Laziness is an awesome attribute to have. You get to do what you want, when you want, and don’t feel obligated to do anything else. You’re relaxed and at ease at all times. Things don’t bother you and you remain cool and laid back no matter what. You’re “energy efficient” and don’t put in more effort than absolutely necessary. I mean, ya gotta appreciate the fact that you are lazy. It’s only when you criticize yourself for being lazy does it become such a bad thing. It’s only when you harshly disapprove of your laziness rather than be thankful for it do you make it a burden. You may think to yourself that you’re just not good enough or never going to amount to anything due to the fact that you are lazy. But sometimes curses are a blessing in disguise and you have to look through the fog to get a clear picture. In other words, just because you are lazy right now, doesn’t mean things are terrible for you right now. You could of course replace “laziness” with whatever sort of perceived setback you are faced with. Maybe you’re broke ass poor. Maybe you’re single. Maybe you’re grieving over the loss of someone close. Being poor means you are frugal with your resources and not bound to be wasteful. It also means you know your friends like you for your wealth or money. Being single means you have freedom to do what you want, without accounting for another person’s wants, needs, and desires. There’s no negotiating with someone else in your decision-making process.Losing someone close means you can remember the things they taught you and live it in their legacy, so they never really die. See, we have to come to appreciate the things we have for what they are, even if on the surface they don’t seem really too great at all. Ya know, often we take for granted just how well we have it because we’re so focused on how things could be “better”. We want a better this or better that. A better car, a better job, a better husband, wife, or girlfriend/boyfriend. We have a longing for how the current circumstances could improve and fail to appreciate the value of what it is (or who it is) we already have. We’re more inclined to live in a distant future (which may not even come) than the actual present. Even more crazy is that once we achieve our “ideal”, there’s always another “better” that we’re seeking after. We could say “life would be much better once I have my own apartment”. Then you get said apartment and guess what? Now you want a bigger one. So you eventually get a bigger apartment. Great. Then what happens? You want an even bigger one, or maybe you want your own property. You want to buy a house. Then you want a house in a nicer neighborhood. And so on and so forth. We tend to look forward to the “next upgrade”, the “next step” more so than we appreciate what’s already immediately available right in front of us - right here, right now. Or maybe we don’t get more. Maybe we actually get less than what we had when we started. Things could take a turn for the worse. You end up losing what you had. And you’ll be looking back with nostalgia in your eye, thinking to yourself: “Man, those were the good days. I wish I knew they were the good days before things changed.” We throw ourselves in a loop. Wanting more, getting more, then wanting more again. Never stopping to appreciate what’s right here, right now, and just how good it really is. Or we’ll throw ourselves in a similar loop. Having something, taking it for granted, losing it, then wishing we had it again. Often, we fail to appreciate whatever we have in the moment. You have to appreciate life while you’re living it. Not after the fact, not after it’s already gone. Besides, life is a hell of a lot easier (and not to mention lazier) when you can lay back and feel grateful for things in the present, instead of sitting on the edge of your seat in either hopes or fear of what might happen in the future or painfully drowning yourself in regret of what happened or what no longer is about the past. Key word: might. It’s not for sure. It’s uncertain. What is certain is all the events taking place right now. Fear and hope are two sides of the same coin. Both are a fascination with the future of what could be, instead of that in the present. Granted, it’s 2020 and to say there’s been a lot of shit that happened this year would be an underestimate. But even during the year of the apocalypse, there’s still things to appreciate. Appreciation is something that we don’t typically seem to practice while it's under our possession. Using the 2020 covid pandemic as an example, I’m sure most of us took for granted small social gatherings at birthday parties and holidays. Now that we’re being discouraged to get together with our family and friends during those special occasions in order to “flatten the curve”, we look back to those times of eating Thanksgiving dinner with those close to us and long for it. It’s something that was spectacular, yet barely given a thought. And in what we lost, there is surely something we gained. Lying around all day being a procrastin8r is, for once, encouraged. It takes a global viral outbreak for the world to say “being lazy is okay”...and that’s something in the future, when it’s gone, when all of this blows away, we’ll look back and...appreciate it. It’s funny how we sort of look at the past with rose-colored glasses, appreciating the things we had, the things that were. We remember all the good things and forget the bad. You can look back at your high school days with a certain fondness of chillin’ with your friends. You forget the bogos homework assignments and the stupid school rules you had to follow. Yet, we’re so pessimistic about the present -- the things we have, the things that are. We have such a negative outlook on things while they are actually happening then years later look back in fond memory. But you don’t have to wait ‘til things are gone and fade away before showing appreciation for them. You can appreciate things right now while it’s still here, while you still have it. Rather than longing for or missing something that “used to be”, or even pining after something better, you can see the good in it all now Thanksgiving or not, it’s great to be thankful. We’re gonna look at how the lazy man practices thankfulness. Without further ado, let’s dive right into it. Appreciate the little shit. “Thank You” - those are words we seem to only say when there’s something significant that someone does for you. “Thank you for watching my dog while I took a month-long vacation to Cancun. Thank you for paying half of my car repair bill. Thank you for buying me front row concert tickets.” We feel genuinely thankful for big gifts and favors. But what about the small shit? What about when your partner makes pasta without garlic because s/he knows you hate garlic? What about your mother who listens to every single one of your podcast episodes? What about the guy or gal who holds the door open for you? Now we might say “Thank You” to those small gestures in order to maintain some form of politeness, but we don’t actually have the feeling of being thankful at all. It’s like “a given” and just something that happened. We take it for granted It’s not just things that someone does for us that we take for granted though. Things we have, like a roof over our head or warm towels from the dryer or food in the fridge are just things we don’t really think all that much about, yet alone have thankful and thoughtful thoughts about them. But in reality, they’re truly special. In order to begin to appreciate things on a genuine level, you have to imagine losing it. As backwards as that may sound - just imagine if you were to lose the things or people in your life. Kinda makes you start to see how awesome they all are, how much they really mean to you. You have to take the attitude of “I’m gonna love you, like I’m gonna lose you.” Cue Meghan Trainor. Pretend this is the last chance you’ll ever have to see your friend, the last chance you have to sit on your couch and watch TV, the last chance you’ll have to call your mother. And just think: one day, it will be your last chance. Everything that’s already gone now, had a “last time” that it happened. You’d probably wanna go back and experience it “just one more time.” But you can’t. Take the lesson to experience thankfulness NOW, while you still can. Make everything the last time, every time. Live this way and you’ll never really lose anything, you’ll simply have it while it’s here. Getting food delivered through an app on your phone, hearing your favorite song on your iPod shuffle, the smell of bacon for your late night breakfast. It all seems like nothing important. Trivial shit. Nadda. But imagine if you didn’t have it, and you’ll soon see how much it really means. Be present. Focus on what IS, not what could be or could have been Instead of being thankful for what you do have, here, in the present, we tend to imagine what we could have. We compare what we have versus what we could have in our imagination and are left feeling unsatisfied. You could have a nicer car. You could have the bigger house. You could have fancier clothes. You could have a partner that has more time to be with you and isn’t always working. We’re always thinking of what we DON’T have or that we LOST. Rarely does it come to mind what we actually HAVE.We’re distracted by things in our mind that keep us from being thankful. To be thankful is to be present. It’s to see the value of “now” and what is, not to long for something to return or something to come soon. In order to be thankful, you can’t be distracted by these imaginary things that don’t exist. The past is gone. It no longer exists. The future is unwritten. It doesn’t exist yet. The only thing that does exist, the only thing that’s true, is the present. Living “back then” or “until then” does us no good. It creates not just lack of appreciation, but an aching feeling of not having or being enough. You can’t be thankful for something that you had or something you will have, because the fact of the matter is, you don’t have it. Not right now, anyway. But that’s okay. Look at what you do have. Be in the moment, be in the present. Tell yourself: “This is enough. I have enough. Everything is good enough for me.” You need to vibe with what’s going on in the now, dude. Be in your surroundings and start to notice the things you might take for granted. Maybe it’s the way the sun lights on your porch. Such a simple thing. A dumb thing. But there’s beauty in it. Again, you have to picture not having that little sunlight in order to see how much it means. It could be dark. You could live in a cave, homeless. And even if you did, you get to be at peace with nature, not interrupted by the busywork of traffic and crowds passing by. There’s always something to appreciate in every situation, no matter how bad or how hard it may seem. Relax, embrace your laziness, and take it all in. It’s all perspective.
You can’t simultaneously live in appreciation and worry. Worrying is the opposite of appreciation. It’s thinking about what you don’t have. You’re worried about paying bills because you don’t have much money. You’re worried about being forever alone because you don’t have a significant other. You’re worried about getting places because you don’t have a car. All this worrying makes you ungrateful. It makes you ungrateful for the things that you do have. You’re sittin’ there thinking about what you don’t have and can’t even see the freaking awesomeness right under your nose. Allow yourself to see the best in your current situation and don’t get so caught up in the downside of it. If you have nothing to appreciate, or you say you do, you’re, again focused on either the past or future. You’re not being present with yourself. You’re stuck in a perspective that there’s nothing worth appreciating due to the fact that you’re only showing appreciation for that in which you don’t have (yet or any more) Kinda screwy how that works. “I would appreciate it if I had...more money, more this, more that, more insert blank!” Or.. “I would appreciate it if I *still* had...blank. No, you want to just appreciate IT. No IFs! Humble yourself a little. Put yourself in the perspective that all you could ever have, all that you could ever need, you have RIGHT NOW. Stop wasting time longing for more. Stop pining over the loss in the past. Be thankful that you’re who you are and you’re where you’re at....right now. After all, one day, you won’t be. Happy Thanksgiving and Take it real easy, N8
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“Anything can happen if you put in the effort” - a common bit of advice we’re often told. But let me tell you what. There are two types of people: those who get what they want...and those who try to get what they want.
See, “trying” does not always lead to success. In fact, more often than not, “trying” for something leads to failure, or at best, very little success. As the great Yoda once said “Do or do not. There is no try.” The harder you try, the more results you’ve come to expect. But those results are not guaranteed, despite all the effort you may have invested. When you “try” something, you put in lots and lots of effort into it. The textbook definition of effort is “a vigorous or determined attempt”. Vigorous, like a hardcore energetic push to accomplish something. Now, I don’t know about you, but I barely have enough energy to get out of bed, yet alone actually do something productive. So I don’t want to “try” to do anything. I’m not saying I don’t want to be productive and get results though. I’m just saying I don’t want to put any effort into said productivity. I don’t want to be “vigorous” in anything I do, man. I want to take it nice n’ easy, ya dig? Getting things done without sweating hard is the way I like to do things. I’m lazy. Like if I can complete a project that would normally take 15 hours in say, 2 hours, I’ll do it. In other words, I don’t want to put in any more effort than I absolutely have to. I’ll do just enough to get what I want. I mean, there’s something to be said in getting what you want without even trying. Look, who’s cooler? The guy who is tryhard, making big moves, pouring his heart and soul into something (or someone for that matter) to get what he wants or the guy who barely lifts a finger at all and still manages to achieve the same result? I’d reckon the latter. The guy who does a whole song and dance to earn something is seen as a bit of a clown, yet the guy who sits there and shrugs, without a care, without effort, is seen as awesome and powerful. Laziness is a superpower. With laziness, you can get what you want out of life, without performing a whole song and dance like a court jester or schlepping all day to yield some crops as a peasant. Laziness gives you the power to remain cool and laid back, without over-exerting yourself. The jester juggles, does a little jig, and pies himself in the face to maybe get a few laughs, to get some sort of approval from an audience. The peasant works his ass off from dawn to dusk out in the fields, and though through his effort, the peasant manages to own his own land, the fact of the matter is, the king sits his lazy ass in a throne and gets a massive applause as he rules an entire kingdom. Big results, little effort, you see. You can either try hard and get little results or try hard and get big results...or try little and get big results. I suppose you could also try little and get little results too. But that’s not lazy. That’s just stupid. Work smart, not hard. Laziness at its core is the ability to minimize effort and maximize results. Take the role as king. Sit your ass down on a big royal couch, lean back, and live a life of luxury and leisure. Don’t be a jester and slapstick your way to earn a measly piece of gold, nor be a peasant and tirelessly swing a scythe all day to keep your land. Be a fucking king. The king is lazy, even in the animal “kingdom”. The lion king naps all day, feasting on the catch of the hunt. But it’s not anything he hunted himself. Oh no. He’s too lazy for that shit! It’s the female lion that’s a bit of a huntress, out running around, chasing and catching prey to feed the pride. The dude lion is definitely “the Dude” lion. I mean, most of the time, he just lies around doing a whole lot of...nothing. The Dude lion abides. Sure, he’ll go out and hunt down an antelope or two if the situation calls for it. He’ll put in the effort if he absolutely *needs* to. But for the most part, he lives a life of leisure. He barely even tries, yet rules over the pride. Certainly he’s hungry. He wants to eat. Yet, he rolls over, [gives it a yawn] and thinks to himself “I’ll eat when i want to, if I want to.” It’s not that big of a deal. It’s a total non-issue. He’ll hunt if he has to, but won’t go out of his way racing after a gazelle just for shits n’ giggles. [Someone else can do that for him.] It’s important to have hunger, desire for something. You must have enough hunger to want to eat without starving yourself, nor too much hunger that you’re gluttonous and making a fool of yourself. That is to say, you must have *enough* desire to want to achieve something without going overboard in your efforts to do so, nor allowing the opportunity to achieve it slip by so that you’re only left with desire (hunger) and no results (food). Putting in the least amount of effort and yielding the biggest results is admirable, royal even. It’s living like a king. It’s being a lion. ...And that my friend is called “Sprezzatura”. Sprezzatura is an Italian word essentially meaning “doing things effortlessly”. It's "not giving a fuck" in Italian. Baldassare Castiglione 1528 in The Book of the Courtier, where the word first appeared, defines it as "a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it" It’s a vital part of being lazy. After all, the fact that things take effort is why we’re lazy to begin with. Doing chores takes effort. Going to work takes effort. Being social takes effort. Ideally, you want to sprinkle a little sprezzatura in all aspects in life and get what you want done, without trying hard to get it, or seemingly without trying hard to get it. You want to create the appearance that you aren’t trying hard. Embrace your inner-sloth and don’t make it look like it’s a lot of effort to climb up a whole damn tree. That is to say, reaching the top of your goal, just like climbing a tree, may take a lot of effort to do, but does the sloth even look like he’s trying? Heck no! He’s a lazy mofo. While it may legitimately take effort to climb a tree, the sloth does so effortlessly. He just does it. There is no try. See, in practicing Sprezzatura, it’s not so much about avoiding effort entirely, but about being effortless. There’s a difference. Avoiding effort means you don’t even take a shot. It means being Impulsively Idle, giving into your emotional fear or guilt and refusing to move at all. Being effortless, on the other hand, means you take away the extra step of “trying” to do something and skip straight to doing it, like it doesn’t even matter, like it’s really no big deal. It’s removing “try” from the entire equation of pursuing your goals, no matter how big or small, and cutting straight to the chase. And by cutting to the chase I mean mostly leaning back and going with the flow as opposed to furiously rushing to do whatever possible to see things through. You do move but do so slow n’ steady. Every move you make is deliberate. You don’t “try so hard to get it right”. You do something and make it right. Going for some sort of rehearsal or interview is not your “chance to shine”. It’s whatever. Asking someone out is not a big opportunity to “find true love”. It’s just a date. Practicing Sprezzatura means not being overly eager. It means toning down your enthusiasm and adopting the attitude of “Honey badger don’t care”. It means tying yourself down rather than looping around in knots. It means walking one step at a time instead of sprinting to your destination. It means, in short, taking it easy. A person with Sprezzatura has the mindset of “this is easy” at all times, no matter how difficult the task or situation may actually be. He’s quite simply unfazed by the sheer idea of difficulty. “It’ll happen one way or the other” is the mindset. No need to complicate things or make it out to be harder than it needs to. It’s no trouble. He doesn’t worry. To try is to struggle When you try, when you “vigorously” put in the effort to do something, you make it a struggle for yourself. You are literally turning your goal into some sort of battle to fight for, rather than just that -- a goal. It becomes this absolutely huge undertaking, instead of just a small task. You turn an otherwise “no big deal” into an overencumbering burden. “Trying” is defeating yourself. It’s a “worry mindset”, where you approach a situation as if it were a conflict rather than an opportunity. You basically make things hard for yourself by “trying”, a hell of a lot harder than they really need to be (or truthfully are for that matter). “Trying” to lose weight becomes this arduous quest to battle against your fat-eating habits and exercise Losing weight (without the try) is simply living healthier. “Trying” to ask a girl out becomes a tireless pursuit to win her attention through elaborate displays of affection like flowers and letters. Asking a girl out (without the try) is simply stating your intention to her and building rapport. “Trying”to start a business becomes a mission to build a shining enterprise from the ground up. Starting a business (without the try) becomes finding a way to make a profit off what you do anyway. Simplify and don’t try. Ain’t no big deal, dude. The key thing you have to keep in mind when adapting a Sprezzatura lifestyle is that things are NOT a big deal. The guy who gets nervous when he even thinks about talking to a girl and spends minutes hesitating walking up to her, trying to come up with the perfect one liner serves no shot in actually getting her number. But the guy who confidently, and rather nonchalantly, approaches her with a simple “hey” then asks for that number has a chance at adding her to her contacts. He may not get it all the time, with every girl, but whether he does or not, it’s no big deal. It’s no big deal in asking. It’s no big deal in getting rejected either. He just does it, without the try. When everything is like, a really big deal, it creates a nerve wracking experience unnecessarily.. Relax and don’t make things out to be a harder trial than they really are. Whatever you’re about to face, there’s no sense measuring it out to be a gigantic thing. “Don’t sweat the small stuff. It’s all small stuff.” It’s better to underestimate the significance of something than to overestimate it. Every single “cool” person you know, guy or gal, has one thing in common: they don’t try very hard, but get a lot of what they want It’s captivating when someone has people surround them yet, it doesn’t come across like they’re trying to seek that attention. They just...get it. That’s what you want to achieve, and it goes without saying you don’t want to “try” to achieve it. Just make it happen. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not the investment you put in, it’s the lack thereof that’s attractive. The prom queen ain’t going with the dude who leaves love notes in her locker, compliments her every day, and sends her sweet little snaps (read: lots of investment). No. She’s going with the football jock who barely even offers her a passing glance in the hallway (very little investment). He may be a jerk but he does have spezzatura. It’s like he just expects her attention, like it’s a given. And guess what? He gets it. A lot of people have this idea that they have to prove themselves in order to win friends and build meaningful relationships.But you don’t have to prove anything. In fact, the harder you try to prove how cool or attractive you are, the less cool and attractive you’ll be. No one likes that friend that’s trying to fit in and be cool. There’s just this awkward aura. Like dude, chill. Stop. Someone “socially awkward” at the core is really just trying way too hard to win the approval of others. The “life of the party” is typically not the one making crazy dance moves, but the person who’s easygoing and approachable - the person everyone wants to talk to. It doesn’t take elaborate (dance) moves to win people over. Stop aiming to impress others and instead aim to have others impress you Brian Regan in part of one of his stand up routines perfectly illustrates how try hards are so unlikable, because they’re trying to earn approval and impress others. Yet the ones who don’t try, the ones with sprezzatura, are the most charming. He says he would like to be a man who walked on the moon so he could top anyone at parties. There’s always an egotistical guy who gets up and pounds his chest, bragging about all his accomplishments shouting ME, ME, ME -- talking about how great he did at this and how awesome he was at that and people will roll their eyes at him… but a man who walked on the moon? He can lean back, say what he did and easily capture the attention of the room. Barely say a word. Barely lift a finger. Doesn’t matter if the other dude rode elephants, fought tigers, scuba dived with piranhas, whatever. It just doesn’t But it’s not just the fact that he walked on the moon, it’s that he did so nonchalantly like it was no big deal. I mean, the man who rode elephants, fought tigers, scuba dived with piranhas could be impressive, but he tried to hard to be impressive. It’s only impressive if you try not to impress. See, in every relationship dynamic, ever, it basically is set up as an exchange of investment. Ideally, you both have an equal effort to reward ratio. When that balance is skewed, it makes one person unattractive to the other. While you may put in a ton of effort, you want to make it look like you barely had to lift a finger. That’s charming as hell! The man who walked on the moon has sprezzatura. He has this charm of seemingly little investment with big return. Granted, here really was a lot of research, planning and time involved in heading to the freaking moon -- a lot of effort. Being a part of that is actually a really big deal. But he makes out to be nonchalant. Like it just happened. Whatevs.He put in the appearance that it was no effort and got lots in return. The man who spent all this time bragging -- He worked himself up. He put in a HUGE amount of effort...and got very little in return. Walking on the moon is quite a big deal and, in all honesty, so is scuba diving with piranhas for the matter. The difference is the amount of fuss, the amount of “try”, you make it to be unique, to be a big deal. Be a unique big deal without making a fuss about it. That’s sprezzatura, baby! Work hard nonstop! That’s what it takes to reach success...or at least that’s what we’re told in this crazy corporate slavery system.
Breaks are frowned upon. Bosses think employees who take breaks are not as capable. Even though companies must, by law, allow some sort of “break”, nothing legally prevents your boss from raising hell about your “lack of motivation” in deciding to take a break from work. Sure, you can go ahead, take your break, but you bet your ass that boss is gonna make you sorry for choosing to do so. While your break is allowed, that doesn’t mean it won’t be shamed or looked down upon. Employees will purposefully skip out on a lunch break in fear of coming across as anything less than diligent in their boss’ eyes. They’ll grind on for hours upon hours to “get it done” , but at what cost? Their mental sanity? Is it worth it? I mean you’re sorta damned if you do, damned if you don’t, amirite? Like, either you take your break and get a nice little breather from your stress inducing job and wind up facing the wrath of your intolerant boss...or don’t take your break and continue putting yourself through tortuous misery. But I say take your break. Fuck what your boss thinks. If he can’t tolerate you taking a fifteen minute break to unwind during the course of a hectic day, I don’t want to see him tanning out on his yacht. Seriously, there’s NO WAY the guy yelling at you to “get off your lazy ass and get back to work!” doesn’t ever take some sort of break. And if he doesn’t, either he’s lying or a robot. Breaks are a basic human need, and anyone that thinks taking one is a “waste of time” is absolutely cracked. Today, we’re going to explore all the quintessential benefits of embracing your laziness and taking a break -- how it’s not only okay but encouraged. Without further ado, let’s dive...right into it! Reduce Stress Grinding it out, working hours on end to see a project to its completion takes a toll on your mental and physical wellbeing. To sit there, painstakingly trying to “get things done”, despite any signs of exhaustion you feel, is no doubt stressful. Too much work leads to too much stress and that leads to feeling constantly “on edge” where even the slightest mishap can trigger a wild sense of aggravation and frustration. You’ll be literally crying over spilt milk with too much stress. What taking a break does is relieve some of that tension. You can allow your muscles to relax, unclench any sort of uptightness in your body. Give a nice good long stretch, a and a yawn. You’re on break. Enjoy it. Indulge yourself a little. Stress accumulates by pressuring yourself -- pressuring yourself to do more, get more, be more. You can reduce a lot of that pressure by taking it easy once in a while. Move closer back to center and away from the edge. There’s this odd notion that if you’re not “pushing through” the stress then you’re weak. No, it takes a strong person to know when to fold and be able to walk away (on break) instead of playing an impossible hand to win with. There’s only so much tolerance you have of stress. Don’t torture yourself and try to “push beyond your limits” or whatever. You’ll only wind up killing yourself. No seriously, too much stress can lead to chronic health issues like heart problems. Never overwork or overstress yourself. Quit before it’s too late. Don’t give into the idea that being a quitter makes you weak. Know when it’s time to call it quits and give yourself a well-needed as well as well-deserved break. Take a break before you break. Have more energy Working drains you of energy, both physically and mentally. If you don’t put a stop to feverishly working, you’ll wind up exhausted, barely able to think yet alone move. You’ll quite simply burn out and be unable to continue working even if you wanted to. Look, you can be the hardest working person on the planet (though chances are if you’re reading this blog, you’re not). But you’d still have a limited amount of energy to do all the work you’d want to. Don’t ever reach 0% on your energy supply.Take. A. freaking. Break! You wouldn’t leave the house without making sure your phone is charged, so don’t leave the house without making sure you are charged. Give yourself plenty of time to relax and reboot. Taking a break allows you to “recharge your battery” so to speak. It’s better to work a few minutes on “full” then it is to work endless hours on “empty”. Driving a car on empty gets you nowhere and so does driving yourself towards goals. Fill up your tank at a “rest stop” so you can finish the whole trip, that is to say, take plenty of time to ease and recover before moving on in whatever journey you set yourself out to do. Create stronger focus When your mind is at ease and not all worked up from stress or depleted from lack of energy, you are no longer burdened by any sort of interference and can completely focus on the task at hand. People may argue that taking a break in and of itself is a “distraction” of sorts, but nothing is more distracting than the pain of stress or the feeling of exhaustion. Sure a flashy sign might be a bit of a distraction while driving, but it won’t sidetrack you as much as a foggy windshield glass. You must clear that “fog” in your brain (by taking a break) so that you can see clearly and travel down the road towards your goal. The more you work, the more you “fog up the glass” and will begin to lose clear sight on where you are heading. You must wipe your windshield once it fogs up, so that you can keep on driving. Take the time to take a break once in a while and clear your mind of any sort of “fog” holding you back and making you lose focus. Of course, that’s all metaphorical speak. Let’s take a look at science. There has actually been a study that has shown that children in the classroom are more focused and able to stay on task when they take breaks. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0091743515002583 It’s much easier to stay fixated on doing something when you don’t have the loud noise of stress ringing in your brain. Turn off the noise by chilling with a little break. Increase productivity With stronger focus comes increased productivity, naturally. You can concentrate better on the task at hand and thus, actually get said task done. No sense making yourself do “busy work” just for the sake of keeping busy. Be busy only when you need to be and on things that actually move things forward. Productivity is moving things forward, in a nutshell. How often are you sitting at your desk doing a mind-numbingly repetitive task over and over again? You’re not really moving things forward. You’re not really being productive. Sure, you’re working hard, but you aren’t being productive. There’s a fine line difference. You can work hard without being productive and be productive without working hard. Ideally ,you want to work less with more productivity. Every move you make should have some sort of impact. By taking a break, you’ll be clear-headed and able to aim towards the task that would be the most productive and have the energy to actually do it for that matter. Make better decisions I don’t know about you, but when I’m tired, I make my decision-making abilities are terrible. I’ll make a decision just to make a decision, rather than weighing the pros and cons to make the best choice like I should. Fatigue hinders our decision-making process and it is through rest that we boost it back up to its full capabilities. When it comes to making a big decision, people will often say that they need to “sleep on it”. The idea is that they’ll wait until they’ve had a full night’s rest before leaping into a decision that’ll quite possibly change the entire course of their life. When they wake up, they’ll be able to approach the decision in a relaxed state of mind. While there of course benefits to a full night’s rest, a break of any amount of time before just jumping the gun into a decision can help you reach the best conclusion.Being able to take a step back and examine the ins and outs of the situation, without pressuring yourself to choose right away, will allow you to be calm in your approach when you do actually go ahead and make a decision. Calmness is key to making thoughtful decisions. Most of your mistakes and regrets were probably the cause of some instinctive emotional reaction to something. By taking a break, you give yourself peace of mind, removing yourself from the instant emotions that spark, and can then make a choice through calm logic and reasoning. Improve your memory and learning Your brain is a machine. And just like a machine, it can only power a finite number of tasks to run before it crashes. If all your power is going towards coping with stress, then it doesn’t have much power to pick up a new skill or technique. Furthermore, your brain is constantly “downloading” new information. From conversations you hear to articles you read online to crazy outfits you see on the street, your brain is constantly in the process of downloading so much info. It needs time to “install” all the new downloaded information it comes across and it can’t do that if you’re constantly buzzing around gathering new stuff for it to process. By giving yourself a break and allowing your brain to “catch up” with all the new stuff it’s picked up, you can actually begin to well, learn it, and install the software. Don’t pull an all-nighter to study for finals. Studying for a test for hours can only get you so far. You need a break in order to retain all that information. Pull a “study a little bit then take a break” nighter. The more you try to cram in your brain without proper “processing” time, that is, rest time, the more likely it is to glitch out or crash, just like a real computer. Give it enough information for your brain to handle without going overboard and let it sort of “render the files” so to speak. If you’re editing a video and don’t render the files, you might end up with glitchy visuals. Similarly, if you don’t let your brain render all the information its learned, you’ll end up with glitchy thoughts (failure to remember something, not remembering precise details, etc.) or at the very least, a headache. Embrace creativity Writer's block. If you’ve ever written a term paper, you’ve probably experienced this. It’s where no matter how hard you think, how hard you try, you just...can’t. You can’t write. You can’t come up with the next sentence. You can’t form the next argument or make the next point. You’re just...stuck. Stuck in a moment in time where the blinking little line cursor on your Word document is the black hole of your existence. Stuck there until oblivion. You just don’t know what to type next. You keep trying to come up with the words, trying to come up with the linguistic art structure to properly articulate your thoughts. But your thoughts are a big blob of slimy mess. They don’t make sense. You’re not making sense. Nothing makes sense. Make sense! Damnit. And you sit there, shaking your head, maybe slamming it on your desk. Begging, pleading, calling upon the creative gods or something to help you imagine, help you write. It seems like a frivolous task. Were you ever even able to write ever? You begin to wonder. It’s an odd feeling. One of entrapment. Perhaps if it’s in the wee hours of the morning, maybe even a bit existential. But either way, there is a trick to escaping this imprisonment and it’s simple. Yup, you guessed it! Take a damn break! Creativity is like hair. It grows on your own. But the more you cut it, tie up, and play with it, the less it’ll grow. You just need to leav it alone and let it grow and it will. (Of course, I hear the bald guys screaming BUT IT DOESN’T GROW!) Point is, creativity grows on its own if you give it time to manifest. Reaching to be creative when you’re “out of juice” will get you nowhere Allow yourself to take some rest. Your creative energy will soon begin to spark. As a matter of fact, I can’t count the amount of times i had to stop typing in order to go take a break in order to get this article done. Musicians will come back later to finish their licks or lyrics. Authors will write the next chapter another day. When it comes to producing something, especially that of creative nature, don’t rush to get it done. Get it done when the creative energy is there. You’ll feel it. Trust me, and if you don’t feel it right now, go ahead and take a brake. Taking a Break is not just lazy. It’s smart. While there may be a bit of a bad connotation with taking excessive breaks, it’s better to be clear-headed and focused for a little while than consistently stressed and trudging on. Don’t wear yourself out and avoid taking a break because you think it’ll be an unproductive use of your time. Your phone can read e-mails, tell the weather, play games, and research info. It’s not a waste of time to charge it up so it can do all that. Likewise, you gotta take time to charge yourself up. Plug in so your batteries don’t die. Tim Krieder said in the New York Times in 2012: “Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets… It is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.” Ask nearly anyone how to practice good time management and they’ll tell you that the key is to avoid procrastination - to “just do it” and get going. They’ll tell you that procrastination is the bane of poor time management. If you procrastinate, then ya ain’t gonna make it, son. Quit wastin’ your time and get to it! At least, that’s the idea served to us on a plate - that if we procrastinate, we’re a failure. We’re fed this belief that by procrastinating our time, we’re incapable of achieving anything. Every second spent procrastinating is a second invested in losing. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Real winners do in fact procrastinate. Contrary to popular belief, procrastination is at the heart of time management. Procrastination is the tool that creates good time management, not the weapon that destroys it. Fundamentally, choosing to procrastinate purposefully is to manage your time efficiently. I know that’s completely contradictory to everything you’ve ever been told. Nearly everything you’ve probably heard up until this point has led you to believe that being a procrastinator is a terrible thing. And with good reason. I mean, it doesn’t sound logical to think that “If I procrastinate my time rather than doing what I should do, then I’ll achieve success.” But today we’re going to explore how you can actually manage your time through procrastination, rather than evade it completely. You’re always putting off something That’s the main idea and focus you have to keep in mind when it comes to managing your time through procrastination. No matter what you do, no matter how you swing it, you’re always, always, always putting off one thing in order to do another. Even if you choose to do the productive thing, like say, work on that important project for your job or school. You are still putting off lounging around and giving yourself a mental break from stress or putting off sleep. You may put off cleaning your room so that you can catch up on the Walking Dead or vice versa. You may put off writing a paper so that you can take a nap or the reverse. You may put off playing video games so that you can eat dinner or quite the opposite. In making the decision to spend your time doing one thing, you are, in turn, slacking off another. You consistently procrastinate one thing so that you can spend time on another thing. There’s simply no way to avoid procrastination entirely. You can either slack off the productive thing or slack off the lazy thing. The choice is yours. To go as far as to say that you shouldn’t procrastinate, you shouldn’t slack off, though, is just insane. I mean, literally by spending your time doing anything, even IF it is productive, you are procrastinating something else, even if that thing is significantly less productive. You may be diligently preparing your PowerPoint presentation for your colleagues. And while that may seem like you’re just “gettin it done” and not procrastinating at all, you’re really procrastinating something else. That something else could be spending time building your own business or maybe even just relaxing on the couch watching TV to ease your mind. Whatever it is, even though you’re seemingly doing the “right” thing and not procrastinating at all, the fact of the matter is, you are procrastinating that something else. And by the way, you don’t necessarily have to procrastinate either a productive activity OR a leisurely one. You can procrastinate one productive activity over the other. You can choose to write a blog instead of doing the dishes, for example. You procrastinate doing the dishes so that you can write your blog (or maybe even vice versa) You see, there’s no such thing as “NOT procrastinating. You have time as a resource and you dictate how allocate that resource accordingly. The very act of spending that time doing something, anything really, means you are procrastinating, or putting off, something else ‘til later. Good time management is not so much about choosing how to spend your time, but about choosing how NOT to spend your time. And since procrastinating is, in essence that in which you are not spending time on RIGHT NOW, we can surmise that time management skills come down to your ability to procrastinate. When people say “don’t procrastinate” what they really mean is don’t procrastinate important shit Now that we covered how not procrastinating is impossible, I want to clarify what I think is meant behind the words of “don’t procrastinate” when people tell you such advice. On the surface, it seems that they are telling you to avoid procrastination. Period. But given the fact that doing so is not even achievable, as there is always something you are procrastinating whether it be productive or leisurely, there must be a deeper implied meaning. What they mean, at the core, is that the shit necessary and/or meaningful should be taken care of first, while the other more nonessential gimmicks should be “put off ‘til later.” Don’t procrastinate your homework. Don’t procrastinate getting up to go to work. Don’t procrastinate maintaining a clean home.Don’t procrastinate (insert productive activity here) -- is what they’re saying. In turn, they are telling you to go ahead and procrastinate on these rather “wasteful” activities. They are telling you to procrastinate playing video games. Procrastinate watching TV. Procrastinate taking a 6 hour long nap. There is value in knowing what to procrastinate on and what not to and being able to prioritize just how exactly you spend your time. That said, the choice is yours. You decide when to use procrastination and what for. You choose which important shit to do RIGHT NOW It’s not a choice of whether or not you should procrastinate. This isn’t a black or white question. You are going to procrastinate. The question is: What are you going to procrastinate on? Pick the important shit, and while there’s sort of an expectation of what that “important shit is”, it really comes down to your own core values. Use your own discretion, not the opinion of the crowd, to choose what the important shit is. Sure, maybe everyone thinks showing up to work 9 to 5 is the real “important shit”. But not you. You value freedom (of doing what you want) over security (of a cozy desk job) and thus, believe that right now, spending time snuggling up on the couch with your laptop to set up a website so you can begin building your own business and escape corporate slavery is more essential than tying your shackles to as DESK. Or maybe you do value a safety net over freedom, then waking up at the ass crack of dawn to get to work in time would be important shit to you (of course if that is the case, this blog definitely isn’t for you to be honest). The point is, when it comes to determining what the important shit is, don’t always eat what’s served for you. Cook your own meal, so to speak. That is to say, don’t let anything or anyone tell you what you “should” be doing right now. Make that decision for yo own damn self. Live a life of desire, not obligation. On the flip side, you choose which trivial shit to procrastinate on ‘til later In making the decision to call something “important shit”, you are in turn saying this other shit ain’t that important. Shit that ain’t that important (in your opinion) is the shit you procrastinate on. If writing up a report ain’t important to you, procrastinate that shit. If reading the next chapter for your science class ain’t that important, procrastinate that shit. If playing some Among Us with your buddies ain’t that important, procrastinate that shit. By choosing to procrastinate on shit, congratulations! You’ve practiced time management skills. Even though it would seem time management is about diligently laying out a schedule and prioritizing what needs get to done first and foremost, you can actually do it by what needs to get done last and least. See, Procrastination is Prioritizing; it’s just doing it in the reverse way. Instead of saying “this is what needs to get done right now”, you’re saying “this is what I’ll do later.” You are, in a nutshell, picking your priorities using the resource of time. You sort of create a to-do list from bottom to top. By saying what is trivial shit, you are also saying what is important shit. It goes hand in hand. Don’t feel guilty about what you procrastinate on If you choose not to get up early to go to work and lay on the couch to binge-watch Netflix, don’t beat yourself up about it later. You told yourself that going to work was trivial shit and didn’t go. Don’t get all uppity after making that decision. Do everything with slow PURPOSE. At this point in learning time management, it’s not so much about choosing to do the “right” thing, but about choosing something and making that choice right. Procrastinate on what you’re going to procrastinate on and stick to it. None of this “Oh whoopsite. I should have done this instead.” after the fact No. Weigh out the pros and cons before making your move. Be Deliberate in your procrastination. Remove any and all guilt about doing the “wrong” thing. There is no wrong thing. Get that out of your mind. You want to feel comfortable with your own procrastination. Yes, eventually you’ll be able to make more productive or worthwhile choices; you’ll be able to use that procrastination to put off insignificant matters and focus on real meaningful things. For now though, don’t worry so much about being effective with your time. Just get used to the idea that you do in fact choose what to spend your time and what not to/what to procrastinate on. You don’t have to self discipline yourself to do a certain thing over another. After all, “Self discipline” is just a fancy word for “self torture”. You’re sabotaging your ability to manage your own time if you act on obligation rather than desire. If you can Procrastinate with Purpose, you, in essence, can manage your time effectively. Removing the guilt means you do it on purpose. You purposefully make the decision to put something off ‘til later. You procrastinate with purpose. Eventually, you’ll be able to make better decisions and procrastinate on the objectively more wasteful thing to do with your time. It just takes learning the habit of being aware of what you’re putting off now and why. Be a procrastinator, it’s the best way to be adept at time-management. Take it easy, N8 |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2022
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