8 Ways to Overcome Laziness When You’re Actually Overwhelmed
That pile of laundry, the dishes that have been sitting in your sink for days, your unorganized wardrobe, the mess in your room right now. And here we are, scrolling through Instagram or Pinterest, absolutely undisturbed.
Sound familiar? You’re not the only one.
I used to be a flight attendant, working with little to no rest. I despised myself for living in the mess. At some point, I realized it wasn’t just me. My colleagues and friends who were working were living in the same mess.
All we did was go for a flight, all dolled up, and come back to a house or warehouse filled with never-ending housework and trash that had never been taken out.
Sounds contradictory to the flight attendant life you know, right? But trust me, most of us in glamorous jobs don’t experience even half of that glamour in our personal lives. We are always busy and overwhelmed with work.
But it’s not just people in glamorous jobs. Even those who work 9–5 drown in stress and anxiety when they think about their future, and they end up with the same laziness and overwhelm.
Sometimes, what looks like laziness is simply a mind that doesn’t know where to begin.
There was a day when everything I had, and should have been grateful for, was taken away from me, and I blamed God for it. The following day, I realized I had been putting off the things I actually wanted to do because I was too overwhelmed by what I already had.
What happens when you give into your laziness
I was too lazy to do the things I really wanted. I wanted to live in a clean and beautiful space. I wanted to organize my wardrobe. I wanted to clear the pile of laundry and do the dishes, and I did all of it, but it was already too late. I had lost my job and had to leave the place sooner or later.
Life puts you in a situation where you have no choice but to do the things you always wanted to do but kept hesitating over. And I’m not only talking about the laundry, the dishes, or the wardrobe.
Deep down, I knew this job was draining me, and I wanted to leave but never had the courage to. And then one day, it happened.
Now, in this phase of life, I have finally realized how important it is to declutter, reorganize, and clean your mind, your body, and the space around you if we wish to have a better life.
I don’t want anyone else to fall prey to the mistake I made, which is why I am here to tell you that we can come out of this loop of laziness and guilt and live a life where we feel refreshed and good about ourselves.
Sometimes what you are avoiding is the feeling of being overwhelmed by the task.
From what I have discovered through my habits and rewiring of neural systems, here are the 8 ways to overcome laziness when you’re actually overwhelmed.
1. Maybe you’re not lazy — you’re overloaded
You wake up knowing you have things to do, but instead, you choose to lie in bed, scroll your phone, watch something, snack, and keep telling yourself, “I’ll start later.” Scrolling endlessly gives your brain the cheap dopamine it craves, so it convinces you to stay where you are.
Sometimes, the problem isn’t a lack of ambition. Too many things are competing for your attention, so your brain chooses avoidance.
The first step is something you’re already doing: being aware of it. See the situation you are in. I am so proud of you for taking the first step towards realizing and accepting that you have been a victim of laziness.
2. Understand what you’re actually avoiding
You can’t call yourself lazy just because you don’t feel like doing some work in this moment. There might be several reasons. You might consider a task too difficult and want to do it later. Sometimes you might not know where to begin, like when you see the pile of laundry, dishes, and trash. Your brain could be too confused to decide where to start.
An important task might bring up the feeling of “I might not be able to do this perfectly right now.” Sometimes you are mentally exhausted from trying to work out what it is that you’re avoiding.
Before calling yourself lazy, figure out what you have been resisting. Once you identify the resistance, you can actually solve it.
3. Stop looking at your entire to-do list
Not everyone has a to-do list, but it’s good to have one, as then you know what needs to be done and what doesn’t. It keeps track and gives you a direction to work towards.
Some of us have to-do lists stretching across days, weeks, and months, and we need to take a breather because the work is overwhelming.
We keep pushing things to the next day, and that day ends up overloaded, when we have little energy to do any of it.
Too much work can create overwhelm before you’ve even started. Instead of doing it all at once in one day, choose one thing.
Keep that one thing for today. Once you accomplish it, you will feel good about it and can do the next thing tomorrow.
4. Make the task ridiculously easy to start
This builds on the previous step. Whatever you decide to do from your to-do list, keep it as small as possible.
The hardest part is often the transition from doing nothing to doing something. Say you have been considering cleaning your room, but it sounds like too much work.
That’s exactly why you should start with organizing your study table instead.
Make the first step so small that it becomes hard for your brain to resist.
You don’t need to solve your entire life today. You just need to solve the task for the next 10 minutes.
5. Stop waiting for motivation
I have said it before: motivation is nothing but a trap. It’s only good for getting you started on a task you’ve been wanting to do. But once you catch momentum and things get a bit complicated, motivation becomes unreliable.
Action often comes before motivation. When you hit the gym just because you watched someone build a good physique and you feel motivated for the moment, you will most probably last a week or so. Once the motivation fades, you won’t be able to keep up.
However, if you hit the gym today because you genuinely what to get that physique and keep going consistently, even on days when you don’t feel like it, that’s when you start to feel better and want to continue.
The most effective way to tackle laziness is to build routines and cues instead of depending on your mood.
6. Remove the things that make doing nothing easier
Sometimes, your environment is working against you. Your phone is a few centimeters away from you. Your TV remote is probably under you right now, with Netflix paused. Your couch or bed is so comfortable that your brain just can’t resist it.
But trust me, this comfort is what gets you in big trouble later. I had it all: a TV, a PlayStation, my iPad, my phone, my controller. All of it within arm’s reach, and I was drowning in comfort.
I loved it so much. But if you asked me now, I would never want it all back. I’d say a hard “No,” because I know how many years of my life it took.
The best way to overcome this comfort zone is to create friction for distractions and reduce friction for productive tasks.
Stay mentally prepared to do things the harder way. Try to keep your phone as far away from you as possible. Keep your workspace ready. Block or delete all apps that distract you. I do know this feels impossible, which is why, if you can’t delete them, you should promise yourself not to use them at all and stick to it as if you are getting paid.
Prepare what you’ll need beforehand. Keep the task you’re working on visible. Make good choices easier to grab.
7. Give yourself permission to rest without guilt
It’s important to distinguish between rest and avoidance. When you are acting lazy and procrastinating, you only think about doing things, and that makes avoidance your best friend. Sometimes, you really need to rest.
But lying in bed, scrolling for three hours while feeling guilty isn’t necessarily rest. It can leave you more mentally drained. That’s what leads you to avoid the task entirely.
Rest should actually help you recover.
In this modern world, rest has come to mean scrolling through Instagram Reels and YT Shorts or binge-watching Netflix. And this, my friend, is the trap we need to free ourselves from.
What can we do to get real rest? Schedule intentional rest. Rest is not just you sleeping for 8 hours. It’s a lot more than physical rest. We tend to miss out on the mental rest that we need at every point in life.
This mental rest can come from taking a walk and observing nature, listening to music (preferably relaxing music), sitting outside, and actually watching something instead of binge-watching.
Once you feel refreshed, you can return to your responsibilities without treating rest as a moral failure.
8. Build momentum instead of trying to transform your life overnight
The harsh reality is you can’t become “that girl” or “the man” overnight, and you don’t need a dramatic “new me.” You need repeated small actions.
One completed task creates momentum. Momentum makes the next task easier. Repeated action creates consistency.
Consistency eventually changes how you see yourself. I know it’s not as easy as it sounds, which is why you can start small. If you have made it this far, I am proud of how serious you are about your self-awareness journey.
I know you can free yourself from this trap of being overwhelmed by work and driven by laziness.
Start with one good habit: the one thing you’ve been procrastinating on out of avoidance and laziness.
Take one small step towards it today and keep doing it for the next 30 days. Then you’ll see how the human brain works wonders for your mind and body.
Final thoughts
Change doesn’t come easily. Give it some time. Even after reading this, there will be times when you don’t feel like doing it anymore. But that’s exactly when you need to do the task, even for 5 minutes.
You don’t have to become a productivity machine. You just have to stop making every task feel bigger than it actually is.
Start small, remove the friction, rest when you really need to, and let momentum do the rest.
Maybe you don’t need to become less lazy. Maybe you need to make your life feel manageable enough to move through again.
If this article has helped you change your mind even for a bit, I am so glad. Thank you so much for being here. Let me know in the comments about your stories. I’d love to hear them.
And if you like what I write about (habits, personal growth, and mindset shifts) please consider subscribing to the newsletter.
Thank you.
