I work a rather demanding job and I’ve constantly been feeling tired and underperformant compared to my colleagues for the past few months. I keep evading responsibilities or putting them off until the last minute.
Many people would kill to be where I am. Yet, I show up every day unmotivated.
There were several stressful years leading up to my current job and I’m wondering if I’m burnt out at this point or if I’m just not pulling my weight.
Edit: Thank you all for your support and guidance. I haven’t given too many details here, but personal life has been moving along smoothly, chores get done, etc. But I definitely need to reconsider where I’m going with my job.
Laziness doesn’t exist, it’s made up, there’s always an underlying cause
Laziness exists. It’s what causes me to not do my work around the house sometimes.
But what’s the root cause of your laziness?
I’m not being snarky - it’s a serious question. For myself, I’ve found that digging down to figure out where some of my behavioral traits are rooted is an extremely valuable and informative exercise.
Isn’t lazyness just evolutionary trait? The need to conserve energy?
If lazyness is an evolutionary trait to conserve energy, why do we get bored (pushing us to spend energy) once we do so?
I’m not an expert, just read it somewhere. But I’d guess it might be because our current lives are miles away from the ones we evolved for and may not get the stimuli we require.
So then, which stimuli do you get and don’t get that make you lazy and, for example, stop you from doing the dishes?
As I said, not an expert on this topic. But I feel like you are combining two different things.
Doing dishes is persumably something you don’t enjoy and your survival is not dependent on it -> you conserve energy.
Boredom, I think, comes from the brain not having enough stimuli.
I see it as two different things. But you are better of asking someone who knows more.
I was trying to get you to question the believe that lazyness is an evolutionary trait. Like the post you replied to said: Find the root cause of your lazyness.
Because it’s almost always not an evolutionary trait, it’s avoiding negative emotions. As you said: Doing dishes (bad) -> do nothing (good) But, with boredom, this would result in this: Doing dishes (bad) -> do nothing (good) -> boredom (bad)
Thus, we get negative emotions again. But we can avoid the final negative emotions by lying on the couch and spending energy looking at a screen. And our chain looks like this: Doing dishes (bad) -> looking at screen (good)
Because being bored is hard. If you want to see how hard it is, decide to just stare at a blank wall for the next 30min-1h instead and watch your brain fight this decision as hard as it can.
Thus saying “I’m lazy” and “being lazy is an evolutionary trait” results in “I can’t do anything about me being lazy”. And that is an easy way to avoid having to face and work through those negative emotions.
I guess I’ll piggyback on the other comment and say laziness doesn’t exist at work. People definitely have off days or hate their job, but I’d say pretty much all the “laziness” I have experienced in my life at different jobs usually boils down to awful work conditions, managers or bosses that don’t care about you, not getting paid enough for the actual work, or general distain for your corporate overlords if you work for a big company. Some may call me lazy, but I’m working exactly as hard as I feel like they deserve when I’m 30 years old and still living in a studio apartment one paycheck away from being homeless. And I’m not gonna work at 100% when 100% of my needs are not being met. And I make more than anyone else in my family so I’m technically the “successful child.”
There is also people who just hang on their phone all day or gossip in the kitchen. I have seen that in the best and in the worst working conditions.
There is good reason, why the principle “same pay for same work” usually does not include surveillance of productivity. But it does feel infuriating to not make 3x as much despite having 3x the productivity of some people that have a similar or even higher salary thanks to seniority, when i am basically financing their lack of productivity.
I agree that the term “laziness” is often used by management to shift blame onto the workers and i don’t know how a solution could look like that would address real laziness without infringing on workers rights.
Sometimes the underlying cause is you don’t want to be bothered with the task. I am highly motivated to complete tasks, but sometimes I will let stuff slide because I can’t be bothered.