by Daniel A. Omolola
Last week, I wrote that laziness can cause a person’s life to degenerate. Laziness will cause you to self-sabotage. You cannot afford laziness and complacency to rob you of your place in life. You cannot allow today to waste away just like that. In today’s article, I want to deal with how you can deal with laziness and start to lead the meaningful life you are capable of.
“When you’re feeling lazy, come and learn a lesson from this tale of the tiny ant. Yes, all you lazybones, come learn from the example of the ant and enter into wisdom. The ants have no chief, no boss, no manager—no one has to tell them what to do. You’ll see them working and toiling all summer long, stockpiling their food in preparation for winter. So wake up, sleepyhead. How long will you lie there? When will you wake up and get out of bed? If you keep nodding off and thinking, “I’ll do it later,” or say to yourself, “I’ll just sit back awhile and take it easy,” just watch how the future unfolds! By making excuses you’ll learn what it means to go without. Poverty will pounce on you like a bandit and move in as your roommate for life”
(Pro 6: 6-11, TPT)1
Before we look at how to fight laziness, let’s look at how laziness can negatively impact and paralyze a person’s life…
- It makes you subservient: “If you want to reign in life, don’t sit on your hands. Instead, work hard at doing what’s right, for the slacker will end up working to make someone else succeed” (Pro 12: 24, TPT)
- It leads to waste: “A passive person won’t even complete a project, but a passionate person makes good use of his time, wealth, and energy” (Pro 12: 27, TPT)
- It turns you to a passive person: “Taking the easy way out is the habit of a lazy man, and it will be his downfall. All day long he thinks about all the things that he craves, for he hasn’t learned the secret that the generous man has learned: extravagant giving never leads to poverty” (Pro 21: 25-26, TPT).
- It makes life difficult: “A lazy fellow has trouble all through life; the good man’s path is easy!” (Pro 15: 19 TPT).
- It brings lack: “Life collapses on loafers; lazybones go hungry” (Pro 19: 15, the Message)2
- It fills you up with excuses: “The lazy man won’t go out and work. “There might be a lion outside!” he says” (Pro 26: 13, TLB)3
- It makes unwanted things fester in your life: “One day I passed by the field of a lazy man, and I noticed the vineyards of a slacker. I observed nothing but thorns, weeds, and broken-down walls. So I considered their lack of wisdom and I pondered the lessons I could learn from this: Professional work habits prevent poverty from becoming your permanent business partner. And: If you put off until tomorrow the work you could do today, tomorrow never seems to come” (Pro 13: 31-34, TPT).
Here are some things you can do to prevent your life from falling apart. You can also learn how to turn things around if you think you have surrendered to laziness.
Take responsibility: God created you as a responsible being and it is high time you started living as one. You have God’s ability in you to timely, effectively, diligently, and accurately respond well to different situations around you. One thing you can learn from the ant is that they know by instinct that they are responsible for their lives. They are responsible for what they do with their time. They are responsible to protect their environment. They attack anything that wants to invade their territory and stop them from accomplishing their dream of storing food. They are responsible for how they dissipate their energy. If you don’t take responsibility, you will end up making excuses and blaming others in the process. Ants do not wait for someone else to tell them what to do. In fact, the Bible says they don’t have any leader or guide to direct them. They are built to work. I want you to also know that you too were built with the ability to take responsibility when God said: “and let them have dominion” (Gen 1: 26) Actually, one translation says: “let them be responsible for…” Unfortunately, some people are still waiting for someone else to tell them what to do, what to think, where to go, how to act. No! if you take a clue from the ants you will stop waiting, you will start taking the right steps towards where you want to go. Just to let you know everyone is busy with their own life and if you wait for them, you may wait forever because they will not include you in their plans. If you don’t learn to take responsibility, you will end up becoming a burden to yourself and to everyone around you.
One thing you can learn from the ant is that they know that they are responsible for their lives.
Make hay while the sun ☀ shines: One of the things that I have seen under heaven is that many people have this erroneous belief that time will stop going and ticking until they are ready. They believe that time will always be there. I am afraid, you don’t have all the time. You only have enough time to do what you are meant to do and when your time is up, your life is up. As I wrote last week, life is time-sensitive. So you have to do what you have to when you have to do it. You will have to put in the work, dispense energy or keep sleepless nights to get things done. Do your part at the right time because that is all you can do. The ants provide their food during summer because they know that there is time for everything. The ants know what to do and they would not allow anything to stop them in the process. Jesus told His disciples in John 9: 5 “We need to be energetically at work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines. When night falls, the workday is over” (the Message).
Set your priority early: The ants know that their priority is to gather food early for reserve and they do exactly that. What is your priority? What is the most significant thing you must do at this season of your life? Where is your focus? Where are you directing your energy? Please remember that energy flows in the direction of our focus. Living a life of priority means that some things are not going to fit into your plans. It is not that they are bad in themselves it is just that they do not meet the standard of significance you want to pursue and they do not fit into your life at this particular time. Setting your priority early helps you to determine what will make the cut and what will not. The ants know that “things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least” according to German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Your priority gets your whole attention and prevents you from slacking. Your priority sets the tone for your steps. Your priority should determine what you do with your time. Author Dan Millman reflected: “I learned that we can do anything, but we can’t do everything, at least not at the same time. So think of your priorities, not in terms of what activities you do, but when you do them. Timing is everything.”
Anticipation: The ants recognize that there is a time where they won’t have the opportunity to gather their food. They anticipate the future. Please understand that you cannot live for today alone, there is always a tomorrow and that is why you must do what you can today to set the stage in anticipation for tomorrow. Failure to do what you must do today can kill your expectations for tomorrow. Living in anticipation for tomorrow will prevent you from worrying about it and wasting today. When you are anticipating and keep doing what you are meant to do today, you will always look with joyful expectations for tomorrow. A lazy person will not want tomorrow to arrive because they don’t know how best they can effectively maximize it. Sometimes it is important to anticipate some of the challenges you will face and come up with solutions ahead of time. Anticipation can help with effective planning. It will help you save time and prevent unnecessary headaches.
Please understand that you cannot live for today alone, there is always a tomorrow and that is why you must do what you can today to set the stage in anticipation for tomorrow.
Watch the people you hang around with: the people in your life will determine the kind of life you will live and the direction you will follow. If you mingle with those who live as if nothing is at stake and don’t take life seriously, then you will end up thinking and becoming like them. Who are your friends? Who do you admire? Who do they admire? Who do you spend the most time with? What do they spend their time on? Show me your friends and I will tell you the kind of person you are. A person who hangs around wise people will end up becoming like them. Whoever you hang around with will determine what will hang over you. The people you connect with will determine how you connect with life. Associating with the wrong people means one thing, you will end up like them. Hang around lazy people long enough and you will end up like them. Hang around complainers long enough and before you know it you will start speaking like them. The Bible advised us not to follow the path of the wicked or learn their ways. Hang around people who love to sleep and you will start feeling guilty for waking up on time. There is nothing as powerful as having the right people around you at all times. Having right relationships can help you keep your focus, challenge you to work on your potential, and encourage you to keep forging ahead when the going gets tough. Ants work together in unity, they join their forces together with others towards a common goal. You too must find people that you can work with for greater achievement.
There is nothing as powerful as having the right people around you at all times. Having right relationships will help you keep your focus, challenge you to work on your potential and encourage you to keep forging ahead when the going gets tough.
Mind your own business: One of the undoing of a lazy person is that they always use other people’s time and standards to run their life. They always compare themselves with others who are not doing their fair share in life. They also think that they are faring better than others. You must stop this attitude and start paying attention to your life. Your life is your life. God has a yardstick with which to measure your life. You must measure yourself based on what you can do but have not done yet. In other words, measure your productivity against your potential.
Don’t wait until all the lights are green: The ants start early. They start slow because they recognize their abilities and how much they ought to do. Most of us are waiting for everything to line up before we take the first step. If you are this type of person, you will wait forever. What is worth doing at all is worth starting now.
Pace yourself: You must be strategic in your approach to life. You must learn to pace yourself. You cannot do everything at once and you are not meant to in the first place. It can be draining and overwhelming. The ants pace themselves because they have strategies. They know what they are supposed to do and when. They know when to sleep, rest, and recuperate. They know when to take a short dash, they also know when it is a marathon. Life has different rhythms and paces to it and that is why you must find and follow your own pace. When composers composed their music, they usually build the pace of the music into it to bring the best to the listeners. For example, they decide how they want to music to sound. They decide if and when it is going to be adagio (play slowly) or allegro (play cheerfully, fast, and upbeat), or andante (not too fast, not too slow), or crescendo (gradually increase the volume). Likewise, when you pace yourself, you will enjoy the journey and not put or allow anyone to put unnecessary pressure on you. If you don’t learn to pace yourself, you will muddle things up and you will end up getting overwhelmed in the process.
Pacing yourself can also involve breaking big tasks into smaller ones and big goals into manageable ones. It helps to protect your time, energy, and focus. The truth is that there are times you won’t feel like doing anything but you must know how to manage those times by doing at least minimal things that will still be pointing you in the direction that you are heading. Rome was not built in a day but the people who built it put a block upon another one at a time.
Avoid distraction: It fuels procrastination. Distraction is anything that is appealing to you even though they are not necessarily supporting where you are heading. You should know that laziness is not doing anything worthwhile that will contribute to where you want to end. Distraction causes you to lose focus and waste time. Beverly R. Imes, founder of Positive Impact once asserted: “Be aware when distractions come your way. You’ll know it’s a distraction when you stop doing what you’re supposed to be doing and find yourself pondering things that have no value.”
If you don’t learn to pace yourself, you will muddle things up and you will end up getting overwhelmed in the process.
Start making today counts: A Chinese proverb states: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” In other words, there is no best time to strike the iron than when it is still hot. Today is the only time you have to make your life count. How you use today will set the stage for what will happen tomorrow. Make today the best day to invest your best, give your best, and do your best. This moment is all you have, the next one is not guaranteed. Do not be like those who “spend too much time dreaming of the future, never realizing a little of it arrives everyday” according to author John Mason. Procrastinating what you can do now until later will not only rob it of its joy it will also rob tomorrow of its effectiveness as well. So start doing what you can do today, today and when you get to tomorrow repeat the process.
Focus on your purpose: God called you to live purposefully. When you embrace your purpose it will help you generate excitement, passion, momentum, and freedom to do what you are called to do. Purpose helps to be a contributor and a value-added person. Without purpose, you won’t have anything to live for and when you are living in that state, nothing will motivate or inspire you to action. The ants’ purpose is for preservation, and they work to fulfill that. You are not an ant, you are not living for self-preservation you are meant to see to the spread of God’s kingdom and the manifestation of His will.
Do not be afraid to start small: Ants start with what they have from where they are. Baby steps when taking consistently can generate compound momentum. Ants are tiny creatures that build something bigger than their size. Although they start small, they keep on working at, improving on what they are doing, lines upon lines, a little here, a little there until they end up building something monumental. One of the reasons some people are not doing anything is because they have not yet seen the bigger picture. If you cannot see the bigger picture you will think it is an embarrassment to start small. Have you seen the size of the load ants carry per time? Very small based on their capacity. However, they keep on going, they keep on gathering, they keep on working, and eventually end up with something bigger than when they started. Even though we start small today, we must not remain small in the end. Our plan must be to grow, continue to learn, and educate ourselves regularly and work to put the new things we have learned into practice. It is not really how your start but how you end. Remember the first step has taken you beyond the starting point and if you keep moving forward you will get to the point of no return.
Work: There is nothing as powerful as working on your dreams and aspiration. The ants keep working to gather their food. They kept at it. They go back and forth nonstop. They are always effectively busy. Many of us love to talk but don’t act. The ants do less talk but more work. Everyone knows their role and they work at it. They are diligent. There is no substitute for work. Living by faith is not a substitute for work. God designed you to work and not doing so is depriving your body of the energy it needs per time. Faith and work are designed to complement each other. Those who have faith put it to work. Apostle Paul wrote that anyone who does not work should not eat. To overcome laziness and prevent your life from falling apart, you must work. Work on yourself. Work to develop your talents and skills. Work on your marriage. Work on your attitude. Work to build strong relationships. Read. Learn. Improve. Be engaged. Give yourself to something worthwhile. Release your creativity. Do your best and leave the rest.
What have you done to combat laziness? Please leave your comment below.
- The Passion Translation (TPT) The Passion Translation®. Copyright © 2017, 2018, 2020 by Passion & Fire Ministries, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
- The Message (MSG) Copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson.
- Living Bible (TLB) The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.