Everyone Thinks I'm Lazy

My name's Mark, and you're listening to Headstraight, a podcast for teenagers and young adults where we talk about mental health, relationships, and all of the complicated stuff that comes with growing up. The things that you're thinking about, the questions that you're asking, and the stuff that you're just trying to figure out. Hello, you lot, and welcome back. Today, we're thinking about the concept of when everyone thinks you're lazy. Because some words get used so often that after a while, they start to stick, and lazy is one of these words.

If you hear it enough, especially from the people around you, it can start to get under your skin. You haven't done your homework yet. Your room's still a mess. You say you were going to get ready and somehow you're still sitting there. Now from the outside, it can look pretty straightforward.

You were asked to do something. It didn't happen. And then the judgment arrives. You're just lazy. But I'm not convinced that the word really tells us much because sometimes the strange bit is that you know what needs doing.

You've thought about it. You might even have been annoyed with yourself and not starting. And yet there you are stuck in exactly the same place. And that's the bit that I'm interested in. I want to explore what happens when you know what needs doing, you mean to do it, and somehow it still doesn't happen.

Because once you start looking at it more closely, lazy starts to feel like a pretty poor explanation for this. And before we get into what might be happening there, I think it's worth looking at the other side of it too. Why do people land on the word lazy in the first place? I suppose part of the answer is people can only really work on what's in front of them. If your homework's not been handed in, that's what the teacher sees.

At home, somebody might have asked you to do something loads of times and come back twenty minutes later to find nothing's changed. They don't get access to everything that's happening in your head before that moment. All they got is the result. And when the same thing keeps happening, people start filling in the gaps. Now that's pretty human.

We do it all the time. If someone repeatedly doesn't do something, it's easy to think that they don't care very much about it or that they can't be bothered. And once you've started to look at something that way, the word lazy fits quite neatly. That doesn't make it accurate, but the judgment hasn't necessarily appeared from nowhere either. Now, I think that matters because it would be really easy for me to sit here and say they just don't understand you.

And perhaps they don't, but they're also trying to understand something that they can only see from the outside. And that creates a problem because effort doesn't always leave much evidence behind. You can spend ages thinking about something, worrying about it, putting it off, getting frustrated with yourself, promising yourself that you're about to start. And from across the room, it can still look exactly like you're doing nothing. That's quite a gap between two people's versions of the same moment.

One person thinking, why can't you just get on with it? Whilst the other is sitting there thinking, I know I'm really trying. And I think that's where we need to go next, because if you're trying and the thing still isn't happening, then what actually is getting in the way? Now, that question sounds pretty straightforward, but I don't think it always is because there's a difference between knowing what you need to do and being able to get yourself started. You can sit there fully aware that the homework needs doing, the message needs answering, or you need to get yourself moving and still feel stuck.

And that's frustrating because from the inside, it doesn't necessarily feel like doing nothing. There can be a lot going on. The thing that you need to do is already on your mind. You've reminded yourself about it more than once, decided that you'll start in a minute, and then somehow another few minutes have gone by and you're still in exactly the same place. At some point, you can turn that frustration back on yourself.

Why am I doing this again? Why can't I just get started? And that's where the word lazy can become more than something other people say. You can start wondering whether they've got a point, Because surely, if you already wanted to do it, you'd just do it. But I'm not convinced it always works like that.

Wanting something to happen and being able to make yourself begin are not always the same thing. Sometimes there's an obvious reason. You're tired. The task feels enormous. You don't know where to start.

Other times there isn't a clear explanation. You just keep circling around it. And that can be harder in some ways, because if you don't understand what's happening yourself, explaining it to someone else is really difficult. You're left saying things like, I don't know, I just couldn't do it. Which probably doesn't sound very convincing to someone who's watched you spend half an hour doing something else.

And maybe that's worth staying with for a moment. When you say I couldn't do it, what does that actually mean? Because couldn't can cover quite a lot of ground. And I think we need to unpack that before we decide what's really going on. Couldn't and wouldn't sound like they should be easy to separate.

Either you were able to do something or you weren't. But I'm not sure real life always works that tidily. There'll be times when you know full well that you could have done it. You just didn't want to. Maybe it was boring.

Perhaps you resented being told to do it, or you kept putting it off because at that moment almost anything else felt more appealing. That happens and being honest about it doesn't suddenly make you a lazy person. But there are times when I just didn't want to doesn't seem to explain it properly. You wanted it out the way. You were sick of being reminded about it.

Maybe you were even annoyed with yourself every time you realised it still hadn't been done. And none of that was enough to get you moving. That's where I can't starts becoming interesting. What does it actually mean? Perhaps you genuinely couldn't do it.

The difficulty might have felt so big that you just backed away or somewhere along the way, avoiding it became easier than dealing with whatever came with starting. Sometimes you might know exactly which one it was. Other times I think the most accurate answer might genuinely be, I don't know. And that's okay as a starting point, because the point here isn't to find the right excuse. It's to understand the difference between something you don't want to do, something you're avoiding, and something you seem to be getting properly stuck on.

Those can feel very similar from the outside. They can even feel pretty similar from the inside. And perhaps that's why arguing about whether you can't or won't doesn't always get us very far. A better question might be this. What happens when I try?

Because once you start looking at that, you stop trying to defend yourself against the word lazy. You're beginning to work out where the difficulty actually is. And there's another part of this that we need to be careful not to lose. Understanding why something is difficult doesn't necessarily mean it no longer needs doing. And I think this is where the conversation can get a little uncomfortable.

Because once you start understanding why something is difficult, there's a temptation to think that that should settle it. There. That's why I couldn't do it. But knowing why something is hard doesn't always mean that you don't have to do it. You might genuinely be exhausted, but still have something that needs handing in.

Getting started might feel much harder for you than it seems to be for somebody else. But there are still mornings where you've got to get yourself up and out of the door. And sometimes you might have a completely understandable reason for avoiding something while the consequences of avoiding it are still yours to deal with. Now, that doesn't cancel out the struggle. It just means two things can be true at the same time.

This is genuinely hard for me and I still need to work out what I'm going do about it. I think that distinction is important because understanding yourself should give you more options, not fewer. Maybe the hardest bit is getting started and starting is where you need some help. A task that feels enormous might need a much smaller first step. And sometimes when you look at it properly, the answer might be much more straightforward.

Actually, I've just been avoiding this because I really don't want to do it. Well, that tells you something too. None of that means that you need to give yourself a hard time, but it does ask you to stay involved in what happens next. The danger with a label like lazy is that everyone can get stuck arguing about whether it's true or not. You're defending yourself.

Someone else is pointing out all of the things that still haven't happened. And whilst all of this is happening, the original problem is sitting there untouched. So maybe whose version of me is right isn't the best question to ask. Maybe the better question is what would actually help me to move from where I am now? And that changes the conversation quite a bit because now we're not trying to prove whether you're lazy or not.

We're starting to ask whether that label was ever particularly useful in the first place. Because once lazy gets into the conversation, it can just take over. Someone says it, you immediately want to defend yourself. They bring up all of the things that you haven't done. And before long, you're both arguing about what sort of person you are rather than what's actually happening.

And that's a pretty difficult argument to win. How do you prove to someone that you're trying? You can explain what's going on and tell them that it's harder than it looks. But if they're looking at another unfinished piece of work or something that they've asked you to do three times, they might still be thinking, well, it doesn't look like you're trying. So maybe we need to stop trying to make lazy the thing that we're trying to solve because there are better conversations to have here.

Instead of saying I'm not lazy, you might be able to say, I know it looks like I don't care. I'm actually getting stuck with starting this. Or maybe I'm not saying I shouldn't have to do it. I'm saying I'm finding this much harder than you realize. That gives the other person something to work with, and it gives you something to work with as well.

Because lazy doesn't tell you what needs to change. Whether you need help getting started, something needs breaking down, or you've been avoiding it and need to face that, the label doesn't help you to work any of that out. It just sits there as a judgement. And the more you argue about the judgement, the less attention anybody gives to the actual problem. And that might be a more useful place to be.

You don't necessarily have to convince everyone that they've misunderstood you before you can start making things better. You can still say that word doesn't really describe what's happening for me, but then you need to move the conversation on. Here's where I'm getting stuck. And being able to say that means you're beginning to understand something about yourself that lazy was never going to explain. Which leaves us with one more thing worth looking at.

If you stopped asking whether you were lazy for a minute, what would you actually notice about the times when you get stuck? What's actually left? Probably not one single answer. You might notice that some things are much easier to start than others. There might be jobs that you can get on with without thinking too much, whilst something else seems to sit there all day getting bigger and bigger in your head.

Sometimes the difficulty might be that you don't know where to begin or you start thinking about all of the things that need doing and it becomes easier to avoid the whole thing. Then there's times when the problem is much less complicated. You just really don't want to do it. And I think being able to admit that matters as well, because the aim here isn't to find a hidden reason for everything. It's to get a bit better at noticing the difference.

Think about what tends to happen just before you get stuck. Maybe you end up doing something else instead. And when you finally do start, does it get easier or is it difficult all the way through? It's also worth noticing whether the same thing happens everywhere or whether there are certain situations where it shows up much more. Now, you don't need to work all of that out straight away.

Even noticing that there's a pattern is useful. Because I'm lazy closes the conversation down. There's nowhere much to go from there. But I keep getting stuck at the point where I have to start gives you something that you can actually work with. So does I avoid things when I think I'm going to get them wrong.

And so does actually, I've been putting this off because I just don't want to do it. They're all different. And once you can tell the difference a little more clearly, you've got a better chance of working out what needs to happen next, Which is probably a good place for us to start bringing this together because we began with one pretty blunt judgment. Everyone thinks I'm lazy. And I'm not sure that's the most useful question anymore.

Because at this point, I think the word lazy has started to look a bit thin. It tells you what someone thinks of what they can see. It doesn't tell you much about what's actually happening. By this point, I think arguing about whether you're lazy gets us nowhere. What's more useful is looking at what happens when you know something needs doing and still don't seem to get there.

That's where the useful information is. Perhaps getting started is the hardest part. The whole thing might feel too big, or there might be something about getting it wrong that makes you keep backing away from it. And yes, sometimes the answer might simply be I really don't want to do it. And that counts too.

The point isn't to make yourself look better, it's to understand yourself more accurately. Because once you know where you tend to get stuck, you've got a much better chance of doing something about it. That might mean asking for the right kind of help, changing the way that you approach something, or recognising that this time you probably just need to stop avoiding it and just get on with it. And other people might still use the word lazy. You might not be able to change that, but you can still get to the point where you understand what's happening well enough that their label doesn't have to do all of the explaining for you.

So the next time you catch yourself thinking everyone thinks I'm lazy, maybe don't rush straight in to proving them wrong. Ask yourself something more useful. Where am I actually getting stuck? Because that question gives you somewhere to go. Next week, we have a different question.

Are you up for it? Of course you are.