keep sloth at bay with insults

david is lazy.

I never do things that are outright heavy; stuff like taking a mortgage, reading thick books, or being romantic. I also avoid what others think I ought to do; namely networking after work for "opportunities," getting an MBA, blah blah. But the thing is—I don't do most of the things that are clearly good for my well-being either.

I've read some "motivational" books. Their presumptions that I eventually had to own a harmonious relationship, Porsche, and a million dollars did not tickle me. david's still a bit stupid to grasp the instrinic joy which these things supposedly offer...

In the decades of deep-chair lounging, however, I noticed that certain "wholesome" activities—like a date with meself going to an utterly silly movie—did leave me with a rewarding glow of satisfaction afterwards...

That is, if david ever managed to endure past the first few steps of executing the whims at all.

What gives? Each time david is about to really, really "get down to it," a dense, techni-color, heavy picture of the end-goal—and how painful the striving would be—would instantly shroud my resolution. My reaction? You guessed. I scurry back to customary comfort double-time.

That said, david still has an iota of wisdom which says "when something obviously doesn't work, consider the exact opposite." So I chopped the lofty ideals into retail, almost insulting chunks.

Well it worked.

Let's say I could actually do 20 minutes of Tai-chi (hard, because you remain in half-ducked positions throughout, which make your knees shake), I would start the session with a resolution of doing five minutes. Yes, five; and all david's obligations to Creation for the day is fulfilled.

Y'know what? After the initial push, it's never as bad as the ego wants me to believe. Every time I'd end up doing 25 or 30 minutes of it on principle to thwart the implied dare in the original aim.

If my stamina ever grows to 40 minutes, for example, I'd shift the yardstick to 10. The point of the deliberately easy goal is only in bypassing the ego's excuses. If you're tempted to set it lower than a quarter of your true capability, the supposed results may not be important to you in the first place.

I suspect the approach only works for some mindsets and not others. But, hey, why not give it a shot with patterns that have kept you fenced-in for years despite of the good ol' positive self-programming? At a minimum, you can't really justify with righteousness that you failed at doing less, can you?

But I digress to the words "keep sloth at bay" in this entry's title. I didn't say "destroy sloth," for too much struggle with anything is poison. And, clever strategy or none, I'm still not going to get the mortgage, read thick books, or try being romantic; for to david these things represent Dante's furnaces, not the garden-variety laziness which I was talking about.