Do Something

"Do Something"
Proverbs 10:5; 10:26; 13:4;19:15; 19:24

"Do Something!"
Proverbs 10:5; 10:26; 13:4; 19:15;

How many of you have a To-Do list?  There are so many apps you can buy for your mobile devices that help you organize your To-Do list.  Most of them are very good.  If you use them.

That's my problem.  I have two of the better To-Do list apps, and I spent the time getting them all organized.  I can categorize all the tasks and dreams I have on my to-do list into levels of importance, and put dates and times on all those items as to when I want them done.  My life is organized!  I'm ready to go!  I even put the To-Do app icon down on that bottom row of my iPhone and iPad so it's always visible, to remind me of what needs to get done.  But then I don't look at it.

Every single day, my to-do list is a reminder of all the things I haven’t started. They may be things I want to do, or want to set myself up for some future time that I ‘just don’t have time’ to do now. And when I do have time? That familiar friend—laziness—comes knocking at my door.  I'm generally not a lazy person.  But in looking at my to-do list and keeping it up to date, I can be very lazy.

Bonnie Ware, a nurse who cared for patients in their final weeks of life, published the most common regrets she heard.  Not chasing dreams was number one.  She wrote:
“When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made."

That's the main issue with to-do lists.  Those lists should contain not just every day tasks and work that need to be done—but also our long term goals and dreams in life.  Those need just as much work and planning as our every day tasks.  Every single day we choose how we spend what few hours we have. Yet, despite the constant warnings to chase after what we believe, we often fall victim to procrastination and laziness and a fear of even just starting.  Just starting!

Laziness keeps us from just starting.  And not starting has terrible consequences.  Most of the Proverbs read this morning had to do with laziness and starving.  If you don't start, you don't work; if you don't work, you don't eat.  When you don't eat, you die.  I love Proverbs 19:24 that describes a person who puts the spoon or fork into the food, but is too lazy to even lift that food to the mouth.  Now that's laziness!

To-Do apps and time management only go so far in dealing with our laziness.  You can put on all the to-do lists you want, "lift spoon to mouth", but if out of laziness you don't do that, you eventually starve.  Laziness isn't simply putting off things until a later date.  It's intentionally putting aside important work, knowing there will be negative consequences in the future, but putting them off anyway.

We aren’t just being forgetful, or complacent. We’re purposefully hurting ourselves by focusing on short-term pleasure at the cost of the long-term good. Almost all studies agree that laziness leads to to higher rates of depression, anxiety, and poorer well-being.

Dr. Piers Steel, an organizational behavior professor at the University of Calgary, has proposed a simple formula to determine why we make certain choices.
                                    Expectancy + Value  =  Motivation
       Impulsiveness + Delay

At the top of the equation, expectancy is the odds of an outcome coming from your choice.  Value refers to how rewarding that outcome might be.  Underneath, impulsiveness is your sensitivity to delays (how easily you get distracted, or how lazy you are), and delay is how long you think you will have to wait to receive the reward.  Work out that equation and it will tell you what your motivation level is, or the drive you will have for a course of action.

According to this motivation equation, one of the main factors killing our motivation and bringing on deeper laziness is impulsiveness.  There are two aspects of how impulsive we are: locomotion and assessment.  Locomotion is the process of setting yourself a goal, deciding what kinds of behavior will best help you meet that goal, and then not allowing any distractions or delays get in the way of you completing that goal.   This aspect of impulse control is about the "getting on with it" or "making something happen"—action that keeps you motivated and heading in only one direction.

So, all of our choices come down to the expectation of a good result vs. how long a task is likely to take us.  The longer we think the task will take, the lazier we become in getting it done.  Seems basic, right? We weigh the potential value against the effort involved.  Should I lift my spoon to my mouth in order to get nourishment?

Recent studies into chronically lazy people have uncovered what Dr. Fuschia Sirois, a psychology professor at the University of Sheffield, England, has called “temporal myopia,” or the inability to see into your future.

One of the qualities that makes us human is the ability to gaze into the future, through planning and setting goals, as well as anticipating activities.  But for lazy people, that vision is blurry. It’s more abstract and impersonal, and the lazy often feel an emotional disconnect between who they are, and who they could become.

Another problem that started in the 1960's is a marked decrease in the value of delayed gratification.  That is, we have become less and less willing to work towards a reward in the future.  We want that reward now, so that we value immediate rewards rather than working toward some future goal.  Our motivation to start any task depends on us seeing value in it, yet we place more value on what is happening currently over what the future holds and justify this decision by emotionally disconnecting ourselves from our future self.  It's easier to get very lazy about future goals, than it is about getting pleasure now.

Keep score.  How much of what you are doing is for the present you vs. the future you?

Ancient Greek philosophers developed a word to describe this type of behavior: Akrasia. Simply put, Akrasia is being weak-willed—unable to see long-term value and giving in to instant gratification.

It’s why the ability to delay gratification is such a huge predictor of future success. Success takes hard work. Long hours of concentration with no absolute promise of reward. Yet the world around us and what it’s done to our brains makes it all too easy to just give in and take the low-hanging fruit.  Or be totally lazy, and not even reach for the low-hanging fruit from our lay-down posture.

Ironically, the guilt and frustration we feel from not starting is often worse than the pain of actually doing work.  In the words of writer and theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky:
“On a moment to moment basis, being in the middle of doing the work is usually less painful than being in the middle of (being lazy).”

It’s that hump of ‘just start’, just do something, that is so hard to get over. Yet once we do, momentum takes over. We see immediate results from the work we’re doing and instead of looking for ways to avoid it, we look at ways to finish.

So, how do we get over the fear of just starting?  Are there ways to combat laziness, or even see it coming and adjust course?

Part of the problem is allowing the small losses to accumulate.  A great example is Billy in the "Family Circus" cartoon.  Several of the cartoons have to do with Billy being given a task, and then getting lost in all the small distractions along the way.  Here's one of those cartoons.






All those smaller losses add up, and the larger milestones we are trying to accomplish don't get done.  The smaller losses have to do with our laziness more often than not.  The more we let the small losses to accumulate through our choices, the more we will feel regret.  That is, according the the Proverbs, the less we will eat.  The less we will be fed.  The less we will be strengthened for the larger task.

The more you keep at a task, there’s a mental process called the Zeigarnik Effect, which kicks in when you are close to finishing, propelling you towards the finish line like you’re running from a hoard of zombies. You feel as though you just cannot stop until you’re done.  The writer, Ernest Hemingway would always stop writing for the day in mid-sentence so that when he returned to the typewriter the next day he could pick up where he left off, effectively forcing himself into ‘must finish’ mode.

Just starting is a mental battle, one that we sometimes have to turn into something physical before we can be victorious. One way to do this is by using some strategy that will make it hard for you to continue with negative behaviors.  For Victor Hugo, the author of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and one of my favorite books, Les Miserables, that meant locking all his clothes in a closet so he wouldn’t be able to go out socializing or entertain and would be forced to write.

Battling laziness most often comes down to this, "just getting started."  Just start!  The fear of starting is often so much less than the pain of actually working. Yet, our brains can fool us into thinking the opposite is true. And once we’ve engrained those beliefs it’s hard to break out of them.  We have to change how we think, in order to break the bonds of laziness.  Just remember the greatest achievements don’t happen without starting.