The Mindset Mentor - How to Stop Being Lazy

Starting point is 00:00:00 When you go on holiday, there is no finer achievement than doing absolutely nothing. Nothing on the beach, nothing by the pool, walking kind of nowhere and chatting about nothing. As an Expedia member, you can save up to 30% when you add a hotel to your flight. So you can have a bit more money to go out there with great ambition to do absolutely nothing. Expedia, made to travel. Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host Rob Dial. And if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button since you never miss another podcast episode. Today, we're going to be talking about how to stop being lazy. So if you're someone that's out there and you tend to be a little bit lazy, if you're not getting things done that you need to, or if you tend to procrastinate too much,

Starting point is 00:00:57 I'm going to give you my strategies on how to make sure that you stop being lazy. So the first tip that I'm going to give you before we dive into like the actual meat and potatoes of exactly how to do it is to stop lying to yourself. You need to first admit that you are a lazy person because all too often I see people that are lazy. They're not getting the stuff done that they need to. And then ultimately what they do, oh yeah, well, you know, I'm just, I've got stuff going on and they make excuses for everything of, so the reason why they're not achieving the goals they want, why they don't have the life that they want. When in reality, the thing they need to do is just admit that what the real issue is, is that they're lazy and they're a procrastinator and they don't have plans put in place. So the first thing you need to do is to admit to yourself, to fully be transparent and say,

Starting point is 00:01:42 you know what? I do have a problem with laziness. It's the same way that if somebody is an alcoholic and they go through the 12-step program, the very first thing to do is to admit that so that they can overcome it. Because once you admit it, then you can start to work through it. And that's the important thing is to realize that humans are inherently lazy more than anything else. If you were to just go back in 100,000 years ago, 200,000 years ago and see our ancestors, I don't think that they were just working all day long. If I were to make a guess,

Starting point is 00:02:12 if they're in the middle of the desert and it's really hot outside and it's 101 degrees, they're probably under a tree in the shade hanging out because they hunt in the morning and then they hunt in the evening. And then during the day, they're just sitting around and sitting in the shade most likely. So I think being lazy is inherently inside of humans. So for you to not be lazy is kind of going against what you actually

Starting point is 00:02:35 would be doing as a typical human if you weren't born in a Western world like we are now with, you know, Instagram and Facebook and all of these things. So when you realize that we are inherently lazy and you admit, okay, I am a lazy person. I have been lazy. It is my fault. It's no one else's fault. It's no one outside of me's fault. It's nothing externally. It's 100% me. You stop blaming anybody else or anything else and you take full 100% responsibility, then you can start actually taking steps to overcome that laziness that you have. So that's the first tip. Make sure that you admit it to yourself. Stop lying to yourself. Be 100% transparent. The second tip that I'm going to

Starting point is 00:03:15 give you is to take your goals and make sure that all of your goals are bite-sized. And I don't mean take your goals and make them smaller. What I mean is take your goals and take the timeframe. So if you have, for instance, let's say you want to make a hundred thousand dollars this year, and that's the goal for the year. If you look at that and you've never made a hundred thousand dollars, there's a part of you that that scares. There's a part of you that that's outside of your comfort zone. And you're not really sure how you feel about it. Like you want to make the a hundred thousand dollars, but it's a party that's kind of, if we're being honest, you're kind of scared shitless of making that $100,000. Because what do you have to do? How hard do you have to work? How much more time do you have to

Starting point is 00:03:51 put into it? So if you're looking at the number and you're saying, okay, this is a long-term goal over the next year, that's 365 days, right? That's a decent amount of time from right now. So when you look at it that way and you say, okay, I need to take these and make these more bite size. What does that mean? I need to take that $100,000 goal and I need to figure out how to take that $100,000 goal and make it smaller, make it so it's more bite size. So let me give you an example. Let's say that you're a sales rep and your goal is to make $100,000 this year. Okay. Well, now that we have the goal of $100,000, we've got that figured out. If you break down your numbers, which every sales rep should know their numbers, how many, you know, sales they get, depending on how many appointments that they have, how many phone calls

Starting point is 00:04:33 they need to make in order to get an amount of a certain amount of appointments. And you look through and you say, okay, if I'm looking at my long-term goal of how much money I want to make this year, a hundred thousand dollars. And I say, okay, over the next year, that means weekly, I need to make sure that I'm doing a hundred calls per week. If I just do a hundred calls per week, statistically, I should make a hundred thousand dollars this year. Automatically, doesn't that already feel better? Because I'm not focusing on the entire year. All I'm doing is I'm focusing on this week. So I know what needs to be done. Okay. Let's take it another step further. If I look at that and I say, okay, if I work for five days and it's a hundred calls a day, a hundred calls a week,

Starting point is 00:05:14 that's 20 calls a day. I mean, I can focus on a hundred, a hundred, a hundred calls a week, 20 calls a day. And if I just do my 20 calls a day and I only focus on just that one goal, statistically, I'll make a hundred thousand dollars. Isn't that a lot easier? Cause then you're taking something that's really far away and really big and making it really close and really small. 20 calls a day. I can do that. If I'm working for the next eight hours, what is that? Like two and a half calls an hour. I can do two and a half calls in an hour. That's super easy. So take whatever goals that you're going for and make them more bite size. And the thing about it is because of the fact that they're bite size, you're more likely to hit little tiny goals throughout the day, which motivates you to then work harder, right? So if

Starting point is 00:05:59 you're lazy, the reason why this is important is because if I go, Oh, I'm gonna make a hundred thousand dollars this year, that's really far away. But if I go, I only need to make two and a half calls this hour, then what happens? I make two and a half calls this hour, you know, three calls this hour. And I go, holy crap, I'm ahead. And it actually makes me feel better because I have little teeny tiny checkpoints that I'm hitting. And each time I hit a checkpoint, what happens? I gain confidence. And when I gain confidence and I feel like I'm moving and progressing towards the goal that I'm hitting. And each time I hit a checkpoint, what happens? I gain confidence. And when I gain confidence and I feel like I'm moving and progressing towards the goal that I want to go for and the life that I want to create, it actually gives me more drive and more motivation towards

Starting point is 00:06:34 that goal, which is more than likely going to make me less lazy. So take all of your goals, all of your big goals, and just make them smaller. Figure out a way to chunk them down a little bit. It's the easiest way to do it. If you sit down to eat a meal, you don't eat the entire meal. You eat the meal one bite at a time. So stop worrying about the entire meal and just worry about each and every bite, each and every day that you have. So that's number two, is to take your goals and make them smaller

Starting point is 00:06:59 because then you're going to hit more checkpoints, which is going to then make you excited to keep working harder towards your goal. Step number three is to figure working harder towards your goal. Step number three is to figure out what your why is. If you're too lazy, the reason why is because you just really don't care enough about your goals. But if you can figure out exactly what you want and why you want it, it makes it much easier to go for it. So let me give you a very drastic example, but it's my favorite example because it shows everybody they can do whatever they want.

Starting point is 00:07:26 So one of my favorite things to do when I'm giving a speech and I start to talk about this is I'll go into a group of people and I say, hey, everybody here, what is the actual percentage chance that you're going to make a million dollars in the next 12 months legally? What's the chance that you make a million dollars in the next 12 months legally? Who has over a 5% chance? And I raised my hand and nobody ever raises their hand. Who has a 1% chance of making a million dollars legally in the next 12 months? And like a couple people raise their hand. And then I say, who thinks that there's a 0% chance of you making a million dollars over the next 12 months legally? And everybody raised their hand. They think there's almost

Starting point is 00:08:06 everybody thinks there's a 0% chance. And I, okay, I'm going to take that exact same goal and I'm going to shift it around a little bit and see if we can shift the way that you believe in yourself. Okay. So I'm going to say, what's the percentage chance of you making a million dollars this year legally? And if you don't, everybody that you love is killed. And I raised my hand and say, who's, who think what's the percentage chance? A hundred percent, a hundred percent, a hundred percent, a thousand percent, 10,000%. Everybody goes from zero percent chance to a hundred percent chance. Now, why is that? The goal didn't change. The timeframe didn't change. What changed

Starting point is 00:08:45 is they actually give a damn about the goal. That's what changed. Is there something interfering with your happiness or is there something preventing you from achieving your goals? Maybe it's anxiety or stress or worry with how much is going on right now. Well, BetterHelp will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed therapist. It's not a crisis line. It's not self-help. It's professional counseling done securely online. And there's a broad range of expertise available depending on what you need,

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Starting point is 00:09:51 million people who have taken charge of their mental health. And the best part is Mindset Mentor listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash dial. There's a why behind the goal. If everybody that you love gets killed, there's no such thing as laziness, right? You'll wake up early. You won't make excuses. You'll get everything that you need to get done and you won't, you probably wouldn't even look at Instagram or Facebook throughout the entire year. There would be no way that you're lazy over the next year. If everyone that you love's life depends on it for you to make a million dollars legally, you would figure out a way.

Starting point is 00:10:29 So what does that show you? You're not just lazy. You're lazy because you don't love what you're doing. You're lazy because you're not fully tied into exactly what it is that you're trying to create. It's not that it's not possible. It's a hundred percent possible. It's a hundred percent possible for everybody listening to me right now, somehow to figure out a way to make a million dollars in the next year. But the problem is it's not that you don't have enough time. It's that you just don't care enough. And that's the main issue. So how do you make yourself care more? You've got to have a really, really, really strong why. So if you figure out what your goals are and you figure out what your why is, laziness doesn't exist anymore. You'll get up and work when your why is strong enough

Starting point is 00:11:09 to figure out why it is that you're working towards what you're working. So that's the third thing is to find your why behind all of your goals. That'll get you past your laziness. Number four is to remove the distractions. Here's the thing that I know. When you're being lazy, I guarantee you're not just sitting on your couch and just staring up at your ceiling the entire time, right? What are you doing? You're keeping yourself busy in some sort of way. If I were to guess, 99% of the people listening to this, when you're being lazy, you're probably either watching something on TV or you're on your phone. I don't think there's anything else that people are really doing besides that. You're not just staring up at the clouds and watching the

Starting point is 00:11:48 clouds pass by and that's your quote unquote laziness. What's happening is you're figuring out another way to distract yourself so that you don't do the thing that actually needs to be done. So if you can remove that distraction, then you're more likely to just go ahead and go, all right, well, shit, I got nothing else to do. I might as well go ahead and do it. So what's a big way to do this? Take your phone and put it in the other room. If you got something important to do, if you have something that needs to get done, take your phone and put it in the other room. Turn off all of your notifications on your phone. For some of you guys, that scares you. Turn off all of your notifications. Take your freaking Apple Watch off. That's the biggest. I have an Apple Watch

Starting point is 00:12:27 and the only time I ever wear it is when I work out because I just don't even want to have all of those distractions. So turn your Apple Watch distractions off. Turn your phone distractions off. The only way, like for me, I'll be completely honest with you, the only way that you can get a hold of me on my phone is if you call me. If you send me a text message, my phone doesn't light up. Nothing lights up. The only time it lights up is when I get a phone call. Not when I get an email, not when I get a Facebook message, not when I get an Instagram message, not when I get somebody that likes one of my photos, nothing, no way would I ever have notifications get in the way of what I'm truly trying to do. So turn off all of your notifications on your phone. Next, turn off all of your notifications on your computer.

Starting point is 00:13:10 Your computer should have all of your notifications off as well. I don't want to know every time someone sends me an email. I check my email once every two to three days. I don't want to know. There's no way because that's going to pull me from everything that I'm trying to do. You know what I mean? So I don't want to focus on that. There's no way that I want to focus on those things. So I'm going to remove as many distractions as I possibly can. How do I remove as many distractions I possibly can? Turn off my freaking notifications. Put my phone in the other room. Let everyone know that you're about to go do something. So like, for instance, when I'm planning my episodes, I planned this episode earlier today. I tell my girlfriend, hey, I'm going to go plan some episodes. I planned three episodes in a row. What do I do? I take my phone. I put in the other

Starting point is 00:13:48 room. I get onto my computer that has no distractions on it. I put my headphones in. I tell my girlfriend, hey, I'm going to go and start planning some episodes. She knows to leave me alone for the next two hours because that's what's going to get me focused. Because if I break my focus, it makes it easier for me to go back to doing nothing. So I'm trying to get myself into the zone so I can literally go, okay, I'm in the zone. Now I'm going to stop being lazy. Now I'm going to do exactly what needs to be done. So just stop freaking turn, turn your Netflix off, delete your Netflix account, delete your Facebook account, delete your Instagram, delete all of those things and see if you're still lazy. Cause you're not going to have shit to do. It's the truth, right? Like if you get rid of Instagram,

Starting point is 00:14:27 Facebook, whatever else there is, Twitter, and you know, Snapchat, some people I think still use Snapchat and you know, TikTok. And now there's this new thing called clubhouse. You delete all of those and you delete your Netflix and your Hulu and all of those things. If you're being lazy, the only thing you're doing is you're sitting outside watching the grass grow. So if you're being lazy, you're probably distracting yourself in another way. So what are those distractions? Write them down with a pen and paper and get rid of those freaking distractions. So that's number five or number four. And then number five, the last one is my favorite thing is just the Pomodoro technique. The Pomodoro technique says, I'm going to work for 25 minutes and I'm going to take five minutes off. You can do anything for 25 minutes, right? Anything. You can figure out a way

Starting point is 00:15:10 to just work for 25 minutes. So you say, all right, screw it. I'm being lazy. I can notice that I'm being lazy. I'm admitting to myself that I'm being lazy. I need to get this thing done. All right, so what am I going to do? I'm going to get my computer and what am I going to do? Next to my computer, I'm going to have a pen and paper and I'm going to write down whatever it is that pops up into my head because I've got one task, only one task I can do for the next 25 minutes. I'm going to put my headphones in. I'm going to listen to, you know, I always listen to music on YouTube. I look up a focus binarial beat song. It's like three hours long and I just put it on. So therefore there's no music, there's music. There's no sounds that could come into my ears except for just this music. I'm

Starting point is 00:15:49 in control of the sounds that are coming in. And then there's no words inside of the song as well. If there's no words inside the song, there's nothing to distract me. And I can start thinking about the lyrics like I do. So I don't have that to distract me. And I go, okay, the only thing that I can do for the next 25 minutes is this one task. And if you give your brain no other options, you'll realize that your brain can get hyper focused. And if you are sitting there and a great idea comes into your head, instead of going and putting that somewhere, all you have to do is take your pen and paper and write that

Starting point is 00:16:19 on the journal that's next to you. And you focus on just one thing for 25 minutes. You'll be surprised how much you can get done being hyper-focused with no distractions, with no notifications coming in, with no external sounds, how much you can get done in literally just 25 minutes. It's kind of crazy. You're way more efficient than you actually realize. When you're done with those 25 minutes, you take a five-minute break. That's it. Super simple. Take a five-minute break and you could go on Instagram. You can go to the bathroom. You can

Starting point is 00:16:51 go stare at clouds passing in the sky. Do whatever you want for those five minutes. You're completely done working for those five minutes. And then what do you do? You go back in and you do another 25 minutes and you only have one task to work for. It's really not that hard. Being lazy is a really easy thing to pull yourself out of. You just have to be aware, you have to admit it, and you have to make a plan, and you have to have a really strong why. So all you have to do is this. Number one, you've got to admit to yourself. Number two, you've got to take your goals that might seem really big, it might kind of scare you a little bit, and just make them bite-sized. Number three, you've got to figure out why you're doing what you're doing. And if your why

Starting point is 00:17:28 is strong enough, you're going to figure out a way to get it done. Number four, you're going to remove all of the distractions, all of the notifications, all the things that get in your way. Number five, you do the Pomodoro technique where you work for 25 minutes and you take five minutes off. And if you do that, it will pull you out of your laziness so that you can start to get shit done. Because I'm telling you this, if you don't do anything and you're too lazy, your life is not going to be what you want it to be. So in order to build the life that you want,

Starting point is 00:17:54 follow these steps, pull your ass out of laziness and get to work. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram and Facebook stories and tag me in at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. The only way that we grow is from you guys going out there and sharing it. So I greatly appreciate it. If you've gotten any value from anything I've ever said, please go ahead and start sharing this so more people can find it. And I'm going to leave

Starting point is 00:18:18 you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.

The Mindset Mentor - How to Stop Being Lazy

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