Laziness does not exist (2018) (opens in new tab)

It dulls the senses and temporarily increases blood flow around a lot of your skin where temperature is monitored, which makes you feel warmer. So it could make a bad situation seem better than it is, could also lead to hypothermia because you've tricked your brain into thinking it's warmer than it actually is.

Also, alcohol typically has a misconception of improving sleep. In some situations, maybe, but it tends to give you a lighter sleep and leaving less refreshed if you consume a lot.

According to Mythbusters it warms your extremities by cooling your core.

I interpreted this as drinking alcohol so that you could sleep even if the cold would have made you too uncomfortable normally. It's not always adaptive obviously (you could freeze to death, etc), but the idea is that the alcohol allows you to sleep when you would otherwise be kept awake by discomforts that cannot be fixed tonight, and the night of full sleep will serve you better.

It's a vasodilator, but over time it will actually cause your core temp to drop.

The point probably is that there are certainly homeless people who drink less than I do, so I really shouldn't be the one to judge people for it.

it cools you down, but you feel warm in the process

It feels like it's making you warm. It doesn't make much sense from calories per dollar perspective though, so not a great example of valid decision making by homeless people.

If that's the quality of advice from Kim or from the article, it's best to disregard it.

Drinking alcohol when you're cold and don't have access to shelter is dangerous: https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/how-drinking-alc...

> procrastination ... laziness

I can only speak for my own procrastination, but it is certainly not rooted in anything I would identify as laziness. It’s rooted in my experience of ADHD, and the corresponding anxiety it produces.

How can I be so sure? Because I will often go to great effort to avoid minimal-effort tasks. Or I’ll continue an effort that I sense is likely a sunk cost to abandon in favor of a better solution, because I’m determined to see the first effort through.

Interestingly (to me), these were major influences on me becoming a programmer. I’m self taught, I didn’t learn to start a career. I thought I would probably work crappy retail jobs and be broke for the rest of my life.

I learned to program because there were tasks I would prefer not to do, so I learned how to automate them out of my purview. Work avoidance, it turns out, is a hallmark of the craft. Why put off for tomorrow what can be put off entirely?

Is that laziness? A younger me joked that it is along the lines of: I'm a lazy programmer; the good kind of lazy.

I no longer see it that way. I see it as one lens among many into my state of mind which ultimately gives me both drive and difficulty—that makes me incredibly effective and also prone to forgetting to do simple chores for weeks at a time.

Edit: that said, I wasn’t motivated to get around the paywall, so I have no idea if the article discusses similar concepts making my reply potentially redundant.

> It seems fairly clear that the author has a "schtick" or a unique "angle" on social psychology that is being promulgated.

You mean they have an opinion based on their research? That's shocking.

> As it turns out, they released a book this year called, "Laziness Does Not Exist", three years after this article was written.

And that's relevant how?

> When a person takes a course twice without ever managing to turn in homework, the situation of the student is not completely to blame, since the student didn't take the time to do something - the work, withdrawing in time, discussing options with the professor, something.

See, you're trying to place blame. The author is in the mindset of looking for solutions. He's got my respect.

The author’s point is that labeling someone as “lazy” is intellectually lazy. Every person, throughout their lives, exhibits behaviors ranging the full spectrum from lazy to diligent. They might be lazy about one thing but diligent about another, all at different times, for reasons others may never find out about. Labeling a person as lazy ignores all of that, and lays judgement based on a specific things the labeler wish the labeled was more diligent about, and at the time of their choosing. It’s entirely subjective, and rarely constructive. Laziness, as a description of a person’s measurable, inherent attributes, is inherently vindictive, intellectually lazy, and generally unhelpful. It’s a way of saying “I give up on you, I don’t want to know your story, and I think you can’t change” without acknowledging your part in that judgement.

I think that’s the point. There is no reason for a student to get an F twice in a course they paid for without turning in any work. They could at least get a W or Audit if they withdraw late, but most schools also provide refunds if you withdraw in the first weeks.

This means the individual couldn’t perform the basic unskilled task of withdrawing, something which usually just involves an email but in 2021 is usually done via button click. This doesn’t sound so much like laziness as depression.

> When a person takes a course twice without ever managing to turn in homework, the situation of the student is not completely to blame, since the student didn't take the time to do something - the work, withdrawing in time, discussing options with the professor, something.

And yet, any number of other words might legitimately describe the student's behavior - hesitant, confused, indifferent, passive, distracted etc. etc.

So, is "lazy" the correct term to use? And if so, why? All that we know about this particular student is that they took a class twice without turning in any assignments! Perhaps they simply enjoyed how the professor lectured and weren't actually interested in getting a degree - though I'll grant that that's a less likely possibility, given the context of the discussion.

TFA explains that procrastination is not laziness.

Any action a human being ever takes is a strategy to meet a basic human need.

- from Nonviolent Communication

Start looking for the needs driving actions and you will gain an x-Ray vision that will give you effortless compassion.

Edit: Here’s a list of basic human needs: https://www.cnvc.org/training/resource/needs-inventory

Having patience and compassion for our fellow humans is important. I often remind myself that people generally take actions that make sense to them. The fact that they don't make sense to me does not mean that they are wrong or stupid, it means I have not taken time to see their perspective.

And this:

> There are always barriers. Recognizing those barriers— and viewing them as legitimate — is often the first step to breaking "lazy" behavior patterns.

One thing that the article encouraged me to do is view the situation from the other person's perspective. What may appear ill-intentioned may not seem that way once we gain context.

Just to mention: It can also mean that the other person is missing some of the context you have (and knowing this can also be considered context information).

Everybody is trying to achieve or maintain a sense of well-being. Part of well-being is understanding, so the (inevitably) missing parts of the context are rationalized?

This statement is equivalent to saying that everyone is perfectly rational though, which we know is not true. Sometimes people are different because they are different, not because we are all one identical mind cloned and put in different bodies and circumstances.

Eh I don't think that's entirely true. Not all traits are so circumstantial. Some biologically inherited or genetic conditions (eg. ADHD or Aspergers) correlate highly with personality "traits" that can hold pretty consistently across different environments and circumstances. There are people with brain damage that are observed to be consistently more aggressive, consistent enough to be identifiable as a trait. In some cases, purely physical medication on its own can substantially alter or eliminate certain behaviors and "traits".

They're all dependent on something, but they're not all highly dependent on the surrounding circumstance like the article suggests laziness is.

> Despite that we've as a society decided that some behaviors deserve moral judgment.

And God forbid someone has a disability. That’s no excuse for failing to live up to the standards of people who aren’t lazy. (1)

1: May or may not be the intention of the parent comment, but that’s where this line of thinking ends. (And where my childhood begins…)

Doesn't the author demonstrate that this is exactly the opposite, by making lazy students not lazy simply by taking their needs into account?

But we do have to make moral judgments. That's just a consequence of valuing some things over others. And we have to be answerable for our actions. You can make that part of the circumstances if you will, if you really believe that people have no free will.

> I'm curious what the author thinks about the navy seals

Probably that it weeds out a lot of people with seen or unseen issues who would be perceived by society as lazy.

Yes. The same argument that he uses to defend “lazy” people can also be applied to “morally repugnant” people (e.g., they haven’t been taught to think correctly about these things and therefor draw erroneous conclusions). That doesn’t make the argument wrong, but it does mean that you have to give pretty much anyone a pass. Most people aren’t willing to do this.

> deliberately, knowingly manipulative and deceitful

I would argue that none of those traits correspond with laziness in any way. In fact, it takes a lot of work to become really good at these skills (for most people), and performing them is not lazy, but it can appear so to someone who doesn't realize they are being manipulated.

> Not everyone is good

Actually it really depends who is the subject of the "good" judgement. Everyone is doing what they think/feel/sense is good for them. So in this sense there is no good or bad: it is just acting out on self wants/needs.

The good or bad makes sense when changing the frame or point of view from self to someone else. So good and bad appears only in relation with other people. In this sense it is subjective and history is a proof of this.

Exactly!

This is the author's book, Laziness Does Not Exist - https://smile.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1982140100 . The author has a gimmick they are milking.

I used to be "lazy" by not working. Then Covid lockdown happened and suddenly everybody else wasn't working either. It truly made me feel better about my own behavior. It's pretty relative.

I think we've all been there and it really blows the "lack of context" argument out of the water.

The post is just suggesting that you (and the people around you) keep digging through the Whys and don't stop at "I can attribute this to laziness".

> The solution, instead, is to look for what is holding the procrastinator back. If anxiety is the major barrier, the procrastinator actually needs to walk away from the computer/book/word document and engage in a relaxing activity. Being branded “lazy” by other people is likely to lead to the exact opposite behavior.

Why put it in "quotes"?

I wish I could find the talk by a professor who gave a lecture on this topic. It really helped drive home the need to break tasks down into bite sized chunks. He basically found that if his grad students weren’t making progress on their thesis, it was invariably because they basically didn’t know what to do next. So he would work with them on finding a next thing to work on, which almost invariably required breaking some bigger task down. I don’t remember the field so this might not work as well for topics that require a eureka moment, but I’ve certainly found if I’m not making progress on something it’s often necessary for me to find a more time boxable thing to work on next.

edit: got lucky.

Tim Pychyl https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mhFQA998WiA

It doesn't exist until you need it.

He's talking about other people's superficial judgement, prejudice and biases about others, that do more harm, than help.

Perhaps there is no solution. Perhaps there is no problem to solve.