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Neel Burton M.D.Hide and Seek

The Psychology of Laziness

The psychology of laziness, procrastination, and idleness.
Posted Oct 25, 2014

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Source: Wikicommons

A person is being lazy if he is able to carry out some activity that he ought to
carry out, but is disinclined to do so because of the effort involved. Instead, he
carries out the activity perfunctorily; or engages in some other, less strenuous
or less boring activity; or remains idle. In short, he is being lazy if
his motivation to spare himself effort trumps his motivation to do the right or
expected thing.
Synonyms for laziness are indolence and sloth. Indolence derives from the
Latin indolentia, without pain or without taking trouble. Sloth has
more moral and spiritual overtones than laziness or indolence. In the Christian
tradition, sloth is one of the seven deadly sins because it undermines society
and Gods plan, and because it invites sin. The Bible inveighs against
slothfulness, for example, in the Book of Ecclesiastes: 'By much slothfulness
the building decayeth; and through idleness of the hands the house droppeth
through. A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money
answereth all things.'

Procrastination
Laziness should not be confounded with procrastination or idleness.
To procrastinate is to postpone a task in favour of other tasks, which, though
perceived as easier or more pleasurable, are typically less important or
urgent.
To postpone a task for constructive or strategic purposes does not amount to
procrastination. For it to amount to procrastination, the postponement has to
represent poor and ineffective planning, and result in a higher overall cost to
the procrastinator, for example, in the form of stress, guilt, or loss
of productivity. It is one thing to delay a tax return until all the figures are in,
but quite another to delay it so that it upsets plans and people and triggers a
fine.
Laziness and procrastination are similar in that they both involve a lack of
motivation. But, unlike a lazy person, a procrastinator aspires and intends to
complete the task and, moreover, does eventually complete it, albeit at a
higher cost to himself.
Idleness
To be idle is: not to be doing anything. This could be because you are lazy, but
it could also be because you do not have anything to do or are temporarily
unable to do it. Or perhaps you have already done it and are resting or
recuperating.
Idleness is often romanticized, as epitomized by the Italian expression dolce
far niente (it is sweet to do nothing). Many people tell themselves that they
work hard from a desire to be idle, rather than because they value their work
or its product. Although our natural instinct is for idleness, most people find
prolonged idleness difficult to tolerate. Queuing for half an hour in a traffic jam
can leave us feeling restless and irritable, and many drivers prefer to take an
alternative route even if it is likely to take them longer than sitting through the
traffic.

Recent research suggests that, though our instinct is for idleness, people will
pick upon the flimsiest excuse to keep busy. Moreover, people feel happier for
being busy, even if their busyness is imposed upon them. In their
paper, Idleness aversion and the need for justifiable busyness (2010), Hsee
and colleagues surmise that many purported goals that people pursue may
be little more than justifications for keeping busy.
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This, I believe, is a manifestation of the manic defence: the tendency, when

presented with uncomfortable thoughts or feelings, to distract the conscious
mind either with a flurry of activity or with the opposite thoughts or feelings. 'To
do nothing at all,' said Oscar Wilde, 'is the most difficult thing in the world, the
most difficult and the most intellectual.' I discuss the manic defence at some
length in my book Hide and Seek: The Psychology of Self-Deception.
Albert Camus introduces his philosophy of the absurd in his essay of
1942, The Myth of Sisyphus. In the final chapter, he compares the absurdity of
mans life with the plight of Sisyphus, a mythological king of Ephyra who was
punished for his chronic deceitfulness by being made to repeat forever the
same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll
back down again. Camus optimistically concludes, The struggle to the top is
itself enough to fill a mans heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' [La lute
elle-mme vers les sommets suffit remplir un coeur dhomme. Il faut
simaginer Sisyphe heureux.]
It should be noted that many people who can seem bone idle are, in fact,
nothing of the sort. Lord Melbourne, Queen Victorias favourite prime minister,
extolled the virtues of masterful inactivity. As chairman and CEO of General
Electric, Jack Welch spent an hour a day in what he called looking out of the
window time. Adepts of strategic idleness use their idle moments, among
others, to observe and enjoy life, find inspiration, maintain perspective,
circumvent pettiness, reduce inefficiency and half-living, and conserve
theirhealth and energies for truly important tasks and problems.

Source: Wikicommons

Evolutionary theories of laziness

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Our nomadic ancestors had to conserve energy to compete for scarce

resources and to fight or flee enemies and predators. Expending effort on
anything other than short-term advantage could jeopardize their very survival.
In any case, in the absence of conveniences such as antibiotics, banks,
roads, or refrigeration, it made little sense to think long term. Desire led to
action, and action led to immediate gratification, without much need for
proposing, planning, preparing, and so forth.
Today, mere survival has fallen off the agenda, and it is long-term strategic
activity that leads to the best outcomes. Yet, our instinct is still to conserve
energy, making us reluctant to expend effort on abstract projects with delayed
and uncertain payoffs.

Intelligence and perspective can override instinct, and some people are more
future-oriented than others, whom, from the heights of their success, they
deride as 'lazy'. Indeed, laziness has become so closely connected with
poverty and failure that a poor person is often presumed lazy, no matter how
hard he might actually work.
Psychological theories of laziness
In most cases, it is deemed painful to expend effort on long-term goals that do
not provide immediate gratification. For a person to embark on a project, he
has to value the return on his labour more than his loss of comfort. The
problem is that he is disinclined to trust in a return that is both distant and
uncertain. Because self-confident people are more apt to trust in the success
and pay-off of their undertakings (and may even overestimate their likely
returns), they are much more likely to overcome their natural laziness.
People are also poor calculators. Tonight they may eat and drink
indiscriminately, without factoring in the longer-term consequences for their
health and appearance, or even tomorrow morning's hangover. The ancient
philosopher Epicurus famously argued that pleasure is the highest good.
But he cautioned that not everything that is pleasurable should be pursued,
and not everything that is painful should be avoided. Instead, a kind of
hedonistic calculus should be applied to determine which things are most
likely to result in the greatest pleasure over time, and it is above all this
hedonistic calculus that people are unable to handle.
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Many lazy people are not intrinsically lazy, but are lazy because they have not
found what they want to do, or because, for one reason or another, they are
not doing it. To make matters worse, the job that pays their bills may have
become so abstract and specialized that they can no longer fully grasp its
purpose or product, and, by extension, their part in bettering other peoples'
lives. A builder can look upon the houses that he has built, and a doctor can
take pride and satisfaction in the restored health and gratitude of his patients,
but an assistant deputy financial controller in a large corporation cannot be at
all certain of the effect of his labourand so why bother?

Other factors that can lead to laziness are fear and hopelessness. Some
people fear success, or do not have sufficient self-esteem to feel comfortable
with success, and laziness is one way in which they can sabotage themself.
Shakespeare conveys this idea much more eloquently and succinctly
in Antony and Cleopatra: 'Fortune knows we scorn her most when most she
offers blows.' Conversely, some people fear failure, and laziness is preferable
to failure because it is at one remove. "It's not that I failed," they tell
themselves, "it's that I never tried."
Other people are lazy because they see their situation as being so hopeless
that they cannot even begin to think through it, let alone address it. Because
these people do not have the ability to think through and address their
situation, it could be argued that they are not truly lazy, and, to some extent,
the same could be said of all lazy people. In other words, the very concept of
laziness presupposes the ability to choose not to be lazy, that is, presupposes
the existence of free will.
The solution
I could have ended this article with a self-help pep talk or the top-10 tips to
overcome laziness, but, in the longer term, the only way to overcome laziness
is to profoundly understand its nature and particular causes: to think, think,
and think, and, over the years, slowly find a better way of living.
This article is adapted from Neel Burton's new book, Heaven and Hell:
The Psychology of the Emotions