Lazy Strings

By Thomas Matthew Pierson

            This morning at around 4:40 AM, give or take about 15 minutes, I could feel what I like to call the “Lazy Strings”. It’s when you have this tugging in your subconscious telling you to not work, be lazy, take the easy route.  It’s that lazy, procrastinating demon on your shoulder gently saying “Go ahead, go back to sleep. The bed is nice.  The sheets are comfy. You can always do it tomorrow.  I remember this quote from one of the Rocky movies that reflects this sentiment, “There is no tomorrow”.  It is such a simple statement, but it hits right to the core.  There is no tomorrow, there is only today, and the now, so get to work.

            The lazy strings tug at me mostly in the morning, when my resolve can be weak.  At those times in the morning I just want to crawl back to bed and go back to sleep.  Heck, sometimes I even do that on occasion.  Afterwards I feel awful, like I have failed myself and I could make the argument that it may be true.  In some regard I did fail myself, I had a goal and I did not achieve it.  If I did manage to achieve my daily goal it was because I managed to pull off a time management miracle and finish my task for the day before noon.  More often though, it is almost just luck that I was able to pull it off.  The morning is where I gather momentum, if I miss that initial launch, that sweet spot between 4 AM and 6 AM. I often struggle to even get my basic tasks done for the day.

            They tug at me hard on the weekend because I worry about FOMO, the Fear of Missing Out.  Fear of missing out is an interesting concept.  I never used to think about it when I was younger.  I guess because I was never really missing out and I had a strong social life.  As time progressed and technology opened you up to what everyone else was doing, FOMO became ever more present.  You’d spend your time texting, contacting your friends to see what they are doing, trying to be social and when the day is all over with you might still not have done anything because everyone had made “plans” or were doing nothing for the evening.  So now you have lost your day just trying to do something social in the evening.

            FOMO can arise via Facebook posts, when people post events or things they had done during the weekend.  It is that fear that hinders you from getting things done, like there is an ever-present party over the horizon so you make sure your schedule is clear just in case.  In some worst cases you may have friends whom you invite to do something and will not respond to your text until the day of the event.  Only to tell you they can’t make it because they have “plans” that night.  They aren’t fooling anyone, they waited until the last minute until something came up that is more “entertaining and fun”.  I miss FOMO mostly because of the night life.  I enjoyed going out and having a few cocktails, but it wrecked the rest of the weekend because I spent it all recovering from “Partying Too Hard”.  I reminiscence often about those days, because even though they were fun, the time that I lost the next day made it almost a wash.

            Lazy strings vary from person to person.  I guess you could call it procrastination but to me it feels deeper than that.  Sometimes it is fear, fear of failing, fear of messing up, fear of not doing it correctly; these are some of the thoughts that may arise at that moment.  Often, it can just be that I am flat out lazy, I would think of things like “I don’t want to do it.” “It’s hard and difficult.”  “Doing it would require effort and effort takes effort”.  Let’s face it, people always want to do the path of least resistance, unfortunately any endeavor worth pursuing takes struggle and is met with tons of effort.  Just remember to ignore those lazy strings, the bed will be there for you later that night, but there is no tomorrow.