, especially if you identify as a perfectionist, or recovering perfectionist like me. Maybe “lazy” isn't the best word to use here. But if I detach that disparaging meaning from it, it is actually really helpful for me to be lazy about something on purpose, when my inner perfectionist wants to obsess about every detail of whatever it is I'm doing, that maybe doesn't matter as much. Or, not even that it doesn't matter, but it doesn't need to be scrutinized to that degree. Because doing that, and looking at every detail of this activity might take me away from other more important things. Our time is limited, we can't go 115% in on everything. Not sure why I said 115%. But there you go. 

If you're a perfectionist, I'm going to say that your 80% effort is probably better than other people's 100% effort, because you are just so focused on doing a good job. I'm not saying that because we need to compare ourselves to other people, but sometimes it's a helpful reminder to me just to know that, “Okay, maybe my 80% is great, that will get the job done, and I don't need to obsess over this thing. I just need to finish it.” 

So if this being lazy feeling is a nagging discomfort for you, maybe it is actually you avoiding something. Then asking that question, “Am I avoiding something? Is the thing I'm avoiding important to me?” - that helps you be more intentional about how you're spending your time?

Or is it coming from a more general sense of resting, just not being okay, and not being able to give yourself the permission to take time for yourself? If that's where your feeling of being lazy is coming from, how can you allow yourself to take up more space in the world? How can you allow yourself to care for yourself in that way, and actually give yourself what you need? 

Are you trying to do more and more because you feel that you need to prove to the world that you're not lazy? I've definitely felt that at many times in the past. As much as I practice this, sometimes those feelings still come up. But the truth is that we don't have to earn our rest. It often feels like we are not allowed to rest until we finish the task. 

Yeah, sometimes we're on an urgent deadline, but I think it's really harmful to use rest only as a reward, because it is something that we need, and something that we shouldn't have to tie to achievement. I keep framing this kind of as a binary, like “work or rest”, and it's really not. There are so many shades of grey in between and how much time you're spending on one thing versus the other. 

It's definitely possible that the thing you're feeling obligated to do is important and that you need to rest and not do it right now. That's complicated. So really, it's how you're deciding to use your time. Resting more doesn't mean that you have to completely sacrifice what's important to you. It's not all or nothing. It just means you might sacrifice doing that thing at an inhumane, really fast pace. Honestly, even if you're trying to do it at a really fast pace, if never resting is going to plunge you into burnout, then you're not actually going to be able to do it quickly. So that might not even be realistic. Rest might be what allows you to replenish energy to come back and do the thing. 

I know a lot of us feel like we only have two speeds, stop and go, and that if we stop, we will never start again. That's a really scary feeling when we feel like we are already kind of hanging on for dear life, and running on that hamster wheel that’s supposedly going to get us where we want to go. But you don't have to take a long break in order to come back refreshed a lot of the time. 

Sometimes I'm in the middle of a busy day, and I’ll go lie down for half an hour, probably, maybe an hour, and I feel so much better afterwards, so much more clear headed, so much more refreshed. Yes, there are varying degrees of that, based on what my energy level is that day, how much sleep I've gotten, all that kind of stuff. 

But the point is that you might have to get more comfortable with taking those breaks throughout your day, and if you have a problem with that, look to your furry friends, especially cats. They don't feel bad about sleeping all day. Okay, yeah, they don't have a lot of responsibilities. They don't have bills that they have to pay, but I still look to Rusty the cat as my inspiration in this. 

I also wish that you could see me right now, because I just said that and he just perked up his head and looked at me like, “Are you talking about me?” When it comes down to it, this is really all about knowing, is there space in your life for the things you want? Is there too much of the things you don't want? 

If you don't feel satisfied with that balance, you might need some rebalancing. You're absolutely allowed to do that gradually. We tend to romanticize the “quit your job and move out to the country in a van”, those drastic life changes, but you really don't have to make a drastic life change in order to make a meaningful change. 

So this is why I don't think laziness is a useful concept. It's mostly a mask for other deeper things. Maybe when it comes down to it, using the word “lazy”, is lazy. How meta. So if worrying about being lazy is something that plagues you, I hope that this episode has helped. 

And if some of the questions I brought up are leaving you thinking, “Whoa, I have a lot to figure out. I don't know if there's space in my life for the things I want, and I don't know how to make the space for it,” I'd love to help you out. You can always book a free discovery call to talk about coaching possibilities. I don't do sleazy sales pitches or put any pressure on you, we just chat and see if it's a fit. You’ll leave with at least one strategy that you can put into practice immediately, because I really just want to help you. So let me know, that's always available. There are one time options or package options, and in Compassionate Creativity Coworking Club, there's an option to have access to coaching in a breakout room during coworking sessions. 

So there are all kinds of ways that I can help you if you need that, just let me know - hello@rebeccahass.com is my email. There are always links to that stuff in the show notes. I'm always wishing you the best in your creative pursuits and everything, and I hope you have a wonderful week!