Nadia Bokody reveals surprising reason you’re ‘lazy’

Nadia Bokody discovered an unexpected reason she wasn’t getting her work done.

Seven words.

That’s all I’ve written in the last four days.

This column is wildly overdue, and I can see my editor’s email in my inbox, along with a growing list of messages I haven’t responded to.

What would I even say?

That my mind is currently running at the speed of AOL dial-up internet?

That I’ve rewritten the same sentence so many times, the words have started to appear in my nightmares?

That my procrastination has reached the point I’ve finished PornHub?

I’ve never had a motivation issue; but as I sit on my living room floor – an expectant cursor blinking back at me from an empty screen beside a decaying to-do list, it’s hard not to wonder, have I gotten … lazy?

The guilt of all the hours I’ve squandered failing to reach my potential has started forming a lump at the back of my throat. My fingers hover over the keyboard, paralysed by indecision. I’m filled with existential dread at the possibility I may never write anything worth reading again.

Nadia Bokody discovered an unexpected reason she wasn’t getting her work done. Picture: Instagram

What’s wrong with me?

Why can’t I just get it DONE?!

“The thing that we call ‘laziness’ is often actually a powerful self-preservation instinct … our bodies and minds are screaming for some peace and quiet,” social psychologist and author of The Laziness Lie, Devon Price, argues.

“When a person fails to begin a project that they care about, it’s typically due to either a) anxiety about their attempts not being ‘good enough’ or b) confusion about what the first steps of the task are. Not laziness.”

And Price’s theory has legs.

A study published in the Journal of Research in Personality found a direct link between performance pressure and procrastination, and another, published in PLoS One, uncovered a correlation between postponing tasks and feelings of stress and anxiety.

In other words, putting off or struggling to complete your work isn’t a side effect of poor self-regulation or ineptitude.

It’s your brain’s defence mechanism for coping with emotional overwhelm, which ironically happens most when we’re deeply invested in something.

“Procrastination is more likely when the task is meaningful and the individual cares about doing it well,” Price explains.

As someone routinely crippled by aggressive perfectionism, also known to waste significant amounts of time procrastibating (basically when procrastination and masturbation collide), this explanation makes a lot of sense to me.

If a task doesn’t hold weight for me, I perform it efficiently and without delay. But when something feels really important? My brain fires off a string of negativity (‘What if I fail? No one will want to read it. If it’s not perfect, I can’t submit it. I’m going to lose my job and be homeless!!), so instead of being driven to action, I’m gridlocked in a traffic jam of self-doubt and inertia.

And people who chronically put off critical tasks tend to experience a similar internal monologue.

‘I’ve never taken more than a week away from writing in any one year for the last decade. I’m not lazy. I’m mentally exhausted.’ Picture: Instagram

“Procrastinators often have a perfectionist feature … they excessively focus on the standards set for them and think too much over how others would assess them,” researcher Bahtiyar Eraslan-Çapan writes, in a paper published in the Journal of Social and Behavioural Sciences.

Given we live in a culture that equates relentless productivity with success, it’s not particularly surprising research is showing perfectionism is on the rise, or that trends like “Quiet Quitting” – a practice of doing the bare minimum in your job to cope with looming burnout – are emerging via social media platforms.

Though the average employee can only produce meaningful output for around three hours a day (according to a report by the Behavioural Science and Policy Association), hustle culture insists we should all be grinding into the early hours of the morning, existing on minimal sleep and sheer willpower while churning out huge amounts of work.

The result of which is often, as Price puts it, our brains “screaming for some peace and quiet”; something that can manifest in difficulty completing things which once came easily to us.

And as I write this, it occurs to me my own brain may be doing just that.

I’ve never taken more than a week away from writing in any one year for the last decade.

I’m not lazy. I’m mentally exhausted.

So, forgive me if this story has a hasty ending, but if I don’t submit something and book a sans-laptop holiday soon, I’m genuinely concerned I’m going to consume all of the porn on the internet.

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