What are the Disadvantages of Laziness?

As an advocate of productivity, I admit that laziness is a big problem to all of us. For one, it makes us think that we are relaxing but actually, we are not. All of us have a tendency to be lazy. Even the productive ones have days where we just don’t feel like it. But I have to make this article as a reminder to the readers and to myself that I should do my best to prevent myself from being lazy. This article will discuss about the disadvantages of laziness.

Here are the negative effects of laziness.

1. Laziness leads to Financial Problems
2. Laziness leads to a Sedentary Lifestyle
3. Laziness can lead to Guilt
4. Laziness Leads to Obesity
5. Laziness Reduces Flexibility in Life
6. Laziness can Increase Time in Work
7. Laziness reduces a Person’s Productivity
8. Laziness can cause Insecurity
9. Laziness can break Friendships
10. Laziness can lead to Anxiety and Stress
11. laziness prevents us from Achieving our Dreams
12. Laziness brings Pessimism
13. Laziness causes Inefficient Performance

All of us know how laziness is bad for us. But sometimes, we just have to remind ourselves. That’s why this article lists 13 disadvantages or 13 negative effects of laziness in our lives. This is not to scare anyone but to tell how detrimental laziness can be.

Generally speaking, the disadvantage of laziness is it is a mask that masks the problems we are facing. The problem with that is that while we are masking problems, the problem gets bigger and bigger until we won’t have any means to fix it. Thus, laziness leads to helplessness.

I have list all the negative effects and disadvantages of laziness in our lives. In the following sections of this article, I will discuss each of these disadvantages so we can understand why they are disadvantages of laziness.

1. Laziness leads to financial problems

If there is something that I’ve always regret in life. It is that my laziness led to me to being broke.

For example, I’ve built a business when I was 23 years old. But the problem is that I am so lazy that it flopped. I know that I need to fix it but I just procrastinated and allowed myself to be lazy.

Also, I’m an active member of forums especially on the forums on discipline and self-improvement. Almost every day, I will see people who are regretting that they are lazy.

Most of them lost their career, lost their business, relationship and more.

I am also a victim of laziness that caused me to fail when I was younger. Right now, it serves as a reminder that I should not allow myself to be lazy anymore. While laziness is inherent to us since we usually don’t want to do hard things, we also know that it can lead to many problems in life. One of which is financial problems.

Laziness can lead to financial problems because instead of working hard to earn a living, we tend to forget about our responsibilities. This can lead to being jobless or bankrupt. Furthermore, laziness prevents us to prepare for our future such as having savings and making investments.

2. Laziness leads to a Sedentary lifestyle

Laziness leads to a sedentary lifestyle because it forces us to stay away from our obligations. Staying away from our obligations and not taking care of our own health and body leads to numerous health complications such as cardiovascular, respiratory, and neurological problems.

Sedentary lifestyle has been widely popular recently. Right now, just sitting in a chair whole day is becoming a norm.

The problem here is that we are not designed to be sedentary. Our body is designed for us to move.

Our movement is very important. Exercise not only makes us stronger, it also keeps our heart, lungs and brain healthy.

Laziness in turn makes us just sit in the couch and do nothing.

There is no problem if we are resting after a whole day of work. But extreme laziness to the point where we are doing nothing all day except sitting in the couch and lying down in bed is a bad idea.

In fact, scientific studies have linked our sedentary lifestyle to numerous health problems. One such example is a research paper from the Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism where it discussed a lot of physiological and health implications related to a sedentary lifestyle.

Mark StephenTremblayM.S. Tremblay, Rachel ChristineColleyR.C. Colley, Travis JohnSaundersT.J. Saunders, Genevieve NissaHealyG.N. Healy, and NevilleOwenN. Owen. Physiological and health implications of a sedentary lifestyle. Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism. 35(6): 725-740. https://doi.org/10.1139/H10-079

3. Laziness can lead to guilt

I can’t remember how many times I felt guilty by not doing what is right.

What I’ve learned is that while it is hard to do things that will improve our life, not doing it can lead to extreme guilt.

There are just times that we know that we can do something. But the thing is we are too lazy to try and fix the problem.

This causes the problem to stay in our mind which will be in our mind the whole day.

That is the problem of laziness. It masks our problems but the truth is the problem will still be there.

The harder thing to take is that this causes the problem to get bigger and bigger.

Thus, it makes us guilty that we didn’t finish it while it is still easy.

Laziness can lead to guilt because it only masks our problems. As long as we don’t fix our problems, it will stay there and will get bigger until we can’t handle it any longer. This makes us guilty because we know that we should’ve solved the problems while we still can.

Another cause of guilt is sometimes, we just know that it is the right thing to do. It can be one important thing to improve our lives and we still don’t feel like doing it.

This in turn talks to our ego and will usually tell us why we aren’t doing it leading to guilt.

4. Laziness Leads to Obesity

How many times have I said that I am too lazy to exercise. Yes, I am also one of those guys that tells that I don’t have the physique I want but too lazy to exercise.

The thing is I solved this by dieting. But before, I really had that big belly.

The problem with laziness is it stops us from taking care with ourselves. This includes exercising and eating right.

We always say that we will do it tomorrow or next week or next month. But the truth is we also know deep within us that it won’t happen.

I am also one of the people who is targeted by this disadvantage. Right now, I do some light treadmill walking after working. It works well.

I know how good it feels to just lay in bed, doing nothing, and browse social media. But it is not a good idea. We know it is not a good idea but we are still hooked.

Laziness can lead to obesity because it prevents us from taking care of ourselves. This means that laziness prevents us from exercising and eating right. This in turn can lead to obesity which is a sign of poor life and health conditions.

5. Laziness Reduces Flexibility in Life

If there is one big lesson I can share in this article it is that life will always change.

For example, after I’ve quit my teaching job, I have to find ways in order to survive. This in turn led me to improve this website and make more blog posts so that it can hopefully help me financially.

Life is full of turns and we can’t really predict all of them.

The only thing that separates people who succeed and people who are not is that successful ones know how to adjust. They know that they need to be flexible since life is not a linear path.

The problem with laziness is that it forces us to run with our obligation to be flexible.

Instead of finding ways to find a new job, laziness makes us complain and sit in the couch doing nothing.

Instead of looking for ways to fix a relationship, it just tells us that it will fix itself and you deserve some rest.

There are many variables in life that we need to work on in order to adjust. Laziness prevents us from working and makes us just accept anything. Thus, it makes us feel useless.

Laziness reduces our flexibility because it prevents us from doing something when a part of our life changes. Life is full of changes and we have to work in order to be flexible, and adjust to the current situation. Laziness forces us to sit idly while things are changing which makes us feel useless.

6. Laziness can Increase time in work

When we think about it, laziness is actually funny.

The reason why we become lazy is because we just don’t want to work. The problem with that is that in reality, it increases our work load and forces us to work more hours.

Let me give myself as an example.

Prior to making the article yesterday which is Can you have motivation without emotion?, I was really not in the mood to start writing.

The funny thing is that I am writing about motivation that time.

But here is the thing.

Because I am lazy, instead to doing my research and preparing my article, what I did in the morning is to browse my social media feed and check for forums.

It took me an hour to realize that I am not really working but am procrastinating.

Thus, for an hour, I was not doing anything.

So I realized that then started writing again and I finished the article in about 2 hours.

But in reality, it took me 3 hours if I included the procrastination part.

That is a 50% increase in work time. Then I felt guilty because instead of working, I am doing something else that won’t be beneficial to my career as a writer.

That is the point.

Laziness can increase your time in work because it adds procrastination to the time we should’ve given to work. This in turn increases the time required in order to do a task which significantly reduces our productivity. It also affects our work concentration making us less efficient.

7. Laziness reduces a person’s productivity

Laziness fragments our attention. How many times have we usually felt like we need to do something else rather than working or studying?

Fragmenting our attention means that we can’t give our 100% to the task at hand. This makes it hard for us to be productive.

One of the key principles in productivity is to do more with less time. The most effective way to do this is to actually reach the zone or what others call the flow.

I talked about the concept of flow on this article: Can you have motivation without emotion?

But it basically means that we must work with our 100% attention and focus to be very fast and efficient in working. That in turn boosts our productivity to the next level.

Laziness reduces a person’s productivity because laziness fragments a person’s time. There are two reasons for this. One is that it prevents the person from working itself making it take more time to finish a task. Two is that it fragments a person’s attention making it longer to finish the task at hand.

8. Laziness can cause insecurity

Few years ago was the most insecure period of my life.

For one, I have nothing to show to others. I don’t have any means to live alone because I don’t have a stable job and money to support myself.

This in turn led me to be very insecure on who I really am.

Of course, the cause of this is because I am not working for myself. I was so focused on being lazy and questioning my abilities when in reality, I was just not doing the work necessary,

Right now, I was able to flip it down by working. I am constantly working on myself and my goals. This is the reason why you might be reading this right now.

I tried my best to stop laziness. I know it is hard and quite impossible. But I keep myself aware when I am lazy.

I only allow my laziness if I accomplished my tasks for today such as when finishing my work early.

I use it as a form of reward.

When I removed my laziness and worked for my goals, I got my sense of identity. I enjoyed the process of improvement. I see my improvement.

It improved my self-esteem and confidence by a lot. That’s why I am one of the believers that working on yourself is the key to confidence and the reduction of self-doubt.

I talked about the improvement of confidence and skills in this article. It is a good read if you are interested in reading how can you improve your self-esteem and confidence by working hard instead of being lazy: Which is more important confidence or skill?

Laziness can cause insecurity because it stays us away from our goals and dreams in life. Our goals and dreams usually give us our sense of identity. Not working on our goals or laziness causes us to stay away from our sense of identity which leads to insecurity.

9. Laziness can break friendships and relationships

Last night, I’ve read about someone who said that she has a boyfriend who did nothing but play games all day. She thinks that her boyfriend is really lazy and she is currently not satisfied with their relationship. Thus, she tried vent out her feelings on the forums.

I am not promoting people to vent out their feelings in forums. In fact, I am against it since you don’t know who you are talking with.

But it is a good example on what laziness can do to your friends and relationships. Instead of working to build the sense of trust, you are not doing anything.

This makes the person feel unimportant.

Laziness can break relationships because it is important to work on it since you are building the sense of trust. Without working in building the sense of trust, people will usually stay away since they won’t feel that they are important enough for you to maintain their friendship.

10. Laziness can lead to anxiety and stress

Laziness leads to anxiety and stress because problems won’t go away even if you don’t think of them. Laziness masks our problems which usually gets bigger the more we don’t care about them. This will usually linger in our minds causing anxiety and stress.

Remember that when you are doing nothing, the earth is still moving. Time is still flowing naturally.

This means that the problems or tasks you are prolonging is still there which will still linger in your mind. The only way to stop this from happening is to work and accomplish your task.

For example, if I am not able to finish my to do list for this day which includes this article, it will stay in my mind until it is not finished.

Only by finishing this article will I be satisfied and not be bothered by my to do list.

Thus, by not doing anything, the problem still lingers in our mind making it a big source of our anxiety and stress.

11. Laziness prevents us from achieving our dreams

Laziness prevented me from reaching my dreams and goals in life.

In fact, it took around 3 years for me to finally realize that I need to stop being lazy.

Just imagine your goals and dreams, and why you want to achieve them. It is really good but why are we doubting ourselves.

Why are we lazy instead of reaching it?

You want to be an artist, them do some art. If you want to be a guitarist then play the guitar.

Instead of just lying down and achieve nothing, why not try reaching your goals. It may take years but progress every day is still progress.

Just be 1% better every day and you will be 30 times better in 1 year.

Yes, as little as 1%.

Laziness prevents us from achieving our dreams because it won’t let us work on our goals. Working on our goals, even just a little bit, every day will be big if we just work on them. If we really want to achieve things in life, we have to work for it.

12. Laziness brings pessimism

Laziness bring pessimism because there is almost nothing good laziness can bring to a person’s life. This makes them think that everything about the world is full of negative because they are not getting anything good. Remember that you reap what you sow.

The problem is that some lazy people are expecting good things to happen in their life.

It is like expecting people to visit my website without putting any effort into it.

Just admit it.

You won’t know and appreciate this website if there are no contents in it.

I worked to make this and I am reaping my reward which are people who supports my dream as a blogger.

Now, let’s put it in the lazy person’s perspective. Since they are not doing anything, they are not getting good news.

Since they are not doing any work, they can’t expect good things to come. You reap what you sow.

This affects their mentality that things in life are always negative because they are not doing any thing to get something positive and satisfying in life.

Thus, laziness makes them think negative because they there is only few or no positive things happening in their life.

13. Laziness causes inefficient performance

Laziness causes inefficient performance because we tend to not use our time wisely. This makes a person look very unproductive in work resulting to low satisfaction from people around them. This also applies to their health, relationships and general wellbeing.

Laziness can be the opposite of productivity. When it comes to performance in all aspects of life, we can’t expect something good from laziness.

Laziness causes us to perform poorly on our health, relationships, career and our life.

There are many disadvantages of laziness that may this article serve as a reminder on the disadvantages of laziness.