HOW TO CURE LAZINESS?

We are all having busy schedules whether we are students, parents, spouse or working all-time. We need to take care of our studies, families, deadlines, works and many more hence will decrease our energy level. When our energy level has declined, we tend to procrastinate and being lazy and not to forget, we also tend to give so many excuses for not doing all the things that we are suppose to do. This procrastination too may caused you to delay your prayer, suffer at the school and not to do well at work.

You might ask yourself, how to deal with this habit? How to overcome procrastination?

Here are few tips that you can consider to cure this bad habit of yours:

1) Make du'a

Our Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) has taught us a du'a :

اللّهُمَّإنِّيأعُوذُبِكَمِنالعَجزِوَالكَسلٍ

"O Allah, I seek refuge in you from incapability and laziness."

Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) teaches us to make this du'a to protect us from the disease which is laziness. Laziness is actually a disease of the heart which we cannot see by our naked eye, but this disease has a very bad prognosis which can lead to other problems.

Narrated Anas bin Malik (may Allah be pleased with him):

The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) used to say, "O Allah! I seek refuge with You from helplessness, laziness, cowardice and feeble old age; I seek refuge with You from afflictions of life and death and seek refuge with You from the punishment in the grave." Sahih al-Bukhari

Narrated Abu Huraira (may Allah be pleased with him):

Allah's Messenger (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said,

 "Satan puts three knots at the back of the head of any of you if he is asleep. On every knot he reads and exhales the following words, 'The night is long, so stay asleep.' When one wakes up and remembers Allah, one knot is undone; and when one performs ablution, the second knot is undone, and when one prays the third knot is undone and one gets up energetic with a good heart in the morning; otherwise one gets up lazy and with a mischievous heart." Sahih al-Bukhari  

Narrated `Aisha (may Allah be pleased with her):

The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) used to say, 

'O Allah! I seek refuge with You from the affliction of the Fire, the punishment of the Fire, the affliction of the grave, the punishment of the grave, and the evil of the affliction of poverty. O Allah! I seek refuge with You from the evil of the affliction of Al-Masih Ad- Dajjal, O Allah! Cleanse my heart with the water of snow and hail, and cleanse my heart from all sins as a white garment is cleansed from filth, and let there be a far away distance between me and my sins as You made the East and West far away from each other. O Allah! I seek refuge with You from laziness, sins, and from being in debt." Sahih al-Bukhari

Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) teaches us to make these du'as to protect us from the disease which is laziness. Laziness is actually a disease of the heart which we cannot see by our naked eye, but this disease has a very bad prognosis which can lead to other problems.

Try to memorize these du'as. Whenever you feel so bored, lazy or tired, simply make these du'as and seek refuge in Allah.

2) Adjust your sleep habit

A person once said that, " If you want to have a successful day, you need to sleep on time." It is true. In this modern era, we have high-speed internet, smartphones and all those social networks like Facebook and Twitter that make us difficult to sleep on time. We use to check our email, Facebook notifications, or watch something on Youtube before we go to the bed and thus make us staying up so late and reduce our sleeping time. Thus, when we wake up in the next morning, the quality of the whole day is not at the maximum level.

The amount of sleep you need on regular basis for optimal performance depends on various factors and one of them is age. For school-age children, they might need 10 to 11 hours of sleeping while adults might need 7 to 8 hours of sleeping. The quality of your sleep also plays an important role as much as your quantity of sleep. If your sleep is frequently interrupted or cut short, you're not getting quality sleep.

So now, try to adjust back your sleep habit. Make sure you go to the bed on time and lastly, avoid taking meals and caffeine close to your bedtime.

3) Be physically fit

Be physically fit doesn't mean that you need to be athletes like Usain Bolt or Muhammad Ali. It also doesn't mean that you need to have the gym membership. All you need is to be healthy to live an active lifestyle and beat procrastination.

There are so many things that you can do to keep your body healthy and increase you physical and mental energy. Just simply jog for 30 minutes for three times a week. If you don't like jogging, you may try to go for swimming and other physical activities.

4) Take care of your eating habit

Having a good eating habit is really important. Nowadays, people don't really care much about what they eat. Because of the limited time and hectic lifestyle, they prefer to have fast foods which are not good for health. Overweight and obesity are so common and become the major problems, instead of malnutrition and infectious diseases. Obesity can cause many health problems such as coronary heart disease, hypertension and stroke, pulmonary diseases and many more.

So, to conquer laziness, one should really take good care of his or her eating habit. Eat nutritious food and drink plenty of water. Avoid oily and high carbohydrates food. Control your daily sugar and salt intake and not to forget, don't skip the breakfast. Breakfast is really important for you to stay energetic for the whole day. Skipping breakfast is a common strategy for those who want to loose weight because they think they could cut the calories, but unfortunately, it is not a really successful strategy. When you don't eat breakfast you may feel so hungry by lunch time that you eat more foods than you normally would. You may also be tempted to choose foods that are not the healthiest choices such as junk foods when you feel like you're starving.

Laziness is truly a disease and we really need to make serious effort to fight in. It is the source of our weakness and defeat. So, what are you waiting for? It is time to challenge ourselves, improve our lifestyle and beat laziness and procrastination in sha Allah.

10 Ways to Break the Cycle of Laziness

1. Set a 10-minute alarm.

Multiple Redditors shared some variation on the idea that you should tell yourself you'll work on the dreaded task only for a designated time period -- and then you can stop.

Here's an example, from backformore: "I set an alarm for 10 minutes and then see how much I can get done in that time. Usually, it gets me motivated to keep going after the timer goes off, but if it doesn't at least I did something."

Meanwhile, psychologist and procrastination expert Timothy A. Pychl gave Psychology Today much the same advice. Essentially, you "make a deal with yourself" that even though you don't like doing the task, you do it anyway for 10 minutes. Once you're already involved, it's less tempting to quit.

2. Leave yourself an easy task for the following morning.

Rosco7 points out that he's more likely to procrastinate at work when he's got a hard problem ahead of him.

If, on the other hand, he knows that the problem won't take much time or effort to solve, he dives right into it, and then into the rest of his work as well:

Here's my big trick: I always try to leave myself something easy to do first thing the next morning. If I find a programming bug and see that it will be an easy fix, I leave it for the next morning. If I need to package up an installer for a new release, leave it for next morning. That way I have something easy to start out with, and I'm less tempted to do something else first.

3. Exercise.

Several Redditors highlighted the importance of exercise for beating laziness, particularly when you do it first thing in the morning.

As hackday puts it, "Once you get your blood pumping, you will realize that you feel wakeful and energetic instead of sleepy and lethargic."

Indeed, research has found that young adults who reported being fatigued all the time felt more energetic and less tired when they exercised at a low or moderate intensity.

4. Switch up your work environment.

"I find that I procrastinate constantly when I'm at home, so when I want to be productive, I go to a library or another public space," writes scissa. "If I have a choice, I prefer public spaces where people are working, because they encourage me to do the same."

Scissa is onto something: Recent research suggests that being around other people who are working hard can motivate us to buckle down, too. That could potentially explain why we're less inclined to log onto Twitter while sitting in a coffee shop full of people who seem super-focused.

5. Get a partner.

HeartlySerious suggests finding a partner to hold you accountable for your non-lazy behavior.

For example: "If you schedule time at the gym with a friend, you'll have more motivation to actually get up."

If you're thinking about getting an accountability buddy or group, take a few tips from productivity expert Laura Vanderkam. Writing in Fast Company, Vanderkam recommends picking people with a track record of achieving difficult things and communicating with them frequently.

6. Dress up.

Here's a tip that's particularly useful for those who work remotely. If you can't find the energy to stop futzing around on Facebook and start writing your project proposal, consider changing out of those stained sweatpants.

"If you dress different, you will act different," says sidianmsjones. "Get together some outfits that you feel make you look really classy, businessy, whatever. Make it a special point in the morning to get FULLY dressed. Shoes and all, as if you were going out, even if you don't."

As fashion psychologist Karen Pine told Forbes, "When we put on an item of clothing it is common for the wearer to adopt the characteristics associated with that garment. A lot of clothing has symbolic meaning for us, whether it's 'professional work attire' or 'relaxing weekend wear,' so when we put it on we prime the brain to behave in ways consistent with that meaning."

7. Write down the problems you're putting off facing.

"Procrastinating starts with avoiding to think about the problems awaiting you," says visarga. "Before you get your work energy up stop and think about the problems, the details, put them on paper, make a list, a graph, whatever you like to describe it."

Maybe you'll realize the problems aren't as big as you imagined, or that you can break them down into smaller chunks, and it will be easier to get started tackling them.

Oscar-winning Pixar director Pete Docter uses this trick to turn overwhelming tasks into something more manageable. "Usually, soon into making the list, I find I can group most of the issues into two or three larger all-encompassing problems. So it's really not all that bad. Having a finite list of problems is much better than having an illogical feeling that everything is wrong," he told Pixar president Ed Catmull in Creativity, Inc.

8. Do the thing you're thinking about.

"The best advice I have seen is when you catch yourself thinking about something you should be doing, but aren't, just get up and do it," 

9. Follow the 'two-minute rule.'

GEEKitty has a "two-minute rule": "If it takes less than two minutes, just do it."

That might include washing your dirty breakfast dishes or picking your laundry up off the floor.

It's similar to a strategy used by David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done. As soon as Allen sees an email in his inbox, he decides whether he can deal with it in two minutes or less. If so, he deals with it right then (e.g., by responding or deleting).

10. Don't 'break the chain.'

iluvucorgi points out the "calendar trick" that actor and comedian Jerry Seinfeld uses to motivate himself to write.

As Seinfeld told software developer Brad Isaac, for every day he gets his writing done, he puts a big 'X' over that day on the calendar. After a few days, he has a nice chain and his only job is not to break it.