How to get a lazy person to do something

Sep 22nd, 2008 Posted in Connecting with others | 2 comments »
tug-of-war by nothing

tug-of-war by nothing

Quick apology

First off I apologise. I’m so late getting this out. Consider this my way of learning as I try and help us all learn about the lazy people in our lives. Anyway, on with the show…

Lazy people are different

Lazy people don’t do something unless they want to, and whilst they will get on with something they think is important it can be near impossible to get them to do something which they aren’t fussed about.This post is designed to help you see how you can manipulate persuade a lazy person to do something they don’t want to.

Lazy people are the same

Things to remember:

  • Lazy people will do something if they want to
  • People want to do something if they think it’s worth it
  • People will do some crazy shit if they think they’ll get something decent out of it
  • In business terms, people often ask about cost/benefit. This works here too!
  • Yes, this is true of everyone – it’s just about persuasion and seeing things from the other person’s point of view for a change
  • No, it doesn’t have to be sales-y and yuck.
  • There’s a fine line between expressing how you feel about something and emotional blackmail – be very careful not to create resentment

Ok, I think that’s enough things for now. Let’s give an example.

Persuading a lazy person – an example

So this series is basically all about me and my partner. And just to be clear – I’m the lazy one! We tend to see things from opposite sides which has been madly frustrating at times, but many years down the line we’ve learnt to learn from each other and now it’s beautifully helpful (and madly frustrating – heck that’s never going to change!)I don’t want to wash the dishes, put out the bins, clean the bathroom, …. These are what I call hygiene tasks because they’re all about keeping the status quo – and I have a whole thing about hating status quo anyway (not the band, I don’t listen to them, but I don’t hate them). But to my mind they serve no real purpose, they don’t get you anywhere. Of course, I prefer a clean house to a dirty one, but if someone else is willing to clean it first because I have a higher tolerance for skuzz in the bathroom then all the better for me, right?

This does not make for a happy home however. So after many long conversations about why we do things the way we do and with lots of compassion and tolerance (read British restraint preventing blood-letting and carnage) we get to the point where I sit there waiting to be convinced (which to someone who feels that people should do these jobs through obligation or necessity is hugely annoying, but hey so’s being expected to do something out of obligation when you think like me – such is the colourful tapestry of life). This is the point which can go one of two ways:

  1. He gives up and goes and does some chores with an air of passive aggression – which I find totally cute
  2. He explains exactly what the costs and benefits are and reasons with me

Not exactly rocket science. It’s win-win for me (but don’t think I get it all my own way, there’s a whole series I could write about trying to convince someone they need to put stuff back where they got it from) because I either get to not do the chore, or I get to learn about why it’s useful. I like learning.

Persuasion is about defeating objections which come from assumptions

Yes, it’s an effort to have to explain all this. Yes, it seems horribly unfair. But you know what, it works both ways and almost every single time the problem has been assumed knowledge. It’s crazy what we assume other people know, just because we know it. I didn’t know that wiping a shower down after you use it helps to prevent mould (it’s just not the kind of thing that I think about). I didn’t know that dust can be such a pervasive little beastie (I’m not that sensitive to it). I didn’t know that stubble rash is such a pain in the ass (until I got me some – now there’s a lesson to teach your boyfriends).We’ve both learnt different things from our parents (not just the bad habits, useful stuff too). And we both, time after time, forget that the other one might not know it! Meh, we’re both fallible – that much we do remember.

How to get a lazy person to do something – the bit where I get to the point

So, to get back to the main point, if you want to get a lazy person to do something then sit down and explain:

  • Exactly what is involved, step by step – be very specific. Assume they are intelligent but uninformed.
  • Exactly what the positive outcomes will be and how great they will be for you as well as them (gratitude is a big softener of hearts).  Again, be detailed but remember that you’re going for zero assumptions, not zero intelligence.  Don’t patronise, it’s the quickest way to end friendly conversation.

So there you go. Simple, but not so easy. Such are all the great lessons of life.

Had a thought whilst reading? Please share it below in the comments.

Want to hear more – you can subscribe to my feed.

Tags: , ,

Hello fellow Naomi & Havi fans!

Sep 18th, 2008 Posted in Connecting with others | no comment »

Since I got a chance to pick the brains of Naomi and Havi on week 2 of self promotion for wimps, and got a little link on the round-up post, I thought I’d best lay out the welcome mat in case anyone was wondering what a Dancing Geek is!

So this is a big hello and welcome to all my friends from the course. This is my current blog, but as I mentioned I’m planning to up the stakes in the very near future so I’d love any thoughts or comments you guys have.

See you in Collective Biggification!

James

P.S. If you aren’t on the course then just go and check out the blogs of Naomi and Havi – the two VERY cool people running the teleseminar.

Lazy people are productive

Sep 11th, 2008 Posted in Learning about the world | 2 comments »
Magic is true! by photographer padawan

Magic is true! by photographer padawan

A brief explanation

Ok, so this is the second post in my Lazy People series and I’ve a title which is a contradiction in terms, so now I have to try and make this make sense. You ready for a little linguistic magic?

Last week I established that being lazy isn’t necessarily a bad thing and that it depends how you go about it. This time I want to talk about how being lazy does not prevent you from getting stuff done. So, linguistic trick number 1 goes like this:

“Lazy people are productive” becomes “Lazy people are productive (sometimes)”

See how the way you say a sentence can totally change it’s meaning? And hey presto, we can move on to the interesting part.

Being lazy as a default starting position

Being lazy is my natural state, which means that when given a choice between action and non-action, all things being equal, I will choose non-action. So yes, I’m disinclined to exertion. However, I will take action if all things are not equal. And in life, things are rarely ever equal.

All that a default position of non-action does is require that any proposed action be justifiable. This seems like a fairly sensible way to make sure that you don’t run around doing stuff that is a waste of time. So if lazy people only take action on the critical tasks, they must be super productive!

If only life were that simple, right?

Of course, I’m over simplifying to make a point. It’s possible to carried away at a task or set of tasks and keep going long after it stopped being justifiable, and it’s quite common for our ‘justification’ to either perform certain tasks or not to be biased at best.

In order to prevent such heinous corruption of the beautiful, pure essence of laziness I have a nice, neat, simple and very difficult solution: stay aware. Be conscious of your motivations and your reasoning. A lot easier said than done, I admit, but I would happily argue that this is true whether your default position be action, or inaction.

Tower Complete by teotwawki

Tower Complete by teotwawki

But any action is better than none, no?

It’s true that common advice would say that doing something is better than doing nothing. In fact, I think I wrote exactly that in an earlier post. So I guess I need to explain a little more.

Whilst it is true that to get yourself moving, to get out of a rut and to start seeing some kind of results you have to take action, there are times when purposeful non-action is the best thing to do. To wait, see what happens, see what turns up for you and how you are feeling about a situation and then, once you have a direction to head in, take action.

You could spend forever waiting but that’s where the staying aware part comes in. If you remain aware of the situation then you will be able to decide when action is right for you and be ready to take it then, not waste time, energy and money rushing around getting nowhere but neither waste away watching life from the sidelines.

It’s a tricky balance – as I think most things in life are – but the more practice you get at balancing, the better you become and the easier and more automatic it will become. It works for training your body to do pirouettes and it works for training your mind to find the point between the two extremes where you can stay in a state of flow.

Next week I’m going to let you know how to use the above information to get a lazy person to do something. Then after than how lazy people can apply this themselves to learn skills like self-discipline (and even why the hell they’d want to!)

If you want to catch these you can subscribe to my feed.

Tags: ,

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »