This question originally appeared on Quora: I am 25 and very lazy. What should I do? Answer by Sam Priestley, Experimental Entrepreneur - www.arbing.co.uk
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I have exactly the same problem as you. But here's where I differ - I believe my laziness has directly lead to most of my successes in life.
I am so lazy that there is no way I could work a normal job.
At school I was terrible. I missed on average one day a week throughout the latter part of high school through 'illness'. I wasn't ill. I was lazy and would much rather sleep and watch TV than go to school.
University was no better. I loved university, but what I loved was that there was no attendance requirements at lectures. It was great, I could sleep and watch TV all day. I took multiple modules where I didn't go to a single lecture.
But the problem is you can't do that in the real world. If you don't turn up to work you don't get paid.
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I started building businesses with the sole reason that they would allow me to be lazy!
If I could become rich or create a passive income streams then I could be truly lazy to my heart's content.
But being an entrepreneur isn't easy. I worked my ass off (probably harder than a normal employee) for years with that goal of being able to truly lazy when I was done.
Eventually I made it. I had made enough to that I would never need to have to get out of bed and do some work again. So I spent my days watching TV. Eventually I got bored and would go and do something that interests me.
Now some weeks I'm lazy and do nothing. Some weeks I'm excited and work incredibly hard. Either way I don't fight myself and embrace the laziness.
OK, that might not be what you want to hear. You may be looking for some ways to force yourself to not be lazy. Well as I got slightly older and slightly wiser I started to understand a few things about myself:
I am lazy. Given the option I will happily spend all day watching TV and playing video games.
I hate letting people down.
I don't like people to see me fail.
All those are true and are not going to change. They are part of my DNA. But I know that I can leverage them to get things done.
In 2014 I decided to learn to play table tennis. So with the help of a friend we set a challenge:
He would train me for an hour every single day for a year, with the aim of getting me into the top 250 table tennis players in the UK. We would video it all and upload it to a blog.
My friends just laughed at me. "You're way too lazy to complete that challenge!"
But I knew they were wrong. I couldn't quit because we had told everyone about the challenge and if I quit they would all see me fail. And I couldn't quit because I would let down my friend who was giving up all this time to train me.
I completed the year! I got nowhere near that top 250 mark, but I did get pretty darn good at table tennis. For someone as lazy as me that is an amazing achievement. Here's a one-second-a-day video of my year:
One of my favourite comments on the video:
Well would you look at that. Setting goals and achieving them. Yet another thing I will never accomplish.
That always makes me chuckle. I bet the person who wrote it is nowhere near as lazy as me!
If I have any advice for you, it is this: Don't fight who you are, rather aim to understand yourself and leverage your natural strengths.
Now if you'll excuse me, this is getting too much like hard work so I am going to go and watch some Netflix.
