Embrace Your Weaknesses: The Laziness Paradox

When is confidence a bad thing? Productivity expert Scott Young has the answer in his blog post “The Laziness Paradox: Embrace Your Weaknesses to Accomplish More.”

Young gives the example of a friend who was overconfident in his ability to accomplish some ambitious fitness goals. He writes: “The weakness of confidence is when you’re forming concrete, short-term plans. These occur on such small timescales that you’re unlikely to reap any of the benefit of your inadvertent boasting, so being too ambitious can actually hurt you.”
He goes on to discuss how recognizing his weaknesses helped him change bad habits:

“For me, the biggest change in my life happened when I stopped trying to accomplish everything at once. I realized that I’m actually incredibly lazy—most of what I do has to do with habits and trivial stimuli, rather than deep thoughts.
“Instead of trying to change every behavior at once, I would pick something incredibly small and simple and focus on it for an entire month. Even that can be difficult, but it meant I could make a change almost habitual before I tried something else.”

So consider acknowledging your weaknesses when planning your schedule and tasks. You just might get more done.