Ok, first is my mom, but now that I know that she’s pretty proud of me.
Seriously though, I live in fear of becoming lazy.
I can wake up at 5:30am, go for a 5 mile run, come home — shower, change, be the first person in the office and still feel lazy, if I didn’t make my bed.
This is what it sounds like in my head:
Hey you lazy shit, you see your bed? It’s not made.
You know you want to be the guy who makes his bed every day.
You know you love going to hotels where the bed is made.
You know you like made beds, why are you walking out of your room without making yours, it is ONLY 3 minutes. You are starting the day taking an L.
My internal “you are being lazy” ticker runs all day. I beat myself up for spending too much time on social, why…I give zero fucks about getting better at twiter or instagram posting / reading yet I have a list of things I do want to get better at that I’m not doing every minute I spend on those platforms.
Yet when my app timer says “time’s up” and its only 5pm, I allowed myself to get sucked into things that have NOTHING to being the best me.
So I make my bed (most days), because I am afraid of 1 day turning into 3 days, turning into 3 weeks, turning into years. Then you end up looking back at yourself and realizing you never reached your potential.
This is the dialogue in my head, I see much of the world through a lens of when does laziness start and I’m afraid as hell of not knowing when it starts and having it naturally occur.
What about your friends?
You are likely, NOT surrounded by people who are going to call you out on it. So they tell you it’s OK.
There are 1000 people in this world who will tell me I’m successful. There is not 1 (Ok I might have 1) who will tell me I’m living below my potential.
Wanna find out…try this…find 10 friends to complain about your work to or your spouse to. How many are going to say… “Have you looked at yourself as the problem?” Tell someone you were overlooked for a promotion b/c you were woman, black, not the CEO’s favorite. How many are going to say…maybe, but also I see you spending a whole lot of time on Xbox? Maybe if you did less of that you could have had a better shot?
How quickly do your friends default to agreeing with you to make you feel better vs challenging you to get better / call out your behaviors that work against your stated goals?
Don’t compare yourself to anyone but yourself
I recently chatted with a friend who started an agency the same time I did, his is doing over $100 Million, mine is doing a “paltry” $28 Million. This doesn’t effect me one bit.
Laziness is about the “war with myself” not about me being better than anyone else, I could run a $100 business, but if I didn’t hand wash and hand dry my dishes, make my bed (most days), and go for runs on icy days in parking lots, I would consider myself lazy.
I don’t let other people make me feel bad about my accomplishments, I only allow myself to do that to me. Only I know when I tell myself “get up tomorrow and get your run in” and I don’t. When I break those promises to myself, I’m disappointed in myself. Regardless of what the outside world sees.
Data, Data, Data
The beauty of tracking my time on social, my apps, my runs etc. I have data to look back on to tell me when I’m investing time in things that do / do not work to my stated goals.
I can’t tell you the amount of time people tell me they are lost in their careers or at work or at home they feel disconnected. And I simply say…do you track your time on Facebook, Instagram, tik tok, etc. The answer is no. Then I’m like, start there, set timers, get the data, and 3 months later, they are in the same boat, same shit, no data. Why?
Data creates accountability and we’d rather talk about who we want to be than to take the small steps to BECOME the person who we say we want to be. It scares me to ever become someone like that because I know no one is going to put that mirror in front of me and show me I’m living below my potential. So I gotta do it for my effing self. Or risk the alternative.
In October I ran 225k, I took only 4 days off all month
So I told myself take some time heal up, so I did, next thing you know November looked like this:
This conversation in my head happens 5x-10x a day. It is a burden. However you know what my bet is, that its a bigger burden to wake up someday and realize for the last 3 years you slowly became someone who you didn’t want to become, 1 small decision at a time.
Hey Strava, if you are listening…I’d give some people the ability to see me packing behind goal, so they can ping me for a co-workout or something, that would be dope. :)
