I am a very lazy person. I delight in lounging around the apartment, raiding the fridge, taking an entire day just to read the newspaper.
Yet by most objective standards I get a lot done. How can this be? I think I have it figured out.
When there is something I really want to get done, I start to create all sorts of artificial deadlines. I schedule a talk where I need to show the demo I haven’t implemented yet, or a meeting where somebody important is coming to visit, expecting to play with software that’s still just a gleam in my eye.
Without even thinking about it on a conscious level, I tend to organize the external world of people and events around me as a forcing function, nudging my lazy soul into a completely artificial unlaziness.
The result is that I no longer need face the pressure of doing it “just for me”, since now I need to do it for them.
Of course, I am still doing it for me. 🙂