If you’re ambitious but lazy… listen to this

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, you wanna get some inspirational texts from me directly to your phone, text me right now, 512-580-9305. Once again, 512-580-9305. Today, I'm gonna give you five tips to stop being so lazy. I used to be somebody who was very lazy. And in fact, there are definitely some times where I am lazy, but it just doesn't go throughout my entire day. Like after six o 'clock, I'm pretty damn lazy when it's during the week.

0:42So when I was younger, though, I was a very lazy kid and didn't really do anything or care to do anything. Didn't want to go to work, didn't want to do any of that stuff. And so I do think that you can be lazy and also still succeed. And I do think that laziness is not a trait that you have to have forever. I think it's something that you can be. Sometimes it's kind of like something you could, you know, sometimes if you're an introvert, you can turn it on and be an extrovert for a party that you go to and then turn it back off. Well, your laziness can be the exact same thing, I believe. And so if you're a lazy person, if you're a procrastinator, you're a self-sabotager, all of those things, this episode is for you because you know, I know, that in order to get the life you want, it requires effort.

1:21And if you're being too lazy, you're not putting the effort in, you're not going to get the life that you want. And so let's dive into those five different things. Number one, I want you to start being honest with yourself. I want you to just stop lying to yourself and I want you to admit to yourself, I am lazy. Or I have been lazy. And then tell yourself, I'm not going to be lazy forever. It's like a 12-step program. The first thing is you have to just admit. You have to stop lying to yourself. Call it what it is. Once you admit it, once you become aware of it, then you start to work to overcome it.

1:51I personally have a different viewpoint than I think most people do. I think that humans are just inherently lazy. I think most people are inherently lazy. I think there's some people that I see that have so much energy and I'm like, I wish. Like if I had that person's energy, I feel like I'd be 10 times further than I'm in life. But I just ain't got it. And I think that most people don't have it. Are there some who are blessed with copious amounts of energy? Sure. Am I one of them? No. Are you one of them? I don't know. Probably not as well. I think the majority of people don't have a ton of energy.

2:21And I think that most people are kind of lazy. You know, if we were to, like here in the summer in Texas, it gets so hot. Like 107 degrees for like 45 days in a row. It is torture to be outside and it is torture to be in the sun. I think if we went back 100 ,000 years ago and we viewed it, whoever happened to be living in Austin, Texas at that point in time, I bet you the majority of the day, they're probably hanging out under trees. Probably are. They probably woke up early in the morning. They did their hunting. They did their gathering. They did everything as the sun was coming up. And then around one, two o 'clock, they probably went and hung under some trees, waited for sunset.

2:58you know they might have taken some naps you know a midday nap as a caveman or cavewoman and then they would go out and do their thing as a summer starting set as it was cooler again and it is natural for us as humans to take the path of least resistance which when we're trying to build a life that we want can seem lazy and so the first thing i want you to do is just admit to yourself that you are lazy sometimes and that's okay there's nothing wrong with it i don't want you to shame yourself i don't want you to guilt yourself because that's completely unnecessary i want you to say hey if i I am lazy.

3:27This is something that I want to work at. This is something I want to change. You know, I can be lazy anytime outside of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. if you're trying to build a business, if you're trying to get something done. And then stop blaming anything that's outside of yourself. Everybody, we like to blame the external. What we have to do is we have to look at it and we have to take full acceptance. Yes, I am lazy, but it's something that I'm going to change. I'm going to change it and I'm going to allow myself to be lazy outside of my working hours. But during my working hours, I'm going to be a machine.

3:56I'm going to figure out how to get done whatever it is I need to get done. Okay. So that's the first thing. Just accept it. Become okay with it first. Therefore, you don't have that internal resistance like you tend to do all the time. Right. Number two is to take your goals and to make them bite size. One of the things that I realized in for years, I would do near-solutions with people and we would do planning sessions and I would do a webinar and we do all the planning for the year and I'd help people come up with their goals. And then I realized as I started talking with different types of people is that some people are motivated by that.

4:28And then some people, because it's a year away, it feels far away. It actually feels more demotivating for them. And to sit down with somebody and then say, you know, let's plan out the next 10 years, it can be extremely demotivating them because their brain is more process driven. And they start thinking about all of the things that they have to do over the next 10 years in order to get to wherever it is that their goal is. And then in their head, they start to get so overwhelmed because they think they need to get all of those things done over the next 10 years done today. And then it becomes too much for them.

4:57So if you're that type of person and you're more motivated by short-term goals, then take your goals and make them short-term. You can make them this week. What do I need to do this week to get further? And then if you want to give them more short-term, you can go to today. And then if you're really just an overthinker and you want to make it even more short-term, it could be, what do I need to do in the next hour? What do I need to do next five minutes to get me closer? And then you just focus on those things. And so I always give this example just because it makes it very easy, but if you are a sales rep and you want to make$100 ,000 this year, if you've been a sales rep for a while, you know your numbers.

5:33You know with this amount of calls, I get this many pickups. And then with this many pickups, I get this many people closed. And with this many closes, I make this much money. And so if you come at it and say, okay, I want to make$100 ,000 a year. Okay. Well, how much is that per month? Okay. That's just over$8 ,000 a month. in order for me to make$8 ,000 a month in commissions, how much do I need to be bringing in? How much sales do I need to be bringing in over the course of a month? Let's say that's 40 sales for you. Okay, 40 sales. And there's four weeks in this month, so I need 10 sales a month, which is basically two sales a day.

6:08Can I get two sales a day? Well, let's see. If I do 50 calls, I'll usually get about two sales. Okay, so all I need to focus on every single day for the next year is just doing 50 calls a day. And now that's the only thing that you focus on instead of focusing on, oh my gosh, this goal seems so big, it seems so far away. And all you gotta do is just focus on the calls that you need to do today. And some days you're gonna get less than two sales. And some days you're gonna get more than two sales. But over the course of the entire year, you should average out to make about the$100 ,000 that you want to.

6:37And so now you're focusing on a very small thing that you need to do every single day versus thinking about everything that you need to do every single day for the rest of the year. You know, it's hard to focus on something that's too far in the future. And so it's better for us to, to break it up into smaller goals. And so that will help you stop procrastinating. It'll help you be a little bit less lazy. Okay. The third thing, and this one's a fun one is to find your why. And the reason why I love this is because I've got a new story. Uh, and I always, I always tell this story as well, because it's just, it's, it's so perfect.

7:06You'll care about your goals and you'll kind of maybe get there. But when you care about your goals and you're sitting there and you're like really invested in your goals, you're more likely to get there. And the example I've given so many times, and I'm going to tell you this story and then I'll tell you a new story because it's funny how it relates. I was used to give speeches and I would be in rooms of people who, you know, make$100 ,000 a year,$200 ,000 a year. And they're pretty consistently been making that amount for a while. Right. And I would sit in that in their rooms and I would say, Hey, what's the chance of everybody, you know, what's the chance of your room of you making a million dollars this year?

7:39And everybody was like 0%, 1%, 2%. And I'd say, what's the chance of you making a million dollars this year. And if you don't, there's a gun to your head and everyone that you love is going to die, including yourself. And everyone would say a hundred percent, a hundred percent, a thousand percent. There's no way that I won't hit my goals. Well, did the, did the goal change? No. Did the timeframe change? No. What changed? What changes the why behind it? It's 100 % possible to hit that million dollars a year. It's a hundred percent possible for you to hit the goal that you want to, but you just don't have a strong enough why behind it.

8:11So the other day, uh, one of my, team members called me and he's like, Hey, you know how you always tell that story about making a million dollars a year? I was like, yeah. He's like, I got a crazy story to tell you. He's like, so there's a guy that I went to college with. And one of my friends called me up and he's like, Hey, do you remember Joseph? And he's like, yeah, of course I remember Joseph. He's like, I got a crazy story to tell you. He's like, so Joseph is addicted to gambling and he got himself $40 ,000 in debt with loan sharks. And the loan sharks called him up a couple months ago and they said, Hey, if you don't pay us the$40 ,000 by the end of this month, we're going to kill you.

8:48And so it's like real story. Now, like this example that I've been giving for years is like a real story in real life. I'm talking to my team member and I'm like, so what happened? He's like, so he literally worked all day, every day for 30 days straight. And obviously he slept and all of that, but he started getting creative and he started going to junkyards. And when he went to the junkyards, he would actually take off, you know, different bumpers that were made out of different materials and he could melt down. And he ended up finding copper and finding, you know, steel and finding all of these different things that he could.

9:19And then he started buying and reselling things, different parts that he would find on cars because the guy knew about cars. So he would find different parts. He would go to different, you know, he'd go and find a good part inside of a car that was abandoned. And then we take it to take it off, take it to a mechanic shop and he would sell it. And so he got super creative and then just worked. And because of fact that he only had 30 days and there was a timeline, he worked his ass off and he made over $40 ,000 in that month and paid off his debts. The crazy part about it, and we will be right back.

9:49And now back to the show. The guy had never made in his entire life more than$50 ,000 a year, and he made$40 ,000 in a month. Why? Because his life depended on it. What would your actions look like? What would your days look like if your life depended on it? Think about that for a second. How would your life be different if you started going at your success that you want, the life that you want, as if your life depends on it? And I was like, man, that's crazy. I was talking to my team and I was like, that's crazy. Because if he were to just continue to work like that, he'd make$480 ,000 a year.

10:25Because if he made over$40 ,000 that month, he's probably going to get better at it. So he's probably going to hit like, if he wanted to go for a year at that pace, maybe he has to scale it back a tiny bit because maybe he was going a little bit intense because he had a very short timetable. But if you want to scale it back a little bit, he might make$450 ,000, $500 ,000 a year doing exactly what he did. And so it's just a great example because I always give the million dollar example when I'm giving speeches. And this is a real life example of loan sharks who are going to kill this guy if he didn't come up with the money and he worked his ass off and he came up with it.

10:55It's just like, I don't have enough time to think about my insecurities or to not care or to procrastinate or to be too busy. It's just, I've got to get it done. And I love that because I think everybody, and I don't love the fact that he got himself in that predicament, but I love that everybody listening has that opportunity to work that hard to do it as they want to do if they really truly want to. Okay. So that's number three. Number four is to remove all of the distractions you possibly can. I wrote about this in my book, Level Up. and I said that the people who are the most consistent at taking action are not the ones with the best willpower.

11:32Like people think they have this amazing willpower. It's that they've built an environment around them where their willpower is not tested. And so when you're being lazy, when you're procrastinating, when you're not doing what it is that you need to be doing, you're not just sitting there staring at the ceiling. You're doing something else. You're doing something. That's why recently I've not really said procrastinating as much as I used to. I'm reframing procrastinating into avoidant behavior is because when you're procrastinating, you're doing something. And that something is to avoid whatever it is that you're trying to avoid.

12:04So that is an avoidant behavior. And so you're doing something. The question is, what are you doing? And anything that is a distraction to you needs to be removed. So, you know, when I really sit down to like get productive work done, I like to call it deep work that comes from Cal Newport's book called Deep Work. My phone is my greatest distraction. It is, and I know that it is. And so what I do is I take my phone and I put it inside of my kitchen drawer and I leave it in there when I'm really trying to do deep work. So that therefore I don't even have that distraction around me. When you sit down at my computer, I have no notifications that pop up at my computer.

12:40If you email me, I don't see it. If you Slack me, I don't see it. If you text me, I don't see it. So that therefore the only thing I could do is what's in front of me. And then when you start thinking about distractions, there's obviously technology, there's obviously different other things. People can be a really big distraction. If you work from home, your children can be a really big distraction. So why don't you try to see if your spouse say, honey, I need two hours of really deep work. Can you make sure you take care of the kids for me and don't let them come in the room? Then if you work in an office, put a sign on your door or put headphones on, whatever it might be.

13:13If your kids are loud in the other room and they're typically yelling and screaming, Put your headphones on, get noise-canceling headphones, turn on some music so you can't hear them. And so what you're trying to do is create an environment, whether it's an hour a day, whether it's two hours a day, three hours a day, whatever it might be for you, to fully get rid of all of your distractions. And the only thing that you can do is the thing that you need to get done. And then you just give yourself, I'm going to work on it, and I'm going to work on it. There are no other options. I can't get distracted.

13:42And what I would recommend is completely clearing off your desk so that the only thing that's up there is your computer, maybe an external monitor, headphones on your ears, and then just get the work done. And so try to remove all of the distractions you possibly can. Try to get anything that will lower your willpower out of the way so that the only thing you could do is that. And it's funny because your brain will bounce around and wants to go to something else. Yesterday, I was creating a PowerPoint for a speech that I had to give. And as I was creating it, my brain did what brains typically do.

14:12It was like, oh my gosh, there's this thing I forgot to do. And I kid you not, I literally took off my headphones and I started walking to the door. And then I was like, hold on, I don't need to get my phone right now. Cause that's going to distract me. So I started walking back to my computer and I was like, I could just do it real quick. And so I started walking back to the door and I was about to open the door. I was like, no, no, no, no. You can always do that later. Just go back and don't break your distractions. Do what you were doing. Don't get out of the flow. And I was like, okay, I'm not going to do that.

14:38So I put my headphones on. So even I struggle with this where I was like, I was, I was like, Oh, I'm going to go get my phone. No, I'm not going to get my phone. Oh, I'm going to get my phone. No, I'm not going to get my phone. And so it's trying to remove as many distractions as you possibly can. Now, if my phone was next to me, I would have just picked it up and I would have been lost for the next 10 or 15 minutes. And so how can you remove as many distractions from your area, from your life as you possibly can? And then the last one that deals with this perfectly, if you're going to sit down, you're going to get work done.

15:02You're going to need to do the Pomodoro technique. I'm not going to go deep into the Pomodoro technique. I've talked about it so many damn times in this podcast. I have an entire episode that talks about the Pomodoro technique that you can go back and listen to. But essentially, it's very simple. When I sit down to work and do really, really deep focus, I use the Pomodoro technique. It's 25 minutes on, five minutes off. So for 25 minutes, I can do one task and one task only. And the only other thing I do have on my desk is a timer, and I set it for 25 minutes. And I do 25 minutes of dedicated work on one thing and one thing only.

15:30Then after I'm done, I get myself five minutes off. In those five minutes off, don't look at your phone. Don't go talk to somebody. There's only a couple of things that you should be doing. You could go for a walk if you want to. You can go outside and just stare at nature and stare at trees. You could close your eyes, do some breathing, do some meditating, whatever it might be. But the point is your brain is so stimulated in those 25 minutes, it's not to go do something else and stimulate it, but it's completely to de-stimulate your brain so there is no stimulation coming in. And so it's 25 minutes on, five minutes of absolutely nothing.

16:0025 minutes on, five minutes of absolutely nothing. And what happens is you start to focus on being more productive, focus on being more focused because both productivity and focus are things are like a muscle that you can build within yourself, you become better at it. And so you might be lazy right now. It's okay that you're lazy right now. I was lazy for a good portion of my life, but then I started building up. It's like going to the gym. It's like building up muscles. I was building up these muscles to be more focused, to be more productive, get more stuff done. And it's like a light switch.

16:31Sometimes I walk into the gym and I work out. Sometimes I don't go to the gym and I'm not working out. So it's the same thing. Sometimes I need to sit down. I need to get focused. I need to get stuff done. And there are no excuses for getting those things done. And sometimes I'm completely off. I'm lazy. I'm watching TV and I allow myself to just to be a lazy rock for an hour or so. And so it's like turning on and turning off. You can be lazy. You cannot be lazy. But I guarantee you this, if your life really depended on it, if someone that you loves life really depended on it, if there was a really strong why behind it, there would be no such thing as laziness for you.

17:03You would just get it done when it needed to be done without any questions asked without any distractions. And that's something that you can build in yourself and you can turn on whatever you want to. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories. Tag me in at Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And if you want to get some more coaching from me outside of the podcast, more in-depth, longer sessions, go ahead and go to mindsetmentor.com. Once again, mindsetmentor.com. And I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode.

17:31Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.