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Why Am I So Lazy?

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Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#141

Post by somethingsimple »

perfmode wrote: post #109
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In think this has been shown to get worse results than praising effort. I call my kids out for being lazy when they're being lazy. Examples from this morning "I don't know what the second rucksack is": meaning "I can't be bothered getting it out the rucksack, you do it for me", my answer "You just want someone else to do it, stop being lazy and get it yourself". Also "I can't do it [take off my boots]": meaning "I do…

Be careful with the coldness. This may backfire on you down the road. Your children may stop respecting you as they gain independence.

I don’t think tough love makes children lose respect for their parents. Anecdotal, but my parents were pretty strict when it came to discipline and habits, and weren’t really warm people, and I have tons of respect for them.

Children lose respect for parents that are inconsistent, don’t have their shit together, or that do literally everything for them.

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#142

Post by somethingsimple »

eludwig wrote: post #78
bambax wrote: post #52

> I see this shit every day in other parents: “She hates to read!” “He’s lazy!” “She’s bad at math!” You are imprisoning your kid with your words, fuckers! That's spot on. It's really upsetting to hear people say that about children, especially people with authority (parents, grandparents). DON'T DO THAT! Or, if you have to do that (!?!) at least be positive. Don't tell a kid she's bad at math, tell her she's good at…

Yes, not screwing up your children is a an excellent goal for a parent, if not a moral imperative. But the truth is that parenting is a huge messy business that never goes according to plan. You will screw up your kids in subtle ways, even if you avoid the major landmines. This is not due to any failing beyond being a human being that was also raised by fallible parents. The other parents on HN will appreciate this:…

> This thought is usually followed by a small voice which sheepishly admits "So that's why they said that to me!"

It’s amazing how a lot of my childhood memories started making sense after I had a kid.

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#143

Post by astura »

perfmode wrote: post #109
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In think this has been shown to get worse results than praising effort. I call my kids out for being lazy when they're being lazy. Examples from this morning "I don't know what the second rucksack is": meaning "I can't be bothered getting it out the rucksack, you do it for me", my answer "You just want someone else to do it, stop being lazy and get it yourself". Also "I can't do it [take off my boots]": meaning "I do…

Be careful with the coldness. This may backfire on you down the road. Your children may stop respecting you as they gain independence.

Telling your kids to knock the shit off and do X is not "being cold."

As pointed out in sibling comments your job as a parent is not to get your children to like you.

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#145

Post by iandanforth »

Warning - rant.

I wish HN would ban BS psychology articles. There are real, scientific, actionable steps to understanding perceived motivational deficit and this article doesn't get close to them. It retreads stigmatizing labels, regurgitates useless advice, and provokes high confidence low value anecdotes.

1. Motivation is a chemical state.

You can induce motivation generically through dopamine reuptake inhibitors. Why do you think Adderall makes you clean your room? It's not a sudden hatred for dust, it's that your baseline motivation to accomplish any task is enhanced and you're in a task rich environment with a messy room. Many other interesting chemical pathways and interventions exist to directly change the frequency and nature of task initiation performance and completion.

2. Environment strongly impacts internal chemical state.

Take an "addicted" rat and put her into a rich environment and the apparently highly motivating cocaine reward looses its attraction. Take a minimally athletic human and put a bear behind them and they will run.

In neither of the above does a person need to re-evaluate their life and identity, utter crap.

My point here is that HN has an unusual respect for technically interesting and accurate news. It's not all gold, but it seems to favor factual pieces over largely emotional and unproductive arguments. Pop-psychology and feel good generic advice blogs are firmly in that second category. Their value has not advanced since the 50s and we should start seeing them as the kind of harmful, anti-scientific, community deviding memes they are.

End rant.

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#146

Post by Joeri »

shawnz wrote: post #115
ianai wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the thing to do is remove the violence of the language. Simply acknowledge whatever situation with no subjective statements. “Your math grade is a C. Would you like tutoring?” Violent language like your examples hurt people. Those hurts sum to resent and ultimately more violence. The following book goes into this in depth: Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Marshall B. Rosenberg, Arun Gandhi

Has this technique been proven to be successful? Otherwise I don't think it's right to call it "the thing to do".

My experience so far as a parent is that there is no such thing as universally appropriate parenting technique. Every child has their own personality and responds to different things in different ways.

Still, I prefer to use techniques that don't make my children feel unhappy, for obvious reasons. First the carrot, then the stick.

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#147

Post by Sir_Cmpwn »

iandanforth wrote: post #145

Warning - rant. I wish HN would ban BS psychology articles. There are real, scientific, actionable steps to understanding perceived motivational deficit and this article doesn't get close to them. It retreads stigmatizing labels, regurgitates useless advice, and provokes high confidence low value anecdotes. 1. Motivation is a chemical state. You can induce motivation generically through dopamine reuptake inhibitors.…

How about banning BS psychology HN comments, too?

It sounds like you're basically talking about ego depletion, which has come under fire in the past few years, with what little evidence there was for it coming into doubt:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#148

Post by always_good »

koonsolo wrote: post #69
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> extravagant, bizarre theory Absolutely not. Self-sabotage is psychology 101. > why can't she just be lazy Because laziness, like demonic possession and telepathy has not been identified by any medical science. > we're too eager to accept such explanations because they are more comforting than more straightforward, harsher ones Or maybe one explanation is backed by decades of research while the idea of "laziness" is…

Sorry, but I have totally no clue what you are talking about. Laziness is preserving energy, which seems pretty vital to survival for me. Have you ever seen a "lazy" lion just laying there, doing nothing most of the day? The reason why he's not running around all day doing active stuff is because of survival, energy preservation. He will put his energy where it is most important, food and sex. He's even so lazy that…

So playing video games all night to procrastinate some homework and then stressing about the procrastination is just preservation of energy?

Did you use an animal example because every human example sounds ridiculous alongside your premise?

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#149

Post by allsunny »

iandanforth wrote: post #145

Warning - rant. I wish HN would ban BS psychology articles. There are real, scientific, actionable steps to understanding perceived motivational deficit and this article doesn't get close to them. It retreads stigmatizing labels, regurgitates useless advice, and provokes high confidence low value anecdotes. 1. Motivation is a chemical state. You can induce motivation generically through dopamine reuptake inhibitors.…

I hear you but any suggestions on what can we do to increase our motivation short of Adderall and bears? Is it a diet thing or.. genetic lottery?

Re: Why Am I So Lazy?

#150

Post by rev_bird »

adrusi wrote: post #50
manigandham wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just normal, not ADHD (which is way too overdiagnosed at this point and would fit 90% of people I meet). People are lazy, but they also do not want to completely ruin their life, so they will wait until they realize they cant wait anymore, doing the minimum amount at the last minute to meet the goal.

What do you think ADHD is? It's defined by its diagnostic criteria, and those are very vague. There's certainly no consensus that ADHD is anything other than a term to describe the lowest performers on the metrics which Adderall improves. ADHD is definitely not some kind of genetic defect of the prefrontal cortex or anything of that sort.

What do you think ADHD is? You say it's "definitely not some kind of genetic defect of the prefrontal cortex or anything of that sort," but there's been growing evidence of exactly that for a long time now:

> New high-resolution, three-dimensional maps of the brains of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) indicate significant and specific anatomical differences within areas of the brain thought to control attentional and inhibitory control systems, compared with brain scans of children without ADHD... The reductions in size of prefrontal regions observed by Sowell and her colleagues are consistent with other reports of reduced frontal lobe volumes in children with ADHD. The more advanced imaging methods and analysis used in the current study, however, suggest that those reductions are localized to more inferior aspects of the prefrontal regions than was previously realized.[1]

> In instances where heredity does not seem to be a factor, difficulties during pregnancy, prenatal exposure to alcohol and tobacco, premature delivery, significantly low birth weight, excessively high body lead levels, and postnatal injury to the prefrontal regions of the brain have all been found to contribute to the risk for ADHD to varying degrees.[2]

> Recently, neuroimaging has led to several important advances in the understanding of the neurobiology underlying the clinical picture of ADHD, and demonstrates a clear brain basis to the disorder in regions involved in attention, and executive and inhibitory control. Furthermore, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has provided evidence that intracortical inhibition, as indexed by the immature ipsilateral motor cortex, normalises with psychostimulant treatment. There is an exciting confluence between emerging studies in basic neurobiology and the genetic, neuroimaging, and neuropsychological analyses of ADHD.[3]

[1] https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/pn.39.1.0...

[2] http://www.chadd.org/understanding-adhd/about-adhd/the-scien...

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3016271/

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