From the author: Laziness: What to do and Who is to blame. Is a lazy person always lazy? Laziness (from Latin lenus - calm, slow, sluggish) - absence or lack of hard work, preference for free time over work. Traditionally regarded as a vice, since it is believed that a lazy person is a parasite of society. Laziness must be overcome, it must be gotten rid of. In general, Laziness is very bad. In fact, not everything is so simple. Behind laziness there can be a variety of quite valid reasons for “doing nothing.” Which a person most often does not even suspect, rewarding himself with the unflattering name Lazy. One of these reasons is the body’s protective reaction when overloaded - physical, mental, emotional. When you simply don’t have the strength to do anything. And this applies not only to “workaholics”; as a rule, they stay in the “wear and tear” mode much longer than others. Overwhelm can be caused by more than just too much time spent working. This could be a recent illness, or a stress that went unheard, which a person did not consider necessary to pay attention to, reassuring himself with the usual “I’ll survive.” This could be an old mental trauma that suddenly surfaced, which he seemed to have forgotten to think about. As a result of overload, a person begins to “shy away” from necessary tasks, this gives rise to a feeling of guilt in him for his laziness, by an effort of will he forces himself to start working, the overload increases, the desire to work becomes even less, efforts to overcome laziness “increase,” etc. A vicious circle arises: work efficiency drops, the pace slows down, the number of errors increases, a person forces himself to “push up” with an effort of will, the pace of work drops again... etc. There is only one way to break this circle: stop. And look at your life from the outside. And then take care of your physical and mental state. Until some disease “caught up” with me. Another reason for laziness is lack of motivation. Simply put, when what a person should do, in fact, he does not need to do at all... or seems stupid, ineffective. A conflict arises between “need” and “why (what the hell).” Overcoming this internal conflict requires strength, first of all, mental strength. You need to simultaneously suppress negative emotions in yourself (or find an environmentally friendly, safe way out for them) and strain to get the unnecessary work done (in order to avoid conflict with the one who ordered this work to be done). Of course, there is also a way out of this situation. Even a few. First, you need to independently find a more convincing motivation for doing this work than just “should”. For example, like this: “I don’t feel like washing dishes (laundry, cleaning, homework...) at all. But if I don’t do this, then major troubles, conflict, scandal, punishment await me... And then I’d rather stress out now than later spoil my mood for several hours, days... than be punished.” You can try another option: enter into negotiations with the “employer” and convince him that this work should be done differently or not done at all, and instead do this. In any case, trying to look at the situation carefully, analyze it and somehow change it is much better than tormenting yourself with remorse and feeling guilty. Another reason for laziness lies in the discrepancy between the nature of the activity and the personality structure: when, for example, an introvert is engaged in a type of activity that involves constant communication with different people, and an extrovert is working with documents; when “Amazons”, “business women” become housewives and do exclusively housework…. The list goes on. But the point, I think, is already clear. The way out of this situation is obvious: start minding your own business, and laziness will disappear. I would also like to draw attention to such an interesting type of laziness as “receiving conditional benefits.” This is “shirking” from doing things that can.