Hi, have been reading this site only for a few months, glad that this thread came up. My stupid question : can a person simply be just lazy, and how does all the motivation/fighting akrasia techniques help such a person?
But I’ve been able to cultivate caring about particular goals/activities/habits, and then, with respect to those, I’m not so lazy—because I found them to offer frequent or large enough rewards, and I don’t feel like I’m missing out on any particular type of reward. If you think you’re missing something and you’re not going after it, that might make you feel lazy about other things, even while you’re avoiding tackling the thing that you’re missing head on.
This doesn’t answer your question. If I was able to do that, then I’m not just lazy.
Beyond needing to survive, and maintain a reasonable health, a lazy person can just while their time away and not do anything meaningful (in getting oneself better—better health, better earning ability, learn more skills etc). Is there a fundamental need to also try to improve as a person? What is the rationale behind self improvement or not wanting to do so?
My question is : can I change this non desire to improve due to laziness? As in, how do I even get myself to want to improve and get my own butt kicked :)
Why don’t you try starting with the things you already do? How do you spend your free time, typically? You might read some Less Wrong, you might post some comments on forums, you might play video games. Then maybe think of a tiny, little extension of those activities. When you read Less Wrong, if you normally don’t think too hard about the problems or thought experiments posed, maybe spend five minutes (or two minutes) by the clock trying to work it out yourself. If you typically post short comments, maybe try to write a longer, more detailed post for every two or three short ones. If you think you watch too much TV, maybe try to cut out 20 minutes and spend those 20 minutes doing something low effort but slightly better, like doing some light reading. Try to be patient with yourself and give yourself a gentle, non-intimidating ramp to “bettering yourself”. :)
I want to change the not want to self-improve part since a life lazing around seems pretty meaningless, though I am also pretty contented to be a lazy bum.
Sorry for reiterating this point, but I still don’t understand the question. You seem to either have no reasons or have relatively weak reasons for wanting to self-improve, but you’re still asking how to motivate yourself to self-improve anyway. But you could just not. That’s okay too. You can’t argue self-improvement into a rock. If you’re content to be a lazy bum, just stay a lazy bum.
I think it’s the difference between wanting something and wanting to want something, just as “belief-in-belief” is analogous to belief. I’m reminded of Yvain’s post about the difference between wanting, liking, and approving.
I think I can relate to Jaime’s question, and I’m also thinking the feeling of “I’m lazy” is a disconnect between “approving” and either “wanting” or “liking.” For example, once I get started writing a piece of dialogue or description I usually have fun. But despite years of trying, I have yet to write anything long or substantial, and most projects are abandoned at less than the 10% mark. The issue here is that I want to write random snippets of scenes and abandon them at will, but want to want to write a novel. Or, to put it another way, I want to have written something but it takes a huge activation energy to get me to start, since I won’t reap the benefits until months or years later, if at all.
But here’s something that might help—it helped me with regards to exercising, although not (yet) writing or more complex tasks. Think of your motivation or “laziness” in terms of an interaction between your past, present, and future selves. For a long time, it was Present Me blaming Past Me for not getting anything done. I felt bad about myself, I got mad at myself, and I was basically just yelling at someone (Past Me) who was no longer there to defend herself, while taking a very present-centered perspective.
As far as Present Me is concerned, she is the only one who deserves any benefits. Past Me can be retroactively vilified for not getting anything done, and Future Me can be stuck with the unpleasant task of actually doing something, while I lounge around. What helped me may be something unique to me, but here it is:
I like to think of myself as a very kind, caring person. Whether or not that’s true isn’t as important for our purposes. But the fact of the matter is that my self-identity as a kind, helpful person is much stronger and dearer to me than my self-identity as an intelligent or hard-working or ambitious person, so I tried to think of a way to frame hard work and ambition in terms of kindness. And I hit upon a metaphor that worked for me: I was helping out my other temporal selves. I would be kind to Past Me by forgiving her; she didn’t know any better and I’m older. And I would be kind to Future Me by helping her out.
If I were in a team, my sense of duty and empathy would never allow me to dump the most unpleasant tasks on my other teammates. So I tried to think of myself as teaming up with my future self to get things done, so that I would feel the same shame/indignance if I flaked and gave her more work. It even helped sometimes to think of myself in an inferior position, a servant to my future self, who should, after all, be a better and more deserving person than me. I tried to get myself to love Me From Tomorrow more than Me From Today, visualizing how happy and grateful Tomorrow Me will be to see that I finished up the work she thought she would have to do.
It is all a bit melodramatic, I know, but that’s how I convinced myself to stop procrastinating, and to turn “approve” into “want.” The best way for me, personally, to turn something I approve of but don’t want to do into something I genuinely want to do is to think of it as helping out someone else, and to imagine that person being happy and grateful. It gives me some of the same dopamine rush as actually helping out a real other person. The rhetoric I used might not work for you, but I think the key is to see your past, present, and future selves working as a team, rather than dumping responsibility onto one another.
I hope that helps, but I may just be someone who enjoys having an elaborate fantasy life :)
I understand the distinction between wanting X and wanting to want X in general, but I can’t make sense of it in the particular case where X is self-improvement. This is specifically because making yourself want something you think is good is a kind of self-improvement. But if you don’t already want to self-improve, I don’t see any base case for the induction to get started, as it were.
I’d guess it’s a bit vaguer than that; from what I’ve seen there aren’t sharp distinctions. I can’t speak for the original poster, but in my case, I have a little bit of motivation to improve myself—enough to ask people for suggestions, enough to try things, but I wish I had a lot more motivation. Maybe they percieve themselves as having less motivation than average, but it’s still some motivation (enough to ask for help increasing motivation)?
If I’m a lazy bum and mostly content to be a lazy bum I will stay a lazy bum. Any interventions that are not doable by a lazy person will not be done. But if I have even a slight preference for being awesome, and there’s an intervention that is fairly easy to implement, I want to do it. Insofar as you’d prefer people who share your values to be NOT lazy bums, you should if possible encourage them to be self-improvers.
What do you mean by lazy? How do you distinguish between laziness and akrasia? By lazy do you mean something like “unmotivated and isn’t bothered by that” or do you mean something else?
More towards the “is there really a need for things to be done, if not, why do it and waste energy”. Which is why I am wondering if fighting akrasia will actually work for a lazy person if the meaning for things to be done is not there in the first place.
Hi, have been reading this site only for a few months, glad that this thread came up. My stupid question : can a person simply be just lazy, and how does all the motivation/fighting akrasia techniques help such a person?
I think I’m simply lazy.
But I’ve been able to cultivate caring about particular goals/activities/habits, and then, with respect to those, I’m not so lazy—because I found them to offer frequent or large enough rewards, and I don’t feel like I’m missing out on any particular type of reward. If you think you’re missing something and you’re not going after it, that might make you feel lazy about other things, even while you’re avoiding tackling the thing that you’re missing head on.
This doesn’t answer your question. If I was able to do that, then I’m not just lazy.
Taboo “lazy.” What kind of a person are we talking about, and do they want to change something about the kind of person they are?
Beyond needing to survive, and maintain a reasonable health, a lazy person can just while their time away and not do anything meaningful (in getting oneself better—better health, better earning ability, learn more skills etc). Is there a fundamental need to also try to improve as a person? What is the rationale behind self improvement or not wanting to do so?
I don’t understand your question. If you don’t want to self-improve, don’t.
My question is : can I change this non desire to improve due to laziness? As in, how do I even get myself to want to improve and get my own butt kicked :)
Why don’t you try starting with the things you already do? How do you spend your free time, typically? You might read some Less Wrong, you might post some comments on forums, you might play video games. Then maybe think of a tiny, little extension of those activities. When you read Less Wrong, if you normally don’t think too hard about the problems or thought experiments posed, maybe spend five minutes (or two minutes) by the clock trying to work it out yourself. If you typically post short comments, maybe try to write a longer, more detailed post for every two or three short ones. If you think you watch too much TV, maybe try to cut out 20 minutes and spend those 20 minutes doing something low effort but slightly better, like doing some light reading. Try to be patient with yourself and give yourself a gentle, non-intimidating ramp to “bettering yourself”. :)
I still don’t understand the question. So you don’t want to self-improve but you want to want to self-improve? Why?
self-improving people are cooler
I want to change the not want to self-improve part since a life lazing around seems pretty meaningless, though I am also pretty contented to be a lazy bum.
Sorry for reiterating this point, but I still don’t understand the question. You seem to either have no reasons or have relatively weak reasons for wanting to self-improve, but you’re still asking how to motivate yourself to self-improve anyway. But you could just not. That’s okay too. You can’t argue self-improvement into a rock. If you’re content to be a lazy bum, just stay a lazy bum.
I think it’s the difference between wanting something and wanting to want something, just as “belief-in-belief” is analogous to belief. I’m reminded of Yvain’s post about the difference between wanting, liking, and approving.
I think I can relate to Jaime’s question, and I’m also thinking the feeling of “I’m lazy” is a disconnect between “approving” and either “wanting” or “liking.” For example, once I get started writing a piece of dialogue or description I usually have fun. But despite years of trying, I have yet to write anything long or substantial, and most projects are abandoned at less than the 10% mark. The issue here is that I want to write random snippets of scenes and abandon them at will, but want to want to write a novel. Or, to put it another way, I want to have written something but it takes a huge activation energy to get me to start, since I won’t reap the benefits until months or years later, if at all.
But here’s something that might help—it helped me with regards to exercising, although not (yet) writing or more complex tasks. Think of your motivation or “laziness” in terms of an interaction between your past, present, and future selves. For a long time, it was Present Me blaming Past Me for not getting anything done. I felt bad about myself, I got mad at myself, and I was basically just yelling at someone (Past Me) who was no longer there to defend herself, while taking a very present-centered perspective.
As far as Present Me is concerned, she is the only one who deserves any benefits. Past Me can be retroactively vilified for not getting anything done, and Future Me can be stuck with the unpleasant task of actually doing something, while I lounge around. What helped me may be something unique to me, but here it is:
I like to think of myself as a very kind, caring person. Whether or not that’s true isn’t as important for our purposes. But the fact of the matter is that my self-identity as a kind, helpful person is much stronger and dearer to me than my self-identity as an intelligent or hard-working or ambitious person, so I tried to think of a way to frame hard work and ambition in terms of kindness. And I hit upon a metaphor that worked for me: I was helping out my other temporal selves. I would be kind to Past Me by forgiving her; she didn’t know any better and I’m older. And I would be kind to Future Me by helping her out.
If I were in a team, my sense of duty and empathy would never allow me to dump the most unpleasant tasks on my other teammates. So I tried to think of myself as teaming up with my future self to get things done, so that I would feel the same shame/indignance if I flaked and gave her more work. It even helped sometimes to think of myself in an inferior position, a servant to my future self, who should, after all, be a better and more deserving person than me. I tried to get myself to love Me From Tomorrow more than Me From Today, visualizing how happy and grateful Tomorrow Me will be to see that I finished up the work she thought she would have to do.
It is all a bit melodramatic, I know, but that’s how I convinced myself to stop procrastinating, and to turn “approve” into “want.” The best way for me, personally, to turn something I approve of but don’t want to do into something I genuinely want to do is to think of it as helping out someone else, and to imagine that person being happy and grateful. It gives me some of the same dopamine rush as actually helping out a real other person. The rhetoric I used might not work for you, but I think the key is to see your past, present, and future selves working as a team, rather than dumping responsibility onto one another.
I hope that helps, but I may just be someone who enjoys having an elaborate fantasy life :)
I understand the distinction between wanting X and wanting to want X in general, but I can’t make sense of it in the particular case where X is self-improvement. This is specifically because making yourself want something you think is good is a kind of self-improvement. But if you don’t already want to self-improve, I don’t see any base case for the induction to get started, as it were.
I’d guess it’s a bit vaguer than that; from what I’ve seen there aren’t sharp distinctions. I can’t speak for the original poster, but in my case, I have a little bit of motivation to improve myself—enough to ask people for suggestions, enough to try things, but I wish I had a lot more motivation. Maybe they percieve themselves as having less motivation than average, but it’s still some motivation (enough to ask for help increasing motivation)?
If I’m a lazy bum and mostly content to be a lazy bum I will stay a lazy bum. Any interventions that are not doable by a lazy person will not be done. But if I have even a slight preference for being awesome, and there’s an intervention that is fairly easy to implement, I want to do it. Insofar as you’d prefer people who share your values to be NOT lazy bums, you should if possible encourage them to be self-improvers.
Well, you want to want to improve. That’s a start.
What do you mean by lazy? How do you distinguish between laziness and akrasia? By lazy do you mean something like “unmotivated and isn’t bothered by that” or do you mean something else?
More towards the “is there really a need for things to be done, if not, why do it and waste energy”. Which is why I am wondering if fighting akrasia will actually work for a lazy person if the meaning for things to be done is not there in the first place.
Akrasia is about not doing things that you rationally think you should be doing.
What you seem to describe isn’t akrasia.
It depends what is meant by the need/meaning being there; if system2 concludes something is necessary, but system1 does not, is it akrasia?
If one system agrees that there need, then there’s at least some meaning in the first place.