The Key for Progress: Recognizing and Overcoming Laziness
If there’s one fact that’s enduringly true in research, practical experience, and simple observation of all facets of life, it’s this: More effort tends to yield better results. You get out of training (or anything, really) what you put into it.
Most people are lazy (myself included). Most people also don’t like admitting that to themselves. This article discusses how to be a little less lazy.
However, it’s important to recognize that some degree of laziness is a good thing, at least when looking at the big picture. Without laziness, we wouldn’t be here.
We’re not too far removed from circumstances in which starvation was always imminent. It’s thought that you were rewarded (or at least, your genes were rewarded) both for being really good at getting food, and for being really good at conserving energy when you weren’t obtaining food. If you were too lazy and too unmotivated to get food, you’d die and fail to pass on your genes. If you were too hyperactive and too motivated to move around when you weren’t acquiring food or in circumstances where food was scarce, you’d burn through too much energy, be more likely to starve, and fail to pass on your genes.
Our motivation for exercise used to be pretty obvious and straightforward: If we weren’t active enough hunting prey or gathering edible plants, we’d starve to death. Even after we domesticated animals and developed agriculture, we still had to be active planting, tending, and harvesting crops, and raising livestock (or following herds, if you were a nomad).
