The feeling of laziness can be said to be one of the most frequently encountered feelings or conditions in our society. This condition or feeling of laziness to do an activity or tendency to delay can be found in most individuals regardless of age, gender, or demographic background of a person.
When looking at ourselves, it seems impossible if we have never felt or experienced laziness. One example of behavior caused by laziness that can be easily found in students is lazy learning which results in difficulties in the teaching and learning process at school.
Definition of Lazy Word
Laziness is the condition of individuals unwilling to work on something or work. Laziness can also be interpreted as reluctance, neither liking nor lustful.
Whereas in English, lazy or lazy is defined as the unwillingness to work or make any effort (Cambridge English Dictionary) Thus it can be understood that laziness is indeed a condition of individuals who do not want to do something, either dislike or not lustful.
How to Overcome Laziness
This lazy condition that is often or has been experienced occasionally sometimes makes individuals wonder about the right way to deal with it. Although there is a group of people who can overcome laziness on their own, there are also groups of individuals who need input or advice from other parties to overcome laziness experienced.
Here are five ways that can be practiced to reduce laziness by applying psychological techniques and theories.
1. Define goals
In psychology, setting goals can also be called goal-setting which has proven effectiveness and benefits for the individual who practices it. The term goal-setting itself in the American Psychological Association dictionary is defined as a process of determining time-based behavioral targets that are easy to measure, easy to achieve, and realistic (Goal Setting, t.t.).
As the definition suggests, the goals created in this process are goals or targets that are not grandiose and tend to be easier to achieve or the process is easy to see.
As explained earlier, this goal-setting has various benefits that have been tested based on previous studies, such as providing motivation to be more productive, generating a sense of direction because of awareness of the target you have, giving rise to hope and optimism because you know that the goal can be achieved (attainable ), confidence in himself with the process and achievement of targets until he is satisfied with the achievement of goals (Cooper, 2018).
Examples of practices for setting goals or goal settings can be seen in the following story. Ani, a student who is attending school from home, feels lazy to do the assignments given by her teacher because there are too many tasks which makes her confused about where to start.
Because of this confusion, Ani tried to make a target or goal, namely completing tasks based on tight deadlines, and chose to do the task of summarizing the history of Hindu kingdoms in Indonesia and then tasks from mathematics subjects. This is done so that he has an idea of what he should do in a more targeted manner and finish in a timely manner and of good quality.
2. Strategize to achieve goals
After successfully determining the goal or target to be achieved, the individual can strategize to achieve it. This strategy is needed so that the process of achieving these targets is more targeted and looks easier to achieve.
In addition, the existence of this strategy can also help to minimize the possibility of the target being stalled because individuals are confused and again lazy to achieve existing targets. One of the strategies carried out is to break down large or general main goals or targets into several sub-targets that are much easier to do. With this, procrastination can also be overcome.
For example, Ani who targeted to be able to complete the task of summarizing the history of the Hindu kingdom in Indonesia broke the target into 3 parts. The first thing is to target to read a history package book and some articles on the topic to find the main things. In the next step, Ani will record and write a list of important sections or topics that she found earlier in her notebook.
In the last step, Ani develops the data included in her list to become a neat summary, using her own understanding and easy to understand. With these sub-targets, Ani becomes more confident and directed to achieve her targets, so that the laziness she had experienced could be minimized.
3. Provideself-reward for achievements
The journey or process to overcome laziness, especially in doing an activity is not instantaneous. In addition, the process is also not as easy as in theory and drains energy and emotions that have an impact on the ups and downs of individual motivation. One way that can be done to maintain motivational stability in this difficult process is to give ourselves self-rewards or rewards for existing achievements.
This reward is given as reinforcement to strengthen the expected behavior in the hope that the behavior will be repeated again (Gazzaniga et al., 2011). The behavior that is corroborated in this process is the behavior of achieving a goal or target that has been compiled. The rewards can range from trivial things like a 15-minute gaming session to your favorite food and drinks and more.
In Ani's story, she gives different self-rewards to each achievement based on the size of the effort she makes. For example, after completing the process of reading the source for the summarizing task, he rewarded himself by buying his favorite boba drink.
Meanwhile, after successfully recording important things for his summary, he gave a reward of 15 minutes to surf in the virtual world that was not related to his duties as a form of refreshment. For the last achievement, which is to successfully summarize his historical task, he gives self-reward in the form of eating food that has recently been very desirable.
4. Take breaks and do me-time
Despite having received self-reward on each or several sub-targets achieved, it cannot be denied that the fatigue or fatigue caused by this conditioning still exists. Just like anything else that if continuously stacked can have an unfavorable or negative impact, fatigue and fatigue are also the same.
On the way to overcoming this feeling of laziness, fatigue and fatigue that is piled up can result in the emergence of feelings of overwhelmed and burnout which plays a role in the emergence of laziness and even stopping reaching other targets. To overcome this, when this feeling of fatigue and fatigue is felt to have peaked, rest and doing me-time are the right choices.
For example, Ani felt saturated in the middle of the process of developing important data into an article summarizing the history of Hindu kingdoms in Indonesia. Ani feels that her condition has decided to stop for a while and do things she likes just to reduce fatigue, such as sleeping for a while or seeing videos from her favorite singers. This is done to refresh his mind and mentality so that after resting he can refocus on doing his tasks.
5. Avoid sources of distractions
In addition to the four ways that have been mentioned above, one of the ways that can also be practiced to reduce laziness, especially when in the process of working on something is to do self-management by maintaining focus. There are various ways and certainly vary from one individual to another in maintaining their focus.
One of the many ways that are quite effective is to avoid sources of distractions, starting from choosing a place that supports or regulates the environment to avoiding or minimizing distractions that can shift focus and even rekindle laziness because we are not focused on our main work.
One of the efforts made by Ani in maintaining her focus to avoid distractions is to disable her device notifications. By not activating notifications from some social media that usually distract Ani, she can focus more on achieving sub-targets and completing them according to her expectations. In addition, with minimal distractions, Ani was able to avoid the possibility of laziness reappearing because she was already surfing social media to forget her duties.
These are five ways that can be done to overcome laziness which can more or less affect the life of each individual who experiences it. These five methods are only a small part of the many ways to overcome laziness, so it is possible that other ways can be added, combined, or replaced.
The methods presented in this article can also be adapted to the conditions of each individual according to their needs. Again, because each individual's condition is different from one another, so is the success of how to overcome laziness whose effectiveness varies from one individual to another.
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