You Are Not Lazy or Undisciplined. You Have Internal Resistance

I really disagree with the whole "procrastination" thing. It's normal to feel depressed, it's part of nature of being tired, our brains are fragile and require a lot of energy and sleep.

I bet that I would generally would be much happier working at a moderate pace in a farm rather than using my brain to do some other complex thing.

I went to do some military training for 2 weeks, it was quite difficult and demanding, but in a way, it has the good stuff of a holiday: you're outside, you use your arms and legs, you have no time to use your brain which often demands more energy.

Do you really understand how stressful it is for a brain to perform programming? Our bodies are not made to sustain such mental effort. Brains are small but they consume a lot of energy to function.

Then it immediately defines a new term "internal resistance" that's exactly defined as something that's "a part of us" and explains how to work around it or "tame it".

This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just important to point out there is a prerequisite condition that must be met before this advice becomes useful.

This seems like a creative explanation that probably makes an article such as this seem a bit more quirky and interesting or something. Otherwise it's not a bad piece, but I don't think potential loss of love or connection is necessary to explain not wanting to do some difficult/annoying/time consuming task.

From experience its usually better to ask people currently struggling to write what their problem is. It's usually so personal and unique that a blanket "you can do it" isn't as helpful as it might sound. If very nicely intended and being supportive.

Aside, I don't feel the need to add the letters after my name for some reason, might be because I'm still engaged in research and find this off putting...

    Internal resistance is an attempt to avoid the pain we associate with successfully doing the thing.

I can understand the argument that people procrastinate because of the fear of failure…but the fear of success? I don’t get it.

I guess "internal resistance" is a kind of bias towards inaction. Not a bad trait if you're in a resource constrained scarcity environment, but it's not a great strategy outside of that. If there's anything to overcome its probably a scarcity mindset when it's unfounded.

That success (defined as successfully completing required work) causes damage, causes pain, often not as a side effect of the work that needs to be put in to achieve success, but by the success itself.

That parts of us recognizes the harm of success and resists when the other part pushes blindly for what it thinks the end goal should be.

Also mitigation strategies seem novel. Discovering what you fear about successfully finishing your work and trying to lessen the strength of those fears. Or doing small steps like acknowledging that doing 30 minutes of work will not result in achieving success so you can do that amount of work safely.

One common fear might be of that the result of you successfully finishing your task won't live up to your imagination about it.

In a professional and career context, however, you would be required to get tasks done straight away. But for artists and even dedicated loafers or those who enjoy being idle, the important stuff rises to the top naturally and it gets done.

You are "lazy" if you don't do something that would benefit you because it's too much effort. That sounds reasonable, right? Except according to this article, you're not lazy, you have "internal resistance." Or in similar articles, you're not lazy if you have depression or ADHD, because it's your mental illness.

But then, who is lazy? Where do we draw the line when someone is depressed vs. merely sad, or ADHD vs. merely inattentive? Moreover, since you can't always tell of someone has a mental illness and you definitely can't see "internal resistance", you technically can't state that anyone is lazy.

Now, I don't want to attack people with mental illnesses. If you have depression or ADHD or burnout or are overwhelmed, you're not a bad person. But you are lazy. Calling it something else is just beating around the bush.

Instead, we as a society need to change how we look at laziness. Just because you're lazy, doesn't mean you should punish yourself, or consider yourself "worse" than someone with more discipline. Don't even try to just "power through" the laziness. None of those things work, and often actually lead to more laziness. Honestly, the author does a good job explaining what you should do. But - if you're lazy, you're lazy, and calling it something else like "internal resistance" is just sugar-coating it.

That said, it doesn't really give me new tools or tricks to deal with the problems?

It's still the same: podomoro or timeboxing, giving oneself a reward for completing an objective, trying to complete a given task every week, and so forth.

I supposed I could give mental health therapies a try, I guess?

And by "it" I mean the important thing that you are resisting.

It's actually a bad thing. And you have convinced yourself that it's a good thing. But you aren't completely convinced.

Deep down you know that it really is a very bad thing. One more step on a march of doom that you have been trying to escape since forever. A special door that, once passed through, your waste and hell will truly and finally be LOCKED IN (relatively speaking).

I mean, nobody dreams as a child of sitting on their office-butt playing mental legos forever. But it's very easy to convince yourself that it is great. And the whole world will help you in that endeavor. It will tell you encouraging stories and feed you big paychecks. It will tell you that you are a rock star.

You will be helped at every turn to forget the life that you lost and to pretend that playing robot is a truly good and desirable thing.

Maybe this great procrastination is your gut trying to tell you something.

In the centre of it all, Your eyes

Why on earth does an eloquent academic need to say f*ing or gorramit every couple of sentences? It is not just needles, it is also bad taste.

I disagree somewhat, and I have a different explanation.

---

Each one of us is born with talents (gifts) and some weaknesses.

If we grow up, and then become adults in the environment that does not discover our talents, and, opposite, emphasises our weaknesses -- then we become:

  - unhappy, 
  
  - dis-engaged, 
  
  - often resort to cheating as a way to 'pad up' our weaknesses, 
 
  - often blaim others. Sometimes rightfully so, sometimes not.

Yes, we have to be adaptable, but when the adoptation requires us to compete in fields, eco-systems that does not emphsize our inborn talents -- we do not do well.

We are not all meant to be technology visionaries, data scientists, lawyers, public speakers, and surgeons.

But a society, an economic system that emphasises one of the above (as an example), is forcing the rest to 'adjust'.

That 'adjustment' - is the friction. But it does not just depend on an individual.

Really, a global solution is the one, that takes advantage of the different talents we have. That should be the purpose of statesman (not career politicians), that offer to dedicate their service to their country (or the world).

And, certainly on a personal level

  - honesty,

  - work ethic 

  - rejection of ideologies that justify 'achieve whatever using any means necessary', 

  - rejection of unfair biases (biases based on inborn characterists that 'lock down  person's fate)

Believing that you always have something unique, something specially good, specially powerfull about yourself -- has to be emphrasized, at a personal level.

Let me check... of course he's a "coach"... If you can't do, teach, I guess.

All of this shit will act as a bandaid, a crutch at best. It's like the bullshit "imagine you're wealthy and you will become wealthy".

No, that doesn't work. Nor does praying to God, nor anything that doesn't entail actual action. You can imagine whatever the fork you want, it won't make it real.

Fortunately, people smarter than me and all of these self help coaches and theorycrafters have already started figuring out how to fix this problem for real, by applying real science to the very real bio computer in our skulls.

It's still a young science, with parts of the same core problem being labeled ADD, OCD, anxiety, depression. But there are real drugs that actually work.

The biggest roadblock is getting this accepted as a treatable condition by the mainstream medicine systems. They're still in the dark ages and treat it like they treat death - as inevitable, unfixable.

Some people are already benefitting from it while the majority is laughing at them and calling the unfortunate ones who don't have access to good doctors and good medicine lazy.

I hope one day humans look back at it and laugh at how ridiculously stupid their ancestors were.