You're Not Lazy, You're Amotivated

Quite a few clients and individuals in intro sessions confess to me that they feel they are lazy.

From my perspective, these individuals would not be considered lazy by the average person.

Yet, working in the productivity-obsessed, competitive world of technology, they have learned to hold themselves to a high standard.

I think labeling oneself as lazy is a mistake.

Because if we term this lack of motivation as laziness, then we miss the root cause and therefore the ability to correct it.

It's like saying you think you have tennis elbow when, in fact, you have a broken arm. All of the tennis elbow exercises in the world will not help you.

In order to understand this sensation of laziness, we need to understand the science of motivation.

In motivation, we have a term called "amotivation," which means essentially the lack of motivation.

Because of the lack of basic psychological education in schools, most people don't understand how their own human motivation works.

It seems to me that more often than not, people expect themselves to work like computers; they input a command and expect themselves to execute it.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, humans do not work that way.

In order to avoid amotivation (the lack of motivation, also known as "laziness"), humans need to meet three conditions.

If these three conditions are not met, amotivation is likely to occur.

Think of it like baking bread, if you do not have water, flour, and yeast, you will not create bread.

So when people are "lazy" or more accurately amotivated, all of the three conditions for motivation to exist are missing.

These conditions, or psychological needs, are autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy means feeling in control of one's own life and decisions, competence involves feeling capable and effective in one's pursuits, and relatedness refers to feeling connected to others.

Below is a diagram of these conditions not being met and therefore resulting in amotivation (Reeve, 2018).

Although we can agree that most organizations are not optimal at meeting these psychological needs, it is also our job to be aware of our own motivational psychology and seek out ways to meet these needs on our own.

Many people are simply unaware that they have psychological needs that if not met result in amotivation.

To meet a need for competence, you can change to a team more aligned with your desired difficulty level. A project that is too difficult for you or too easy typically results in a lack of competence.

Feedback is also crucial for competence so if you are in an environment in which you have little feedback you need to seek out a mentor, colleague, or coach who can help you see your growth areas and highlight your progress.

The above can also be useful in developing relatedness, if we do not have a connection with the people we work with, we tend to not care about our work.

This is just how the human mind works. The sooner we can accept this the better.

So if you are feeling a lack of relatedness from the constant online meetings, a day in the office or traveling to visit a team you work with might give you a relatedness boost.

These may not feel like the most productive ways to spend your time, but that is the cultural obsession with productivity talking. Remember most people don't know what they are talking about when they talk about productivity.

You will be much more productive if you actually care for and like the people you work with, and they care for and like you.

Lastly, is the lack of autonomy. This one can be the trickiest to solve in a large organization as individual freedoms are often sacrificed for efficiency.

This is when it can be helpful to create boundaries for yourself around work. Most of you have the freedom to spend 30 mins doing something you like in the middle of the day.

Go do it, don't feel guilty. We need your mind to feel like you have freedom and agency over your life.

Because if it doesn't, you will have amotivation and that will not be conducive to your career goals.

Work with your human mind, not against it.