Mental Laziness (A Comprehensive Guide)

In this article, we look at what is Mental laziness and contributing factors. We also look at ways to overcome mental laziness.

Mental laziness – Overview

We live in a developed society where there is a consistent availability of knowledge. We can view what’s happening in distant countries quickly, and we can see instantaneously how thousands of other people think about it. This triggers the creation of mental laziness for increasing numbers of people.

We’re letting someone else instruct us on how to think, rather than deciding for ourselves. The more we do it, the worse it becomes for our reasoning skills. Like any muscle, it gradually weakens if you do not use it.

When we permit our impulses to become unconscious, mental chronic laziness occurs. This is entirely acceptable sometimes. For starters, your responses and actions become unconscious after you’ve been a certified driver for quite a while. Without contemplating much about the circumstance or the choices you make, you literally go about your trips.

In circumstances where you’ll have to respond rapidly as your mind is running on impulse, this is desirable. Mental laziness is not such a positive thing in circumstances that might involve deeper reflection or critical reasoning.

Exclusion of deep thought means mental laziness, typically because it’s just too much work. Mentally lazy individuals prefer to take it at face value what they are told and do not only implement their thoughts or arguments.

This is a significant source of false news being disseminated. Mentally lazy individuals spread the information without even a moment’s hesitation, rather than analyzing the data for themselves. Often before posting, people would go so far as to just read the news article highlights since reading the article will take too much conscious thinking.

People who are struggling with mental laziness usually make decisions based on impulses and intuitive feelings rather than taking the time to understand the reality around them. They carry on a strategy of “do it now; think about it later.”

In a variety of ways, mental laziness can emerge. Since they don’t want to consider the consequences of their acts or the motives behind the norms, some people can become risk-takers and rule-breakers.

Factors that contribute to Mental laziness

• Insufficient Goals

A key factor contributing to mental laziness is the absence of long term and short term goals for an individual. Developing a sense of purpose and something to aspire for pushes us to be more aware. In what they do, ambitious individuals are actively looking for meaning and seeking parallels between their present activities and their aspirations for the coming years. Without such purposes, when nothing has a lot of sense to it, you will experience mental laziness.

• Fear

With physical laziness, a fear of trying unsuccessfully is also induced. A simple way to disguise the discomfort triggered by a fear of not performing is to pretend that you can’t be affected. Mental laziness is equivalent.

We stop thinking about stuff if we don’t completely grasp the idea. When it is discovered that we don’t comprehend anything, we feel ashamed and worry that everyone else will conclude we’re dumb. We always hope for someone else to come up with the answer for us rather than forcing ourselves to think about something, even if it’s a tricky topic.

• Weak Wellbeing

Our brains do not work as well when we’re exhausted, and we may experience mental laziness. We are distracted and incapable of focusing. This suggests that we prefer to operate on unconscious ideas rather than insightful and logical reasoning. Many scientific findings indicate that our sleeping patterns significantly influence our capacity to reason.

Similar research shows that our eating habits do have an effect on mental laziness. Our attention is impaired by fast food, and malnutrition makes it hard to think clearly. We all know the difficulty just before recess, which is trying to focus at work or school. To comprehend the knowledge and generate profound thoughts, our bodies need strength and proper nutrition.

• Being reckless

They don’t build their capacity to think about their acts when they mature, having gotten everything handled for them. They glide through life, creating chaos and problems in their path, and they’re just mentally lazy for no evil cause.

You are unlikely ever to be pressured to worry too hard about your behavior or what’s going on around the world if you’ve not had to assume much accountability for something.

• Technology

We live in times of unimaginable information access. By tapping or talking into a little device that sits inside your purse, you could get a quick response almost to any request. Guessing such new technology could have been envisioned, our predecessors would have called it sorcery.

There’s a potential downside to immediate knowledge, however. Although it does have many advantages, it also makes us mentally lazy. It’s undermining our critical analysis capacity and stealing the abundance of our lives.

It was challenging to work before the internet to look up details. “Even basic questions such as At sea level, what is the boiling point? ” effort is needed to respond. In the encyclopedia, we had to go through and search along with the index. We have to go to the library and search through the relevant column for the textbooks if the topic is missing from the text. And you’d have no assurance, even after that, that you would discover the answers to these questions.

Today, it’s only a matter of punching a few words or asking your voice assistant on your smartphone. It seems to be incredibly nice. So much time you end up saving! But while it is valid, there are some unforeseen drawbacks to this quick access to knowledge.

To begin, continuously digging up information will decrease your capacity to recall it. You might assume that you recognize a fact, but ultimately, you know where and how to look it up.

The more questions you use the internet for answers, the more you depend (rather than your knowledge and logical thinking abilities) on it. With time, you rely on it to the extent wherein your brain retains less and less knowledge. This approach is referred to as cognitive offloading,” and it seems benign enough.

The cognitive offloading that the internet allows, though, could have some profound implications for your capacity to think and logically analyze data.

If you believe that the web has the correct response to anything, what happens when you stumble onto incorrect information?

This knowledge could cause people to make poor choices without a strong foundation of critical thinking abilities. Sure, it can seem innocent enough to use inaccurate information in a research report for school. But how about poor diet advice when you come across it? If you can’t critically examine information, then misleading or even manipulating you is simple for the others.

Over-dependence on the internet can cause you to assume that problems that do not have simple solutions can be answered.

This is easy to overlook, as a search engine’s primary function would be to provide answers as quickly and concisely as possible.

A simple response is beneficial when you’re looking up how many pints are in a gallon. “But then what about a more complicated, existential problem like, “What am I supposed to do with my existence? These searches will always return the responses, but they are mostly shallow and unsatisfactory.

It’s convenient to criticize the nature of the results returned by the search. And while that may often be the case, the larger problem is that there are no easy answers to life’s significant questions. In a simple blog article or fragment of the text, you can’t make them fit. People spend their days researching these topics, publishing whole books regarding them. And the responses remain unclear even then.

Signs of mental laziness

• Rejecting thinking

Most people find it difficult to think. And since it is perceived as daunting, many individuals do not participate in it. But the thought is a medium for individuals who are not unmotivated to build their own universe, clarify the mazes of their lives, and tackle the existential dilemmas that irritate them.

Lazy individuals fail to crack the barriers to thinking. Their minds are being taken on holiday. This is something that you are teaching yourself to do. Thinkers guide the world.

• Cowering behind deity

Mental laziness is when, at an interview, an inexperienced graduate who’s never spent the time to understand how to deliver a resume or handle himself leaping through many devotional centers assured that God would interfere.

No level of divine help will propel you towards the next stage of your life if you are mentally lazy. Yeah, faith in God is essential, but it will not compensate for perseverance and intelligent thinking. Don’t be sluggish. Think.

• Creating excuses

Instead of always finding time to contemplate a topic carefully, we concoct a justification and set the topic aside. “This is not my work,” “This is hard, I can’t do this,” are some of the statements we use to offer excuses. If you catch yourself offering such excuses for doing such tasks or not doing them, you might have those laziness tendencies.

Dealing with mental laziness

Luckily, mental laziness isn’t something you’ve got to be permanently trapped with. You can pull your brain from autopilot and become a logical thinker with a minimal concentrated effort.

• Mindfulness

The most excellent way to combat mental laziness is through therapy. It causes you, with your ideas, to be isolated. Meditation also helps us to filter through our thoughts and dump the junk for useful knowledge.

Using meditation to put forth ideas of interest to you if you are not much of a thinker. This may be potential plans, thoughts regarding current affairs, or simply appreciation to friends and family. Meditation, particularly if you find it challenging to communicate with your emotions, does not always have to be achieved with an empty mind.

While overthinkers will profit from peaceful meditation, reflective meditation will help “underthinkers” and those who are mentally lazy.

• Strengthen your health

The best place to begin is probably with your sleep schedule and eating habits. Attempt to get into a good night pattern, which will provide a happy eight hours of sleep for you. Much less sleep makes it tough to function, but too much may promote mental laziness as well.

It may be difficult to change your diet, but your brain can gain significantly. As the body will have more nutrition and renewable resources, a relatively balanced diet will be a significant enhancement that consists entirely of unhealthy foods. Particular foods such as seafood, peanuts, and even dark chocolate can have specific vitamins and minerals proven to enhance cognitive abilities.

• At a time, take one job.

Multi-tasking may seem like a wonderful thing to be possible to do, but every other one receives reduced focus when you load your mind with multiple assignments at once. Usually, our minds can not manage several deep-thinking tasks simultaneously, so we grow mentally lazy and implement each one with reduced thought.

Ensure you still isolate your duties if you are trying to rid yourself of mental laziness. You will give more attention to this method when you’re working on a task.

• Set up certain objectives

You can’t go wrong with establishing targets if you’re trying to gather some momentum in your life. If you’re mentally lazy, you can walk through life without worrying much about your next step or the inspiration underlying your acts. You would be far more inclined to have intense, critical thoughts when you have objectives, both long and short term, to bring you to all those targets.

• Stop Running away

There are those of us who dislike being alone with our feelings. We’re going to do anything to prevent our mind noise from being heard, particularly those who struggle with anxiety and negative thoughts. This is a form of mental laziness because we would rather entertain ourselves than worry about nonsense. Let the thoughts enter instead of fleeing. The only way to overcome the root cause is to work about it yourself.

Conclusion 

In this article, we looked at what is Mental laziness and contributing factors. We also looked at ways to overcome mental laziness.

FAQ: Mental Laziness

Citation

Patterson, R. (2020, May 27). The Internet Is Making Your Brain Lazy – Here’s How to Change That. Retrieved November 27, 2020, from https://collegeinfogeek.com/mental-laziness/

Mante, T. (1970, January 01). 3 SIGNS OF MENTAL LAZINESS. Retrieved November 27, 2020, from http://terrymante.blogspot.com/2013/07/3-signs-of-mental-laziness.html

Becky StoreyContributing writer at Learning Mindpassionate about the way we think and the human mind since she developed chronic anxiety many years ago. Now she loves to write and educate people on mental health and wellbeing. (2020, February 16). Mental Laziness Is More Common Than Ever: How to Overcome It? Retrieved November 27, 2020, from https://www.learning-mind.com/mental-laziness-causes-overcome/

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