Why Am I So Lazy and Unmotivated? What’s Really Going On

Why Am I So Lazy and Unmotivated?

“Why am I so lazy and unmotivated? I just can’t get my crap together.”

If I had a dollar for every time I have heard that statement, or some respectable variation of it, I would not be writing this article. I would be drinking a Mai Tai in Tahiti.

But before we diagnose you with a severe case of Can’t Get My Crap Together Syndrome, I have some questions.

After years of having these conversations, I have noticed something: some of the women calling themselves lazy are among the busiest people I know.

A woman will sit across from me and explain that she lacks discipline. Then I learn what her life actually looks like. She may be working, running a household, caring for people, serving at church, helping aging parents or building a career. Usually, several are happening at once.

Her evidence of laziness? There is one more thing she believes she should be doing, and she cannot make herself do it.

Maybe she wants to get up at 5:30 and go to the gym, cook healthier meals, spend less time on her phone, go to bed earlier, or stop eating Oreos at 11:30 PM while doom-scrolling.

Before we create a color-coded schedule and purchase another planner—which, if planners produced discipline, most of us would have achieved sainthood by now—I want to know what her life looks like today.

What fills her days? What is non-negotiable? What has she taken on because she wants to, and what is there because she has always done it? Or thinks she's suppose to do it. How much sleep is she getting? When does she have time that is not productive, responsible or devoted to someone else?

Then she tells me about the life she thinks she should be living.

She wants to exercise, eat well, nurture her relationships, have a meaningful spiritual life, stay on top of work, get enough sleep and, if there are 14 1/2 minutes left, enjoy being alive.

It is a lovely plan.

Then I ask something that has nothing to do with time management: “Are you happy? When was the last time you had fun?”

By this point, I am often hearing about a life with very little room for either. Somehow, a woman is expected to behave like a competent robot—preferably one with toned arms, a clean kitchen and a gratitude journal.

Many women have spent years connecting their value to being responsible, successful, productive, or needed. Somewhere along the way, I got everything done becomes I am doing a good job, and everyone is happy with me; therefore, I am okay and have value.

That makes letting something go harder than it sounds. If I don't get it all done, am I failing? If someone is disappointed with me, have I done something wrong? Here's the reality check: if your best friend told you her worth depended on keeping everyone happy, accomplishing everything, and never needing a break, would you agree? Of course not. You'd look at her like she was bat sh*t crazy. Yet we are slower to question the same rules when we are the ones living by them. Unfortunately, those rules can create the very life we later try to escape.

One version of this conversation comes up often. A woman tells me she wants to get up early but cannot make herself do it.

Eventually I ask, "What time do you go to bed?"

“Usually around midnight.”

reality?...Sometimes it is one. Occasionally two.

At that point, 5:30 in the morning has ceased to be a motivation problem and has become a sleep problem.

So why is she staying up?

“Because that’s finally my time.”

There it is.

Late at night, she is done being productive. She can watch something ridiculous, scroll, eat something she enjoys, read or sit in silence. Those hours cost her sleep, but they are also giving her something. She does not want to give that up.

Frankly, I don’t blame her.

Now we have a much more interesting problem than bedtime.

Your Bad Habit May Have a Job

Once you see the pattern, it shows up everywhere. Maybe you want to stop eating takeout three nights a week, scroll on your phone for hours, smoke cigarettes or drink a couple of glasses of wine at night.

We know some of these behaviors are more harmful to our health than others, and some may have become addictions. Obviously, addiction is more complicated than simply needing more fun. But there is still a useful question we can ask about almost any behavior:

What is this doing for me?

In psychology, we often talk about the function of a behavior. Instead of looking only at what someone is doing, we look at what comes before it, what follows it and what may be reinforcing it. In everyday language: if you keep doing something, there is probably a reason—and it is not necessarily because you are lazy. The behavior may provide relief, comfort, pleasure, escape, connection or freedom. Yet we often identify the behavior we dislike and immediately try to remove it.

Fine. Then what? Good job, you took away your evening bowl of ice cream. But it was the one thing you looked forward to all day. If scrolling is your only mental escape, deleting Instagram does not solve whatever you are trying to escape from.

And if midnight is the only time that feels like your own, going to bed earlier may feel less like self-care and more like giving up your one little piece of nirvana.

This can feel counterintuitive because many of us were taught to push through, and “put on our big girl panties and deal with it.” But motivation is more complicated than discipline versus weakness. Research on self-determination suggests we function better when we have some sense of autonomy, competence, and connection. Behavioral activation takes a similarly practical approach by helping people add meaningful and rewarding activities back into their lives. None of this means that adding a little more fun or rest will magically erase an unhealthy habit, and it certainly does not treat addiction by itself. What it can do is make us less dependent on those habits as our only sources of relief, pleasure, or escape. The larger point is simple: if a behavior keeps showing up, we need to understand what it is doing for us before we can expect to change it.

Maybe You Need to Add Before You Subtract

Before I help someone take something out of her life, I want to know what needs to go in: fun, rest, friendship, creativity, solitude, laughter.

You know. Living.

When most of life is made up of things you have to do, the few things that feel good start carrying a lot of weight. That is when midnight scrolling, dessert, or another glass of wine can become less about lack of discipline and more about grabbing the only relief available. 

The better goal is to build enough pleasure, meaning, connection, and rest into ordinary life that we are not trying to smuggle them in at the end of the day. That does not require a dramatic reinvention of your life. It may mean protecting lunch instead of eating over your keyboard, making plans with someone who makes you laugh, sitting outside for twenty minutes without accomplishing anything, returning to a hobby you abandoned years ago, or leaving enough room in the week for something spontaneous. The point is not to schedule “fun” so efficiently that it becomes one more item to complete. It is to stop treating enjoyment as a reward you earn only after everything else is done, because everything else is never done.

Before You Ask, Why Am I So Lazy and Unmotivated? Investigate

The next time you hear yourself say, ‘I just need to get my crap together,’ do not immediately build a new schedule. Please, for the sake of all that is holy, don’t. Just don’t.

Start with the life you have. Look at what fills your days, where your energy goes, how much sleep you get and where there is room for rest, pleasure and connection. Then look at the behavior you keep promising to change.

Ask: What happens right before I do it? What am I feeling? What do I get from it? What would I lose if I stopped?

Then ask the question we tend to skip: What do I actually need?

Maybe it is sleep, help, fewer commitments, fun, time alone, movement, creativity or twenty blessed minutes when you are useful to no one.

Once you understand what the unwanted behavior has been providing, you can look for other ways to meet that need. Then you can decide what needs to change, what needs to go and what needs to be added.

You may still need discipline. But discipline works better when it helps you build a good life instead of forcing an exhausted woman to squeeze one more improvement into an already overcrowded one.

So before you call yourself lazy or unmotivated, get curious.

You may not need a better planner. You may need a better understanding of the life you are trying to plan.

If this article has you wondering whether you really need more discipline—or whether something else is getting in the way—the Before You Call Yourself Lazy Gap Analysis Workbook can help you take a closer look at the life you are actually living, the habits you are trying to change, and what those habits may be doing for you. You can download it for free here 👇

Download Workbook Here

And if you want help sorting through what you find, one of our counselors at Every Girl Living can help you look at the bigger picture, identify what is draining you, and create changes that actually fit your life.

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