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Ahh, good ole “To Do” Lists. More like “Things I’ll Never Get Done But WIll Compile Anyway to At Least Look Semi-Productive” Lists, amirite? DON'T DO IT It seems the more I add to my “To Do” List, the less there is that actually gets done. It seems To Do Lists are just a reminder of what a failure I am. As if I’m writing myself a personal note saying: “Hey, look at all these things you couldn’t manage to do today!” Well I’ve since then learned To Do Lists, in the traditional sense anyway, but believe me, it was quite a struggle to get passed that. I mean have you ever had so much on your To Do List and feel so overwhelmed by it that you end up just...doing nothing? Of course, doing nothing is not only acceptable but encouraged, as I have talked about in great detail before, as long as you do nothing on purpose, as long as that's what you set out to do. However, doing nothing when you set out to do something, doing nothing "by accident", is just "plain" lazy You're beyond being plain lazy. You're a PRO-crastin8r. You want to aim to be SUPER LAZY. As a matter of fact you're not being lazy at that point, when you're not in control of what you do and when you do it, you're just being dumb. Essentially, you have to use your laziness, not let your laziness use you. We’re going to use our laziness to do very little but be LARGELY (more) productive We’ll be making a tiny to do list, not a overwhelming massive one like we usually make that never gets done. The less you have on your to do list, the *more* you will feel you have accomplished. Less is more. (Cha, cha, cha and cue a dancing bear). As silly as it is, a toilet paper company gets the theory of minimizing effort and maximizing results. They understand the super power of laziness -- that’s the secret ingredient to their formula! You want to be as effective as possible. Using the TP example, that means cleaning up as much shit as possible, uhh literally, while simultaneously using as little resources, or in this case paper, as possible.  DO JUST ENOUGH Basically, if you want to get shit done, do shit with as little effort as possible that allows you to make the biggest shit happen.Minimize effort. Maximize results. Be lazily successful. Imagine you’re a kid and have to eat a plate full of vegetables. Well, you don’t want to eat vegetables, so what do you do? You put as little vegetables on your plate as possible. Likewise, if you’re going to put stuff on your plate (as in work load/to do list), then you want to put as little as possible on it so you can actually finish it. I specifically remember my mom telling me something like “You must eat *at least* three pieces of broccoli if you want dessert” Well you bet your ass I’m about to eat only three pieces then. “At least” means the maximum amount in my dictionary Kind of like writing a paper for class: If the professor/teacher says a paper must be “at least” 3 pages, then that, to me, means it will be three pages. MAX. No more, no less. I do just enough. The same principle goes for a To Do List. I do “just enough” to call it a productive day and move on. DON'T LIST WHAT YOU CAN'T OR WON'T DO. PERIOD. List (and do) just enough to get by (and make progress towards your goal) You probably have this huge ass list of stuff you should do. Well go ahead and do yourself a favor: tear it right up and throw that out. Instead, make “at least”, (read: maximum of) 3 things on your to do list. Narrow it down to the MOST important tasks that need to get done for the day. Think about what really contributes to your ultimate goal and focus on that. Everything else is just extra work, dude. You don’t have to “do” it. Stop making ridiculously long-winded and unachievable To Do Lists. Make practical, lazy ones instead. Make an actual To Do list, not a To Don't list. List things you can and will do that contribute to your goal.
And I could even justify putting a stop to using *any*sort of To Do list all together if it wasn’t for the fact that I enjoy gamifying my productivity and leveling up my life. It’s also nice to write myself a little love note that says: “Hey Nate, look how freaking awesome you are” By seeing a list of things I have DONE Rather than the one I suggested in the beginning of this blog post, where it’s a list of things I haven’t even started. You want to be able to actually achieve the items on this list, so be realistic, even if you end up only putting down one thing on this list or nothing, whatever, congrats, you did it! Identify with what you actually DO, not what you DON'T Do The reason you may label yourself as a “failure” is because you are judging yourself based on what you did NOT accomplish, rather than what you did. The reason you may think your laziness is such a bad thing is because you have learned to associate that failure with “lack of hard work” but what it really is, where that failure comes from, is your “lack of tactical laziness” -- using it as a super power that you are in control of. You’re identifying with what you DID NOT do instead of what you DID do This is like a chef saying he was a failure at work today because he didn’t paint the walls. Like, you cook in the kitchen, man, chill. You got plenty of meals done. Leave that to the painters. Determine what your “role” is, your destiny and purpose, and design your lazy little to do list in such a way that ONLY contributes to serving that role that you can accomplish TODAY. If you want to be a streamer, you can stream a game today. If you want to be a podcaster, you can prepare show notes today. If you want to be the very best, you can catch one more Pokemon today. You get the idea. Make a simple goal that you can accomplish immediately and also serves the greater purpose of fulfilling that dream role of yours. Create a to do list that helps make your dream become reality with one (or a few) simple tasks. Don’t go over board with high expectations or a high amount of To Dos. Take the easy way out in getting where you want to be. Keep. It. Simple And keep it focused. If you have a list of 37 things to do. Even if you manage to do 8 of them, or even 12, you still have over two dozen things that you DIDN’T get done. This impacts your ego in a negative way. It makes you feel like you haven’t really done anything. Meanwhile, if you only have 3 things on your list and you manage to get done all three out of three of them, you will feel much more positive and much more accomplished. You did everything you needed to! Not only will you feel like a winner, but you managed to get 3 IMPORTANT things done, rather than 8 obscure, unnecessary, or extracurricular tasks, so you’ve actually objectively (and not just subjectively) enhanced your productivity. Cut out the majority of your to do list and forget about it. Keep the things that really matter. Keep it real. Ask yourself:
2. Which of these tasks contributes to that goal the most? If you're having trouble answering these questions, then perhaps a better set of questions to ask is: What do I do when I procrastinate? Which tasks allow me to do that thing more in the future? Anything else doesn’t need to get done. You can take satisfaction in that, cut it off your list, and relax, man. Do less with more focus. That’s the Procrastin8r way. Take it easy, N8
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NO is an awesome word for the lazy. Yes it is! A lot of people are afraid to use the word “No”. Maybe they fear the disapproval or rejection of people. Maybe they don’t want others to think of them as a “bad person” if they turn them down. Maybe they don’t want coal for Christmas or turn burn in the after life. Who knows? But PRO-crastinators use the word “No” all the time. It’s a powerful little two letter word that gets us out of doing things we don’t really want to do and it’s very easy to use. I mean it’s only one syllable to roll off the tongue and it can get you out of a long series of commitments you honestly have no interest in, yet alone time and energy for. Look, if you say “yes” that means you are agreeing to either more work, more effort, more time, or more money on your part, or a combination of all of the above in the future. There’s no reason a good sensible lazy person would want to sign up for *more* things to do. You want to have a small to do list, not a gargantuan one. Heck, I mean you probably even want that list to be empty. It just doesn’t make sense to volunteer yourself for work and effort when your goal is to achieve laziness. You don’t achieve laziness by being a “Yes Man” or “Yes Woman”. I mean if someone asks you to watch their kids or review their blog or help them move furniture or whatever and you say “Yes” Well great, now you made a commitment. You’re locked in. You pretty have to follow through at that point. I mean you could abandon it later but then you just created disappointment. It’s better to reject in the first place than to make a promise and later disappoint. Think about it, dude, what hurts more: Getting rejected on the first date or going through a break up after years of dating? Definitely the latter. If you have no intention of doing something, just say you don’t want to do it and when you do…. Don’t beat around the bush Or as I like to say...Don’t fluff the pillows too much. Just lie down. In other words, just say “No”. Not “maybe”. Not “next time”. Not “we’ll see”. Get to the point. Just say NO. Otherwise, you’ll raise the expectation that you will commit to the request at some point in the future. Unless you really mean it, unless you really *want* to do that request in the future, then you can tell them something along the lines of “I can’t right now, but maybe later”. But if you *know* your mind is not going to change later and you *know* your not going to have the time or will to do it later., then flat out say “NO” to begin with. You’ll save yourself the hassle of having to explain or make an excuse later down the road. Plus if you keep giving these half-baked nos and not a true NO, it’s going to catch up to you and you’re going to have to spill the beans and make it clear that NO was the answer from the very beginning. You should just say it from the beginning then and not go through this whole elaborate social song and dance. Jeez, that’s a lot of getting up and moving around Embrace your laziness instead and just say no from the get-go. You have NO obligation to say YES I don’t care if they are your family, friend, wife, husband, son, cousin, daughter, aunt, uncle, neighbor, roommate, or even boss... whoever. You owe them nothing and certainly not a "yes" to everything and anything they want. Just because you’re related by blood or you’ve known each other for years or your in love or live next door to each other or work under them, does not mean you are required to do anything they ask. If they do something for you, you could say “yes ”to something they ask of you once in a while-- just to return the favor. That’s Reciprocation though and an entire different topic entirely. Nonetheless, you’re not entirely obligated to reciprocate either and if you do, you give either equal or less effort than they did. You should never say “Yes” more often than the person requesting something from you. That’s the general Lazy Mindset rule in handling reciprocation, but we’ll have to dive into deeper detail on that in the future. Even if the person has authority over you, like your boss or teacher, you do not have to comply. Show them that you’re not afraid of the consequences of saying NO. Show them you just don’t care -- you are too lazy to bother with whatever request they want and feel unfazed by whatever sort of punishment they threaten you with. You’re just minding your own business. Contrary to popular belief, you’re not going to get fired for saying NO. They’ll actually respect you more and give you less bitch work. And if, in the extremely rare case they do decide to fire you on the spot for saying NO, then congratulations! You no longer work for a jerk of a boss! You can now find a decent human being to work for. Or better yet, be your own boss. Don’t be a people pleaser There’s this whole idea that in order to live “a good life”, you have to be some type of martyr, always sacrificing your financial and emotional resources and especially TIME for the “good of others”. Sounds all well and good. But this will absolutely wear you thin. You’ll be tired and not like the “I’m gonna relax and take a nap” sort of tired but the exhausted, burnt out, “I can’t take it anymore” sort of tired where you feel physically and emotionally depleted. Plus, by people pleasing, you are working towards the goals of other people and not your own. That’s not an efficient use of your time. PROcrastin8rs do NOT people please. It’s against their nature to serve others at all, yet alone to the point of fatigue Have you ever tried to help someone or make them happy? Like truly gone all out to help that person with your time and resources; you gave them all you could? If you have, you’ll know that no matter how hard you try, that person is never happy or never seems to quite get themselve sout of the rut. They wind up right back where they were before you helped or tired to make things better -- in the same emotional and financial state they were in to begin with. You don’t bring happiness to the world by trying to make others happy. You bring happiness to the world by being happy yourself and setting an example. Please one person and one person only - yourself! How can life be any good if you’re not being any good to yourself? There’s only so much time, energy, and money you have and if you give it all away, well then you can’t really around and be lazy, can you? You can’t enjoy your own things. You’re worried about problems that aren’t yours and that may not even directly affect you. This is a toxic practice that’ll stain your brain. Relieve yourself by focusing on yourself and you wants, your needs. Do things on *your terms*. You can’t take care of other people if you don’t take care of yourself. Love yourself. A healer does no good for the party when she’s out of mana. Rejuvenate your mind and say NO when you have too much on your plate. Be RUDE when you say NO If you’re in the habit of being agreeable…. If being a “Yes Man” or “Yes Woman” is basically part of your identity at this point... If people always expect you to do things, but never really seem to return the favor, yet you still have a hard time turning them down... If you have a hard time rejecting someone’s idea, request, or suggestion. No matter how much of a serious impact it can have on your time and resources… You need to start being rude. You need to be a bit of a lazy asshole. Sounds a bit contradictory, I know, but stick with me. You’re basically being a overly nice and hardworking people-pleasing slave. You have to free yourself. Break those chains. The act of breaking is a bit forceful of course but it’s effective. You currently have a YES mind and need to shift into a NO mind. Eventually you want to land somewhere in between. It’s a continuum and the target is definitely in the middle. You don’t know what hot is without feeling cold and vice versa. You don’t know what sweet is without tasting salty. You don’t know love without hate. You must understand the extremes before finding a balance. You’ve been on the one side of the scale your whole life, saying YES to everything in a kind, sweet way. You have to be on that other side of the scale in order to find symmetry. You have to say NO in a rude, arrogant way. Like if your aunt asks “Hey can you watch my dog this weekend?” Be like “No, I ain’t gonna spend my weekend cleaning up shit and pouring slop in a bowl. I have better things to do.” Or if your boss asks “Hey can you add this report to your to-do list.” Say “No, I can’t. Given my work load already topped off, I don’t expect that I’ll be able to finish it on time.” You can even just say NO to people without any sort of explanation. You don’t need to explain. Just say NO. Period. End of sentence. End of discussion. “I said NO and that’s it. That’s final. No further conversation” You could also just ignore them, like they’re so unimportant, they haven’t even earned your attention, yet alone time and commitment to whatever task they want. This is just a starting point from where you want to actually be. Eventually you want to be able to do it with more tact as we’ll get in later. You may hurt other people’s feelings when you say NO, but they’ll respect you more They may whine, bitch, moan, cry, beg, or yell. But it doesn’t bother you or change your mind. You’re above that. You won’t stoop down to their level. Stand by your decision. You’re calm, cool, and relaxed. You’re living life on your own terms. Their feelings are not relevant to your reality. Just because they are upset, doesn’t mean you are or have to be. You don’t feed into drama and don’t want people in your life that can’t take NO as an answer. Say no, move on and do your own thing, despite whatever their reaction is. ...But eventually learn to say it with TACT Once you feel comfortable saying NO in a rude manner, you can eventually begin adjusting yourself on that YES/NO continuum. You don’t want to be perpetually rude, but it is a necessary stage of development in growing up from your immature people-pleasing self into a lazy procrastinator one. Your goal is to eventually be charismatic about your NOs. This is done in three steps:
For example, going back to the dog sitter scenario you could say “Hey I understand how important your dog is to you and how you want to put someone you trust in charge of taking care of her, but I’m saying no. I don’t like the responsibilities of taking care of animals as cute as I think she is. Plus, I already have plans. Let me know how your doggy’s weekend turns out though.” In this example, you’ve established that you understand the problem their going through. You then made it abundantly clear that NO is the answer. Make sure you use a phrase that doesn’t leave any wiggle room or ambiguity. “I’m saying no” “I respectfully decline” “I am rejecting your request/offer.” “I do not want to” “I’m not interested” “I cannot commit to that.” Finally, you offered a positive sign off and sort of “best wishes” to them. This will keep you from leaving a sour taste in their mouth when they hear your reply. You still remain assertive. Assertive is key. You don’t want to the other be second guessing yourself on whether or not you’re sure about your answer. Say it and mean it. While you don’t have to be mean to be assertive, it’s easier to achieve “assertiveness” by being mean, at least temporarily. You’ll eventually strike a balance and be able to drop the jerk persona completely. 'The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.' - Warren Buffet Take it easy, N8  Have you ever made goal for yourself, set out to go get it, and detrimentally failed in doing so? Maybe you wanted to lose weight or earn a million dollars or start a successful business, but it seems that no matter how hard you try, it just doesn’t get accomplished at all. Ever.You wind up in a failure loop: try, fail, try again, fail again. It makes you feel like your identity is “a failure”, that you’re just “no good at all” at getting what you want. Well you know what? Fuck it. People will tell you to “just keep trying” and “never get up”, to “live the dream” or whatever. Fuck them. If you failed at prevailing at an accomplishment you set for yourself so many times and aren’t really making any notable progress on said goal (or learning from your mistakes for that matter), maybe it is time to actually call it quits. In other words, if the goal is leading to nothing but failure, without any lessons learned or opportunities opened, then cut it. Be lazy and take it off your to do list. Seriously. See, there comes a time where we must examine our goal(s) and see if it’s actually attainable or not. If your goal is too big, you’re gonna flop n’ fail and not the good kind of fail either, where you can say “mistakes are meh”, learn from it, and move on, but the bad kind of fail where there’s no value you can take away from it. These are goals you should just give up on It’s like you’re failing just to fail, without even realizing it. I mean if I told you to go swim across the Atlantic Ocean within a day. You’d be like “nah, bro that’s impossible.” Like you’re not even going to try to do that, because it’s a DUMB goal. It’s a Dangerously Unattainable Monstrously Big Goal that doesn’t make any sense to even attempt. It’s utterly stupid. So why set yourself up for failure? Failure is okay. You’re going to fail along the way to success. That much is unavoidable and as a matter of fact welcomed, with open arms. But to reach the same failure again and again without any sort of progress or lesson learned is a waste of time and pointless. Fuck that. I mean don’t get me wrong. I love to waste time. I waste time on video games. I waste time sleeping. I even waste time scrolling through Reddit and looking at memes. But one thing I do NOT waste time on is hard work. I don’t spend any more time working than I have to. If I do any actual work, I want it to matter and be effective. I do just enough work to get by. I don’t want to work hard just for the sake of working hard. If you go for a goal and keep failing over and over for the same reason, then you're wasting time.  As Vaas Montenegro in Far Cry 3 said over and over again (ironically): the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and over again. If you’re trying the same goals repeatedly and making the same mistakes along the way, guess what? You may be a bit insane, or at least just not paying enough attention. It’s okay, though-- we’ve all been brainwashed. This hard work mantra society is enough to drive anyone batty. We haven’t been taught how to properly set a goal because in order to properly set a goal you have to be…. LAZY! And they (the owners of society) don’t want that. They just want obedient hard workers who help achieve THEIR goals, not your own. You want to make an easy, peesey, SMART goal. Specific Measurable Attainable Relevant and Timely. If you make a goal that is way too hard, or DUMB, you’re not only going to fail at meeting the expectations of that goal, but you’re also really not going to learn anything from that failure. And this is what they want, they want you to associate goal-setting with Imagine trying to dead lift a weight at the gym that you don’t have the strength for. I’m talking way beyond your capability, not like a “I could probably lift that on a good day” sort of thing but like a “I do not possess the muscle capacity to lift that amount of weight on any day. Period.” You’re going to end up dropping it on the floor, failing, and the only thing you’ll learn from that little episode is that you can’t lift that amount of weight. Not much of a lesson there. You could have just used common sense.  See, instead, using the weight at the gym example, you gotta sorta start out low and incrementally increase the amount of weight that you lift, in order to build strength. You have to make the goal of lifting 10 pounds before you make one to lift 300. The same goes for any goal: start with a small easy goal and gradually increase the "weight" of it. If you make your goal to dead lift 300 pounds and you don’t achieve it right away, you’re gonna feel like a failure. On the other hand, if you make it something small and achievable, you’ll earn this cool thing called progress and that’ll keep you moving forward and who knows? Maybe one day you can eventually get that 300 pound weight lifted. Another example of a DUMB goal is, if you’re playing an RPG, it’s like trying to kill a boss you aren’t the proper level for nor have strong enough equipment for. Like in Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, you can literally fight the FINAL boss at the very beginning of the game as noob link. This is a DUMB goal because you’re just not going to have the skill or equipment necessary to take him down (for the average player anyway. I know there are probably some streamers out there who have successfully beaten this final boss with starter gear, but even *they* didn’t do that during their first playthrough; they took the time to master the controls and mechanics of the game, one step at a time). The odds are against you. The SMART goal would be to journey along other quests and fight lesser monsters until you are ready to take on that one final big baddie.  Now it’s easy to see why a goal is DUMB when I use a bit of hyperbole and say go swim across an ocean or lift big weights or kill a final boss as a noob something, but it isn’t always flat out in our face how goal can be DUMB.. Sometimes a DUMB goal seems like a “smart” thing to do -- like maybe multiply your income tenfold or master an instrument or even “be a better person”. Seems like an intellectual path to take, don’t it? Well, the issue with these goals is that they don’t really have any substance. They’re too vague. They’re just these generic convictions about what you “should” do and who you “should” be without any specific parameters or measurable assets within a certain time frame. They aren’t really relevant to your current situation or ability either. They’re more like hopes or wishes. Heck, you’re better off throwing a coin down a wishing well than actually putting in strenuous physical or mental effort and financial and emotional resources to try and attain any sort of DUMB goal. You’ll be relying on luck anyway. Plan your actions one step at a time. Make a simple, yet attainable goal. Move like a sloth-- slow and deliberate, not like a squirrel trying to dash across the highway. These type of (dumb) goals are just huge undertakings that you straight up just aren’t ready for. Put it this way, every hero has a backstory where they started out weak, maybe they were a peasant in the field or a nerdy kid at school. Their goal was to just solve one problem at a time, which *eventually* lead to saving the world. Their ultimate accomplishment of saving the world was not their initial goal though. It was a result of the series of small goals they made along the way that got them to reach hero status. Cloud from Final Fantasy VII (one of my favorite STORIES of all time by the way including any books or movies), for example, started out as a mercenary that wanted to make a bit of cash. [SPOILER ALERT] Later, he decides he supports the goals of Avalanche, the group that originally hired him, and wants to help take down the evil greedy corporation: Shinra. Soon, Cloud and his friends realize the Shinra is just a tiny spec in the bigger picture and that there’s a larger play at hand. See, Shinra was involved with these crazy experiments. One of which, they injected a human fetus with cells they found from an alien (from outer space) to see what would happen. Well said human, Sephiroth, grew up and decided it was his “destiny” to rule over the planet. Oh and he believed that this alien thing was his “mother”. I mean technically it was. I mean kinda. But like, not really. Yeah, pretty messed up in the head, but that’s understandable. I mean mental illness happens is pretty common childhood stars, yet alone childhood scientific experiments. But instead of developing a drug addiction or shaving his head in a mental break down (like childhood stars tend to do), he kinda had superpowers. And let me tell you, crazy + superpowers = danger. This dude wanted to destroy the planet, so he could then rule it? Doesn’t seem like a great plan to me. That’s like burning down a kitchen because you want to be head chef. Well, what are you the head of now, oh mighty bright one?  Aaaaanyway…. Long story short, it winds up that Cloud and his buddies decide they’re the best for the job to put a stop to this god-wannabe one winged lunatic. The point here is that Cloud never originally had the goal to take down a monstrous being with divine powers who was set to destroy the entire planet and rule over its ashes. But they winded up there through a series of small goals that got increasingly bigger. The Cloud at the beginning of the game (both plot/character development wise and stat/gameplay wise) is not the Cloud that could save the Planet. If he did make the goal at the beginning of the game, he would have failed. (Of course, Zack Fair, who Cloud actually imagined himself to be for 75% of the game, always said he wanted to be a hero, and turned out to be, but that’s another story.) [END OF SPOILERS] You want to build a goal based on real insight, not imagination. The former being one of calculated planning based on facts and the later being based on complete fantasy or idealism. You’re a procrastinator so quit your goals that are too big and go for the low effort ones. There’s no point in “trying hard” to attain big ass goals that are well, quite frankly, unattainable. It’s a waste time, effort and energy, so just give up on them. Then replace them with some lazy, easy, SMART goals. Take it easy, take it reeeal easy, N8  Stop Trying to Get Instant Gratification. There's No Rush for Happiness, Success, & Fulfillment.4/3/2019 Woah, hey slow down. Sit on down and relax. That’s not something most people tell you any more, unless they'r being condescending. I know. It’s crazy out there! Everyone’s rushing to get things done and no one really knows why they’re in such a hurry to begin with. Everything we do from going to work to completing our everyday tasks in between is done in an unbelievably quick fashion, with no regard to actually taking our time, experiencing the thing, and well, living in the present. We don’t even take our time to do something as simple as eat. I mean certainly we eat by stuffing our faces with burgers, pizza, and other fast food, but the act of eating itself is rushed. We’re not *eating*, we’re just rushing through the process of obtaining sustenance and nourishment. We don’t actually put ourselves in the present and experience what eating actually is. There are monks that literally eat their entire meals...One. Bite. At a time...in order to fully experience the process of eating by its very nature, in order to taste the food, smell it, feel its texture, and become aware of how each muscle moves while eating ---the movement movement of, the throat swallowing, all these things that go on that we typically don’t give a second thought to. There’s a lot going on, a lot of artful complexity in everything we do, even the simplest of things, that we all but miss due to our habit of rushing through things endlessly. Are we at fault? Is this a habit we are responsible in ourselves for developing? Well, it may not be completely our fault in obtaining this odd fixation on asking “what’s next?” and moving immediately from one thing to another. After all, we don’t necessarily choose the society we’re born into, but it may be our fault to continue to embrace such patterns once we “wake up” and realize what’s going on. It’s a fast paced society with an unceasing amount of things to do. It’s a world of desire for instant gratification and instant results. You want a date? Swipe right. You want to order pizza? Click a few buttons You want to get the latest weather update? Talk to a speaker on your desk How about a new pair of shoes? Great. One click checkout and it’ll be at your house in a few hours. We’re used to getting things right away or at least very soon from the moment that we crave them or want them. We live in a world of instant gratification and getting it done now. Well, the procrastinator always waits for later. Anything you want can be available within seconds (or at least on its way to your door within seconds). Anything you crave to eat or touch can satisfied within the same time frame. It’s quick, instant, and as a patient procrastin8r who always puts things off, I have to say, scarily so. We’re addicted to seeing the little red bubble pop up within minutes after we post something and getting that instant gratification of approval. The amount of likes has become tied with self confidence. This whole “do it for the likes” culture has gone too far. People were literally eating Tide pods, remember that? And spoonfuls of cinnamon all just to get views. Then you have this whole phenomenon of how“ Depression” is seen as a “cool” thing. There are memes and comments all over.There are people depressed and it’s a serious issue, don’t get me wrong. I’ve been there, personally. I know how life can feel like it’s out to get you, how it feels like there’s no escape and no end to the psychological and emotional torture. But there are many people that are simply going through a hard time, experiencing the natural process of grief or regret and aren’t anywhere near the level of negativity that depression encompasses. As much as grief and regret are negative emotions, they are not any way equivalent to actual Depression. If you have *actual* Depression, it’s hard to reach out to anyone, yet alone make a public billboard (aka social media post) about it. These people, the ones who are not clinically diagnosed, and recently experienced some trauma that made them feel negative, are looking for attention. Simple as that. And that’s how far we’ve gone as a society. We’ve become so addicted to this attention and receiving it instantly that people diagnose themselves with diseases in order to get their fix -- fix as in a junkie’s relief, not a fix as in an issue resolved. That says something though. That says that on some level we want to connect on a human level. We want to share in our experiences through real emotion. But unfortunately, the desire for social approval and instant gratification is often times stronger than the desire to build genuine, meaningful relationships. People will try to “connect” only if it gets them likes. We swipe right and left when we want to meet someone, not just for dates, but you can even do some professional networking on Tinder-like app called “Ripple” Meaningful relationships are rare and are certainly NOT encouraged in our work hard mantra and instant gratification society. People post and “communicate” with the sole intention of earning likes, that instant gratification of social approval, the instant attention. They don’t try to connect on a deeper level or truly understand each other. Online conversation, especially when it gets into politics turns it no nothing but a flame war with each party speaking in memes and one liners they found from a [insert political party] blog here. This is no way to connect with other people or build meaningful relationships or even understand one another. A procrastin8r sits on back and listens, without judgment. Blues muusician Daryl Davis has befriended and converted over 200 KKK members within the past three decades. He didn’t do this by shouting or yelling or posting a meme to their wall or sending an angry e-mail or creating a viral rant video. You know what he did? He met up with them. Sat down face to face and he... Listened. He questioned them from a place of curiosity like a child wanting to learn (genuine curiosity), not in a condescending or hostile way, and listened. He held back any accusations and angry banter and instead sat back, listened, ask some follow up questions, and repeat. This is the way to do it. This guy has the Lazy Mindset without even knowing what it is. He’s a natural PRO-crastin8r. These two people with two very opposing worldviews became friends. It is possible to make that happen. Social media, on the other hand, doesn’t do a great job at building such a connection, at least thus far and has yet to prove otherwise; it sets us apart and has us think of each other as nothing more than a screen name and profile pic. It’s a rushed means of communication and isn’t a replacement for the ability we have as humans to connect and understand one another on a higher level than these virtual tools can ever offer us. Setting us apart is an important goal for the elite, of course; it keeps us fighting among st ourselves rather than focusing our efforts towards working together and taking action to put a stop to their excessively greedy practices. A recent example was that whole "Aunt Becky" scandal -- it literally became abundantly clear that rich people were buying their way to (academic) success. Psh. No surprise there. But the media tried to sway the conversation into one about race -- how there are black mothers who lie about their address in order to qualify for a better school and they’re doing is trying to create a better opportunity for their child, just like how white people pay to get into IV leagues. This isn’t an issue of race. This is an issue of class. They will literally throw us plenty of “confetti ammunition: Gender, weight, sex, race, religion, whatever, all to keep us distracted from the real core issue: an unfair distribution of resources and over-competition for them as well as lack of human connection and empathy. They want you DISTRACTED. They want you thinking about what separates us, rather than what brings us together. The distractions are everywhere too, beyond just our identities. They want you entertained with all these TV shows, video games, and of course, social media so you don’t take the time for self-reflection and human connection. Heck, couples nowadays go out to dinner and stare at their phones. Families talk to their followers rather than each other. We’re living in a virtual world during our free time and rarely, if ever, experience the world around us. Lay down alone on your couch. Don’t turn on Netflix or your Xbox or Switch or Playstation or anything - just for a night. Turn it all off and unplug the truly and completely relax, without any distractions.  I’m not saying you shouldn’t do these things -- playing video games or watching tvshows/movies. (As a matter of fact, find a way to make them profitable when you do participate in such awesome endeavors -- blog or make videos, create content based on your interests. Heck you can just turn on a microphone and camera and stream your game play or movie reaction. Simple.) I’m saying you shouldn’t let those things actually distract you from self fulfillment or remove you from your focus and pathway to success. Live in the world instead of trying to escape it all the time. There’s a live, breathing world around us and the people that surround you are *real* people, not just labels of whatever they identify as or you judge them as Furthermore, they want us to remain uneducated and take knowledge for granted. What is knowledge any more when we have Google in our pockets? Anything you know or could know can be discovered within seconds from our smart phones. There is a greater wisdom and insight that we are capable of though. We’ve just become reliant on letting our phones and computers do all the thinking; it concerns me that at some point our own thoughts may be replaced with lines of code. We, as a society have stopped thinking for ourselves and have become so determined to gain the external, material benefit of things, rather than the internal, self-fulfilling ones, the substance that makes us very well human. Fulfillment is not instant and you don’t see it as a red bubble when you attain it. Those colors, by the way, the red and the blue, were specifically designed to trigger certain emotions in the brain. Psychologically, the blue gives a sense of calmness and welcoming, while the red (bubble pop up) instigates a sense of alertness and powerful. It makes us feel powerful when we get likes. The more likes we get, the more powerful we feel. Ex- Facebook employees have confirmed these facts. They’ve confirmed that the very structure of the platform was not to “connect” people, but to get them addicted -- to have them spend as much of their time as possible browsing the platform and sharing their oh so juicy data, all while being trained to seek instant gratification and results. People that seek instant gratification and instant results are the best customers -- the easiest to sell to. They are not only collecting your data, figuring out who you are, but also subtly training you to be more likely to consume. They want you to be a worker droid who’s programmed to work, work, WOOORRRRK, then buy, buy BUYYYYY. This is why we must slow down, like a sloth, and not seek instant gratification. It’s not something we need to survive nor is it even a way to reach true happiness. Happiness is not anything material and success never comes instantly -- a fact procrastinators understand. Your mind is being programmed to be a fast-paced worker droid that relies on a network to verify information (Internet/Google/Siri), rather than think for yourself. You are being turned more machine like every day by focusing on the materialistic world, rather than the inner-mind. Escape yo your own “Lazy Island”. Free your mind and procrastinate. Put off gratification and wait for a bigger pay off. Success takes time to build. Quality relationships take time to build. Take the time to connect to people, instead of rushing to satisfy your craving for attention or sex or whatever. Take the time to move towards success and don’t expect to get it quickly. The general population is no longer has a desire for genuine connection, instead they are after saying the words that’ll earn them the most likes, the most little red bubbles, the most approval. They want to separate us -- to see *each other* as less than human, to see the person that disagrees with you as less than human, instead of an actual human being who just so happens to hold a different set of beliefs. This “work hard” mantra is social conditioning to become less human and more like a robot designed to carry out tasks without question and without connecting with fellow robots, who used to be human as well. We only get one life. One. That’s it If we rush through it, then we will never take the time to see the beauties and life and feel the sensations. We will never experience actually living. We will never have a real connection, just artificial ones. I’m here to LIVE not exist. I’m here to learn and grow, not settle. I’m here to connect and share with others on a deep level. People are so worried and concerned about “making a living” and “getting likes” that they forget to actually LIVE! The owners of this world don’t want people to live. They want worker droids who...
They want to destroy every fiber in our being that makes us human. Know this and start to live life on your own terms, doing what you want, whenever you want. There’s no rush. Stay human and keep on procrastinating. LAZINESS MAKES YOU HUMAN I like to take things nice and slow. I’m a procrastinator; I’ll always wait for later.I’m proud of the fact that I’m not on board with this “get it now” mindset. I practice the L.A.Z.Y. Mindset, one of calm, peaceful, serenity I don’t experience “FOMO” because I live my own life and don’t really care what other people are doing or what they think about the things I’m doing. I’m not chasing after instant gratification, either, because that doens’t lead to true happiness or fulfillment. I take my successes as they come and roll through my failures and learn from them. Take a step back, relax, and enjoy the ride. Don’t fall under the pressure of what society expects from you. All they want from you, the elite rich people who own this whole system, is to be a hard worker and enthusiastic consumer. They want you to work your ass off and then spend that money to buy things that you don’t really need. Once you realize this, once you *see* how they value your labor and your dollar over your humanity, you can walk away and find your own path to success and happiness. Don’t fear failure along the way just because you’re not getting “instant” success. Real success doesn’t come in an instant; real success comes...later. Take it easy. Take it REEAAAL easy, N8 |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2022
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