When You Feel Lazy

The Daily Stoic for August 30th, “When You Feel Lazy”.

“Anything that must yet be done, virtue can do with courage and promptness. For anyone would call it a sign of foolishness for one to undertake a task with a lazy and begrudging spirit, or to push the body in one direction and the mind in another, to be torn apart by wildly divergent impulses.”
—SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 31.b–32

The book that I’m reading lately, “How To Be Everything“, talks about multi-potentialites: people that just can’t specialize in a concrete field and, instead, need to add variety to their lives with multiple occupations, jobs, hobbies or activities.

I immediately felt identified with this concept and started to read the book eagerly. One of the things that resonated with me most was how you grow tired of some projects sometimes. That’s when your pull for variety is telling you that you need a change.

When You Feel Lazy

The lesson here is the same. When we do something, we need to put our heart on it. We need to love what we do and it has to fulfill us, bring us joy or entertain us. If not, we are doing something wrong.

If you are about to start working on a project and suddenly you realize you don’t want to do it, it’s time to ask yourself why.

There might be multiple reasons: fear is one of them. Spite is another, or boredom, or plain disinterest.

In those cases, it’s better to consider if that project still makes sense for you, or you still feel connected to it. If it does not… It’s time to move on.

Maybe the only exception to this rule is fear. Sometimes, especially when delving into unknown waters, we feel fear. That happened to me until very recently when my business started growing. Sometimes I would open the email with a sense of fear in my chest. I was not sure if I would find a new problem I would not be able to solve.

Unless this fear becomes something that really stresses you out, or makes your life miserable, I think it’s healthy to face your fears and realize you can do more than you are aware of. That helps you grow as a person.

Conclusion

Today’s Daily Stoic, “When You Feel Lazy”, discusses how we need to put our own best in everything we do. Our job, our relationships, our hobbies… If it’s something we don’t want or like anymore, it’s time to move on.