Overcoming Laziness And Inertia Towards Working On Your Issues

For a lot of people, it's not that they don't know what to do to do better socially, it's just that it's hard to get out of their comfortable rut and start making improvements. Here's my take on how to get yourself going.

Usually the hardest part is getting started

Acquiring a new routine and pulling yourself out a well-worn groove is often the most difficult aspect of changing. It's so easy to put off. Once you take that first step, it's often rewarding and natural to keep going (e.g., once you've got some people to hang around with it becomes much easier to spend more time being social). Like with taking up a new exercise program, the first few weeks are often the roughest as well. Starting something new can be draining and discouraging at first, but once you get over that initial hump it's not as hard to continue.

Think about what you actually want

Sometimes students find themselves procrastinating a lot at university because deep down they're not really that into their program. Maybe they just felt they had to pick something because it seemed so important to go to college. Maybe their parents pressured them into it. Maybe that's what they thought they wanted to do, but changed their minds once they saw what it was like firsthand. They haven't admitted it to themselves yet.

Someone may drag their feet with their social goals because they're not that enthusiastic about them. They could be reacting more to the expectations of other people rather than what they really want for themselves at the moment. It can help to take the time to think about this. What are your goals? Why do you have them? What about them motivates you?

As this article goes into, it may also be useful to consider if you're fully ready to begin working on your issues, or if there are factors that are making you ambivalent about it.

Accept that you're going to be lazy some of the time

Anything that is both a) uncomfortable, and b) optional is inevitably going to lead to bouts of procrastination. Improving your social situation often falls into this category. It can suck to go to a party where you don't know many people, or try to make friends, or invite someone out. But there's no law that says you have to do it. On the other hand, you pretty much know you're going to have fun if you watch a new movie or rent a video game.

So just realize up front that you're going to slack off some of the time, and that this will make the process of improving yourself take longer than it has to. Accept that some of your natural tendencies will slow you down. If you read enough self-help material, you'll come across the same archetype over and over again: It's the person who was in a low, low place in their life, and through years of consistent, determined effort they turned themselves into a huge success.

It's awesome if you can be one of those people, but most of us aren't cyborgs with a bottomless reservoir of willpower and discipline. We're going to get there eventually, but we'll occasionally plod along, detour off the path, or take a break. Sometimes you'll throw a week away reading a new book. That's fine and isn't going to make or break how your life turns out. Sometimes you'll be happy with life the way it is, your problems won't be weighing on your mind too heavily, and you won't feel any need to get to work on yourself at that moment.

Don't feel the process of getting better with people is always going to a painful grind

Going back to that archetype of the self-improving cyborg, an implicit message I read into a lot of self-help material is that changing yourself has to be a painful, drawn out process that requires a ton of willpower and a high tolerance for hardship. While there are most certainly times where you'll have to deal with anxiety, discomfort, and rejection it's not always going to be one torturous experience after another. A night of practicing your social skills may involve going out to dinner with some new people, hitting it off, and having an awesome night.

One idea this site talks about is that you can sometimes do a lot to get better with people through slow, easy, indirect methods. If you can't talk to other people, you don't necessarily have to put hours into having discouraging, unsuccessful practice conversations with them. You may just need to read more so you'll have more topics to bring up. If you have trouble having fun with people maybe you just need to learn to get into a more joking frame of mind, or get the hang of dancing so you can take part when your friends dance at a bar, rather than watching from the sidelines and feeling like you want to go home.

Break your goals down into manageable chunks

A classic piece of advice for getting past procrastination is to break your task down. If someone has to write a 20 page assignment, that can seem very overwhelming and huge. They can't imagine where to begin, so they just don't bother starting. If they divide that paper up into smaller pieces, it probably won't seem as bad. Like all they may have to do that day is go to the library and take out some books.

It's the same with social goals. 'Having a bunch of awesome friends' or 'Completely getting over my shyness' are huge, amorphous objectives. It would be way better to take that apart into more manageable sections. For example if someone wanted to make a group of friends and currently didn't have any they could come up with tasks such as:

Don't look too many steps ahead

When people have a big, ambitious goal it's only natural for them to look to the finish line. There are times when doing this can make the task of getting there seem too overwhelming or discouraging. It can help to only focus on sub-goals that are a few steps ahead, before worrying about the tougher challenges.

For example, if someone wants to make a ton of friends but currently has no one to hang out with, their goal may seem too complicated and out of reach. They may not be able to imagine themselves as the kind of person with an bustling social life. However, to make a ton of friends, first you only have to make one friend. Then you have to do it again and again. Making one single friend is something anyone can do.

You could take this 'The longest journey begins with a single step' approach even further. Maybe even making one friend could seem like a lot... Well, to make one friend you have to start by talking to one person. They may not become your buddy, but maybe the next one will. Chatting to that first person may not seem hard at all.

Tell yourself you can stop at any time

This is another fairly well known piece of advice for getting started on things. It's a way to trick yourself into beginning, and it works even when you know you're trying to fool yourself. Again, a task may seem overwhelming if it's framed as this huge, lengthy undertaking. If you tell yourself you don't have to commit to it for life and can back out any time (which is technically true) then starting it doesn't seem as intimidating. Of course, what usually happens is that once you start you'll naturally want to keep going.

This idea can apply towards the whole idea of improving your social situation. Tell yourself you'll commit to trying to get better with people for one month. If you don't like how things are going you can always back out and take it up again another time. The trick works with smaller things too. You can make a deal with yourself that you'll at least show up to a party and stay for half an hour. If you're not liking it after that you have permission to leave at any time.

Ease into uncomfortable tasks gradually

When facing your fears it's much, much more effective to tackle them at a slow, manageable pace. Often when we're reluctant to get started on something it's because an element of fear is involved. We may not even be consciously aware of it either. This article talks about how to face your fears in this way:

How To Face Your Social Fears (Gradually)

Alter your environment so it pushes you in a certain direction

This suggestion is a little more extreme, and not everyone will be into it. It's also derived from anti-procrastination advice. It's a lot harder to get started on something when you've got a lot of other fun things surrounding you. That's why students often go to the library when they want to study, rather than staying in their distracting rooms.

If you find you often choose to do things like read or play video games or mess around on the computer when you really feel like you should be socializing, it may help to eliminate some of these distractions. Yeah, you're hardly going to throw your PlayStation out the window, but you can make little rules for yourself like, "During my lunch break at work I can't go on the internet" (i.e., I have to chat to my co-worker instead), or "On Tuesday evening I can't read, play games, or use the computer" (i.e., "Maybe that'll be the kick I need to check out that swing dancing night I keep putting off").

However, you can use your natural interests in another way to motivate you. Make doing them contingent on meeting your social goals first. So tell yourself you can check your favorite websites, but only after you've hung out with your co-workers over the break. This is even another dose of procrastination advice. When people tell themselves, "First I'll watch an episode of the new TV series I'm going though, then I'll get started on my paper", they're getting it backwards and essentially giving themselves a reward pellet for not working. They need to put the reward after the task they want to do, not before.

If you've already read the article on facing fears gradually, you'll notice using the 'I can do something fun, but first I have to do this' reward system is also a good way to motivate yourself to confront the things that scare you.