Day 559 - I'm not successful because I'm not lazy enough - https://golifelog.com/posts/im-not-successful-because-im-not-lazy-enough-1657679632654
I’ve been frustrated with my lack of results lately. The success I seek seems to elude me. It’s been years. I try patience. I try to reframe my perspective. It provides temporary relief. But this frustration—turning into annoyance, at myself—always returns.
And I’ve got a working hypothesis that I’ve been toying with in my head, why it’s that way:
I’m not successful because I’m not lazy enough.
The reason why I’m not hitting my goals for my products is because I’m too working hard.
I’m too willing to work hard on everything—things that matter and don’t matter—that I spread myself too thin.
I’m greedy and hard-working, want to do it all, and feel confident to be able to do it all through just working harder, so I lose focus.
I’m the sort who enjoys feeling competent, so even if I’m not good at the skill, I’ll force myself to learn it.
I’m not using enough leverage to help me succeed—like tools, automation, capital, partners, freelancers, VAs, systems, templates—so I end up doing and achieving less.
I’m great at forming habits and applying consistency, discipline and a never-say-die attitude to my work, so that blessing brought to the extreme ends up being a curse (when I just hunker down in hard work without results).
I’m too much of a workaholic that I forget that rest is required for optimal productivity.
Essentially, the very virtue called industriousness had turned into a vice, because it had blinded me to what I need to do to be effective.
I was just being ultra efficient, but not effective.
To be effective, I need to be lazy.
In some aspects, at least.
I should really start practicing selective indolence and strategic incompetence.
I need to be willing to not treat my industriousness as the hammer and every problem as a nail.
I need to be open to doing more work upfront to automate, create systems, templates and using other tools to scale and amplify beyond the bottleneck that is myself.
I need to start considering how I can bring others in to help me, complement me, free me up to focus on things I’m more effective in.
To be successful, I need to learn how to be lazy.
Laziness is not a vice per se. It can be a virtue, if used appropriately.
Lazy on the things that don’t matter.
Industrious on the things that do.
And I’ve got a working hypothesis that I’ve been toying with in my head, why it’s that way:
I’m not successful because I’m not lazy enough.
The reason why I’m not hitting my goals for my products is because I’m too working hard.
I’m too willing to work hard on everything—things that matter and don’t matter—that I spread myself too thin.
I’m greedy and hard-working, want to do it all, and feel confident to be able to do it all through just working harder, so I lose focus.
I’m the sort who enjoys feeling competent, so even if I’m not good at the skill, I’ll force myself to learn it.
I’m not using enough leverage to help me succeed—like tools, automation, capital, partners, freelancers, VAs, systems, templates—so I end up doing and achieving less.
I’m great at forming habits and applying consistency, discipline and a never-say-die attitude to my work, so that blessing brought to the extreme ends up being a curse (when I just hunker down in hard work without results).
I’m too much of a workaholic that I forget that rest is required for optimal productivity.
Essentially, the very virtue called industriousness had turned into a vice, because it had blinded me to what I need to do to be effective.
I was just being ultra efficient, but not effective.
To be effective, I need to be lazy.
In some aspects, at least.
I should really start practicing selective indolence and strategic incompetence.
I need to be willing to not treat my industriousness as the hammer and every problem as a nail.
I need to be open to doing more work upfront to automate, create systems, templates and using other tools to scale and amplify beyond the bottleneck that is myself.
I need to start considering how I can bring others in to help me, complement me, free me up to focus on things I’m more effective in.
To be successful, I need to learn how to be lazy.
Laziness is not a vice per se. It can be a virtue, if used appropriately.
Lazy on the things that don’t matter.
Industrious on the things that do.