I Feel Lazy – How To Get Rid Of Laziness And Procrastination?

“I feel very lazy, I can’t do anything, I don’t want to do anything, I procrastinate too much. It is hurting my life big time. But I want to be active like successful people, I want to be free from this tangle. How to get rid of laziness and procrastination?” . Laziness at the outset, seems to origin from mental causes, but the cause may be physical as well. While this problem requires a lot of motivation, simple easy Ayurvedic home remedies will also prove handy to get rid of laziness. Let us find out.

Laziness and procrastination

Laziness and procrastination are the major mental hurdles between you and success.
Laziness – “I have to do it, but I can’t, or may be I don’t want to do it”.

Procrastination – “I have to do it, I want to do it, let’s do it tomorrow”

Effects

Effect of laziness and procrastination

• Failure in professional life  – ‘Don’t know when I will be completing the project, but if I wish, I can complete it this week.”
• Failure in personal life – ” I should be visiting the dentist today. But let me go next week”
• Failure in family life – “Since how many weeks, my children want me to take them to that nearby new garden”

It is the feeling that we want to get rid off, but not today, tomorrow.

Causes and solutions

Causes and solutions for laziness and procrastination – 
Laziness and procrastination arise both due to mental and physical reasons.

Tiredness leading to laziness – Tiredness can cause laziness. While you are feeling lazy, do a self check whether you are tired physically or mentally.

 – If you think you are mentally tired,

• Take up some hobby,
• Spice up your family life with a family tour or a surprise movie.
• Try to mix up different types of work.
• Organized mixing up of works leads to freshness in mind.  
• Sleep also helps to bring back freshness.

 – If you think you are physically tired,

• Take rest, sleep for at least 8 hours at night.
• During your work, if physical tiredness comes in your way of marching forward, just a small 10 minutes nap works wonders.
• Consult a doctor. You might have some hidden physical problem.
• If you work for long hours continuously, you should consider  day sleep as an option.
• There are other reasons and solutions for physical tiredness. Read it here – I feel tired all the time.

Laziness hides in your body – 

Most of the times, when you feel lazy, you can identify the focal point of laziness in your body.

Laziness in stomach – Sometimes, laziness can be felt in the stomach. Reasons for this is – ‘Ama’  and ‘Kapha imbalance’. Here the usual symptoms are

• Thick white coating of tongue,
• Feeling heaviness in stomach
• Excessive salivation
• Feeling bitter or sweetness in the mouth
• No desire to take food.
• Feeling like you are going to vomit anytime soon.

If your laziness is associated with the above symptoms, do the following –

1. Do not eat till you feel lightness in the stomach.
2. Stop eating food over undigested food.
3. Keep a gap of minimum four hours between two eating schedules.
4. Do not take sweets, milk, curds or oily food till abdominal lightness is restored.
5. Drink a peg of ginger decoction / ginger tea, without milk.
6. Triphala with honey remedy – If ginger is too spicy for you, take a table-spoon of  Triphala powder and mix it with honey to make a paste. Lick it. Drink a glass of warm water. This cleanses the stomach and intestines.
7. If you accidentally have a heavy, high cholesterol diet, follow these tips – What to do after high cholesterol diet
8. Watch what you eat at night

Laziness in body joints – If you are feeling lazy along with heaviness in joints, then ginger tea can of help. If not, seek Ayurvedic help to get rid of this issue.

Laziness due to depression – If a bad feeling is hurting your work since a long time, follow these tips to get rid of depression.

Laziness due to attitude – 

• Lack of motivation, lack of aim can cause laziness.
• Lack of direction sometimes make you feel like stopping the work. Imagine the result that you want to achieve precisely, then it becomes a lot easier.
• Don’t let confusions grow on you. DECIDE the exact date when you will go to dentist, when will you finish off that office project, when you will take your children to the garden and when will you go for a family trip. DECIDE everything right now!
• Read inspirational biographies of successful people
• Keep your room and home neat and clean
• Keep an inspirational photo in front of you. Make it your phone and computer desktop background.
• Do not sleep without a plan for what you will do after getting up.
• Do not sleep without knowing when you are going to get up.
• Do not sleep without an alarm clock.
• Do not eat without a proper plan. Do not eat till you really feel like eating.
• Write down things to do and read it over and over again – at least two times a day.
• Stop excessive sex, masturbation, smoking and alcohol.
• Switch off TV and close that Facebook tab in your PC. You might be wasting your time.
• Replace oily food and sweets with fruit and vegetable salads
• Do not over commit. Say no to things that are not-so-important.
• Start going to gym, yoga, dance class or your favorite sports. Being physically fit helps to be active and kick out laziness.
• Try stand working

Ikigai

I read the first sentence of the book Ikigai and the effect of it on my mind was profound
Dr JV Hebbar
Only staying active will make you want to live a 100 years – Japanese proverb.

Staying active: 
Keeping yourself busy with one or the other activities. 
Not wasting much time in procrastination. 
Trusting your gut and strength and making quick decisions – “a and b both options look good but taking long time to decide, let me just go ahead with a option and see what happens”
Taking swift actions – “option a is showing some positive results but not expected… let me put more effort into it to see if it is the right path” 
and making timely course corrections – “It appears that a might not be the best option, good thing is that I tested it fully and now I am confirmed that the best option is option b. Let me not make the same mistakes and put my best foot forward with the option b and make it work“
Not wasting time in unwanted chatters whether with other people or in one’s own mind. 
Not wasting time with smartphones, social media, web series 
Not wasting time with unnecessary people and places 
Not wasting time during the day. Filling your time with productive work. it need not always be profession related work. It can be just cleaning the room, putting things back in their place etc. 
Actively seeking and indulging in any small or big work rather than being lazy and avoiding work 
Taking time for meditation, positive thoughts, pranayama, and religious / spiritual activities – some of these may look passive or stale, but they add necessary energy to mind and body to do real, positive, productive work. 
Not wasting time and life with bad habits – alcohol, smoking, drugs 

Being vigilant of where the mind is diverting towards garbage thoughts and actively blocking those unwanted channels. 
Being vigilant about time gaps in our day and filling them with one or the other works. 

The above rules do not mean that you should not relax, or spend time with family and friends. Of course these are important. But you would do that by default anyway. 

Having some discipline and guidelines for your mind to follow with utmost strictness helps your mind not to go overboard with any relaxation methods.