5 Ways to Whittle Laziness into Steely Self Control

8 months ago, I couldn’t even be bothered to get up at 7 am. My alarm clock would reach 4–5 snooze hits before I crawled out of bed at 8:30 am, where I fussily got ready for work, threw on some clothes, and went to work disheveled and feeling demotivated. I had gained a bit of weight, had no direction with my career, and always felt like I could do more with my life, except I didn’t make any changes and fell into complacency.

It took a huge life turning event (which you can read in my other article) to turn my life around.

But, this wasn’t an immediate 180 turn — this was a process that took its own course, slipping and falling, but with self resolve, made it to the current state of mind I have now.

Fast forward to the present and now I make my bed each morning, do core40 (lagree fitness classes) 2–3 times a week, seldom reschedule meetings or hangouts, contribute 18% of my paycheck to savings, and carve out Sundays for my personal musings and self-care. I make it a point to journal at least twice a week, using my written words as an outlet to self reflect on my personal improvements.

One of my primary focuses of self was to whittle my laziness into steely self control. This derives from a deeply rooted childhood issue, a common occurrence where I had many quit many things (karate, piano, classes, etc) and always got the hall pass from my mom simply because I said I hated it, but really I just was very lazy. This extended into parts of my adulthood, which became a common occurrence of me starting projects and never seeing them to the end, taking responsibility and never delivering on time, and canceling on events or people because I just didn’t want to go anymore.

Here are the 5 things I’ve learned over the course of time, which has tremendously help me exercise and stretch my muscle of self control.

1. Know that repetition is key — do something at least 30 times and it’ll become clockwork. I would say the best way to get started is to start by making your bed. A simple task, but a majority of people fail to execute on this. It’s the picture of the start of your day, and the end of the day. Corny, but it helps you prepare your mindset by knocking out one accomplishment of the day; plus, it just feels good to see a well-made bed. What is something small that could be a minor annoyance at first, becomes something of a habitual nature and ingrained in your daily cycle. Repetition is important, and as self control is a muscle, it exercises that muscle. Once you master one task, you can move onto another.
2. Create accountability through yourself and others. Exercising is something many want to do, but don’t actually do. By attending lagree classes with my friend, I created accountability with her by not wanting to let her down. We would motivate each other by sending reminders, adding it to our calendars, and signing up for another class immediately the day after our class ended. It became a sort of weekly hangout, which became something I looked forward to because we got to suffer through core exercises together, and then spend time chatting and catching up. Tell people what you’re working on, or what you’re doing. Involving others creates a sense of accountability to yourself, making you hyperaware of what you’ve said because of other’s expectations.
3. Get inspired by people who have the characteristics you want or admire. I started to follow people on Instagram who were inspiring and had turned their lives around — these were trainers, entrepreneurs, CEOs, writers, etc. Once simple people, they also were able to shift their mindset and transform their lives. I studied their habits, especially the ones that were more realistic to me, and tried adding them to my life. This meant exercising 2–3 times a week, waking up earlier to start the day, reading more books, contributing to society through content, etc. In some strange way, I believed in manifestation and whatever energy I surrounded myself would envelope my life as well.
4. Nip it in the bud before your self conscious kicks in. This one is a bit hard, but I like to think of it as evading that small space of time when your self begins to lean towards the alternative. By doing a task immediately, you immediately pick up the resolve to finish something. For example, you need to take out the trash, but your self says you can do it later. When the thought that your trash is building up comes to mind, make it a motive to get up immediately and take out the trash. You don’t allow that other voice to postpone your action — literally, just do it.
5. Keep track of these things by writing and reflection. I find that writing has been imperative to keeping track of progress, especially as you are a different person after a week, a month, and a year. It’s fascinating to rifle through past pages of my journey and read up on what has failed and what has worked for me, as well as reminding myself of the driving factors that had initiate self change. Plus, journaling a few times a week is also a form of discipline within itself. It forces you to sit down and capture your thought processes of certain scenarios of wavering or solidified self control.

I correlate laziness with complacency. Though not an easy process, whittling laziness into self control has indirectly targeted the issues I had with myself, and I feel so different. I have found that my current discipline has translated well to many aspects of my life, specifically health, career, and my well-being.

Emily is a US expat currently living in Singapore to learn about the tech communities growing in Asia. She has worked 4+ years in dev relations, community management, and event marketing within the tech and travel industry. Her time at OmniSci, Google and Booking.com gave her cross-functional expertise. In her free time, she runs the volunteer community initiatives for TEDxSanFrancisco, as well as promote and blog on the importance of financial literacy and education.

You can follow her on LinkedIn and Twitter.