A person is being lazy if she is able to carry out some activity that she ought to carry out, but is disinclined to do so because of the effort involved. Instead, she carries out the activity perfunctorily; or engages in some other, less strenuous or less boring activity; or remains idle. In short, she is being lazy if her motivation to spare herself effort trumps her motivation to do the right or expected thing.

Synonyms for laziness are indolence and sloth. Indolence derives from the Latin indolentia, ‘without pain’ or ‘without taking trouble’. Sloth has more moral and spiritual overtones than laziness or indolence. In the Christian tradition, sloth is one of the seven deadly sins because it undermines society and God’s plan, and because it invites sin. The Bible inveighs against slothfulness, for example, in the Book of Ecclesiastes: ‘By much slothfulness the building decayeth; and through idleness of the hands the house droppeth through. A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things.’

Procrastination

Laziness should not be confounded with procrastination or idleness.

To procrastinate is to postpone a task in favour of other tasks, which, though perceived as easier or more pleasurable, are typically less important or urgent.

To postpone a task for constructive or strategic purposes does not amount to procrastination. For it to amount to procrastination, the postponement has to represent poor and ineffective planning, and result in a higher overall cost to the procrastinator, for example, in the form of stress, guilt, or loss of productivity. It is one thing to delay a tax return until all the figures are in, but quite another to delay it so that it upsets plans and people and triggers a fine.

Laziness and procrastination are similar in that they both involve a lack of motivation. But, unlike a lazy person, a procrastinator aspires and intends to complete the task and, moreover, does eventually complete it, albeit at a higher cost to himself.

Idleness

To be idle is: not to be doing anything. This could be because you are lazy, but it could also be because you do not have anything to do or are temporarily unable to do it. Or perhaps you have already done it and are resting or recuperating.

Idleness is often romanticized, as epitomized by the Italian expression dolce far niente (‘it is sweet to do nothing’). Many people tell themselves that they work hard from a desire to be idle, rather than because they value their work or its product. Although our natural instinct is for idleness, most people find prolonged idleness difficult to tolerate. Queuing for half an hour in a traffic jam can leave us feeling restless and irritable, and many drivers prefer to take an alternative route even if it is likely to take them longer than sitting through the traffic.

Recent research suggests that, though our instinct is for idleness, people will pick upon the flimsiest excuse to keep busy. Moreover, people feel happier for being busy, even if their busyness is imposed upon them. In their paper, Idleness aversion and the need for justifiable busyness (2010), Hsee and colleagues surmise that many purported goals that people pursue may be little more than justifications for keeping busy.

This, I believe, is a manifestation of the manic defence: the tendency, when presented with uncomfortable thoughts or feelings, to distract the conscious mind either with a flurry of activity or with the opposite thoughts or feelings. ‘To do nothing at all,’ said Oscar Wilde, ‘is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.’ I discuss the manic defence at some length in my book Hide and Seek: The Psychology of Self-Deception.

Albert Camus introduces his philosophy of the absurd in his essay of 1942, The Myth of Sisyphus. In the final chapter, he compares the absurdity of man’s life with the plight of Sisyphus, a mythological king of Ephyra who was punished for his chronic deceitfulness by being made to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again. Camus optimistically concludes, ‘The struggle to the top is itself enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.’ [‘La lutte elle-même vers les sommets suffit à remplir un coeur d’homme. Il faut s’imaginer Sisyphe heureux.’]

It should be noted that many people who can seem bone idle are, in fact, nothing of the sort. Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria’s favourite prime minister, extolled the virtues of ‘masterful inactivity’. As chairman and CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch spent an hour a day in what he called ‘looking out of the window time’. Adepts of strategic idleness use their ‘idle’ moments, among others, to observe and enjoy life, find inspiration, maintain perspective, circumvent pettiness, reduce inefficiency and half-living, and conserve their health and energies for truly important tasks and problems.

Evolutionary theories of laziness

Our nomadic ancestors had to conserve energy to compete for scarce resources and to fight or flee enemies and predators. Expending effort on anything other than short-term advantage could jeopardize their very survival. In any case, in the absence of conveniences such as antibiotics, banks, roads, or refrigeration, it made little sense to think long term. Desire led to action, and action led to immediate gratification, without much need for proposing, planning, preparing, and so forth.

Today, mere survival has fallen off the agenda, and it is long-term strategic activity that leads to the best outcomes. Yet, our instinct is still to conserve energy, making us reluctant to expend effort on abstract projects with delayed and uncertain payoffs.

Intelligence and perspective can override instinct, and some people are more future-oriented than others, whom, from the heights of their success, they deride as ‘lazy’. Indeed, laziness has become so closely connected with poverty and failure that a poor person is often presumed lazy, no matter how hard he might actually work.

Psychological theories of laziness

In most cases, it is deemed painful to expend effort on long-term goals that do not provide immediate gratification. For a person to embark on a project, he has to value the return on his labour more than his loss of comfort. The problem is that he is disinclined to trust in a return that is both distant and uncertain. Because self-confident people are more apt to trust in the success and pay-off of their undertakings (and may even overestimate their likely returns), they are much more likely to overcome their natural laziness.

People are also poor calculators. Tonight they may eat and drink indiscriminately, without factoring in the longer-term consequences for their health and appearance, or even tomorrow morning’s hangover. The ancient philosopher Epicurus famously argued that pleasure is the highest good. But he cautioned that not everything that is pleasurable should be pursued, and not everything that is painful should be avoided. Instead, a kind of hedonistic calculus should be applied to determine which things are most likely to result in the greatest pleasure over time, and it is above all this hedonistic calculus that people are unable to handle.

Many lazy people are not intrinsically lazy, but are lazy because they have not found what they want to do, or because, for one reason or another, they are not doing it. To make matters worse, the job that pays their bills may have become so abstract and specialized that they can no longer fully grasp its purpose or product, and, by extension, their part in bettering other peoples’ lives. A builder can look upon the houses that he has built, and a doctor can take pride and satisfaction in the restored health and gratitude of his patients, but an assistant deputy financial controller in a large corporation cannot be at all certain of the effect of his labour—and so why bother?

Other factors that can lead to laziness are fear and hopelessness. Some people fear success, or do not have sufficient self-esteem to feel comfortable with success, and laziness is one way in which they can sabotage themself. Shakespeare conveys this idea much more eloquently and succinctly in Antony and Cleopatra: ‘Fortune knows we scorn her most when most she offers blows.’ Conversely, some people fear failure, and laziness is preferable to failure because it is at one remove. “It’s not that I failed,” they tell themselves, “it’s that I never tried.”

Other people are lazy because they see their situation as being so hopeless that they cannot even begin to think through it, let alone address it. Because these people do not have the ability to think through and address their situation, it could be argued that they are not truly lazy, and, to some extent, the same could be said of all lazy people. In other words, the very concept of laziness presupposes the ability to choose not to be lazy, that is, presupposes the existence of free will.

The solution

I could have ended this article with a self-help pep talk or the top-10 tips to overcome laziness, but, in the longer term, the only way to overcome laziness is to profoundly understand its nature and particular causes: to think, think, and think, and, over the years, slowly find a better way of living.

Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt In solitude, where we are least alone. —Lord Byron 

Loneliness is a complex and unpleasant emotional response to isolation or lack of companionship. It can be either transient or chronic, and typically includes anxiety about a lack of connectedness or communality.

Loneliness is so painful that, throughout history, solitary confinement has been used as a form of punishment and torture. More than just painful, loneliness is also damaging. Lonely people eat and drink more, and exercise and sleep less. They are at a higher risk of developing psychological problems such as alcoholism, depression, and psychosis, and physical problems such as infection, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.

Loneliness has been described as ‘social pain’. Just as physical pain has evolved to signal injury and prevent further injury, so loneliness may have evolved to signal social isolation and motivate us to seek out social bonds. Human beings are profoundly social animals, and depend upon their social group for sustenance and protection. Historically and still today, to be alone is to be in mortal danger.

Causes of loneliness

The infant is especially dependent upon others, and loneliness may evoke and evolve from early fears of abandonment and neglect.

In later life, loneliness is an outcome of social isolation or an absence of meaningful social relationships.

It can be precipitated by breakup, divorce, death, or the sudden loss or undermining of any important long-term relationship. Such a split entails not only the loss of a single meaningful person, but also of that person’s entire social circle.

Loneliness can also result from disruptive life events such as moving schools, changing jobs, immigrating, getting married, or having a child; from social problems such as racism or bullying; from psychological states such as shyness, agoraphobia, or depression; and from physical problems that restrict mobility or require special care.

Loneliness is a particular problem of industrialization and modernization. One American study found that, between 1985 and 2004, the proportion of people reporting that they had no one to confide in almost tripled. In 1985, respondents most frequently reported having three close confidants; in 2004, nought close confidants.

These findings may be explained by such factors as smaller household sizes, greater migration, heavier media consumption, and longer life expectancy.

Large conglomerations built on productivity and consumption at the expense of connection and contemplation can feel profoundly alienating.

Aside from being intrinsically isolating, long commutes can undermine community feeling and compromise time and opportunities for socializing.

The internet has become the great comforter, and seems to offer it all: news, knowledge, music, entertainment, shopping, relationships, and even sex. But in the longer term, it stokes our envy and longing, distorts our needs and priorities, desensitizes us to violence and suffering, and, by creating a false sense of connectedness, entrenches superficial relationships at the cost of living ones.

The paradox of modern living

Man has evolved into one of the most social of all animals. Suddenly, he finds himself apart and alone, not on a mountaintop, in a desert, or on a ship at sea, but in a city of men, in reach but out of touch.

Such is the paradox of modern living.

Despite our fear of being alone, our society is highly individualistic and materialistic, so much so that people are no longer called people but individuals; and no longer defined by their social role or needs and aspirations but by their commercial function or consumer status.

A doctor is no longer a doctor but a healthcare provider or service provider, and his or her patients are no longer patients but clients, consumers, or service users. Anyone with an involvement or interest in their relationship is a stakeholder. Stakeholders include investors, creditors, commissioners, managers, administrators, suppliers, collaborators, contributors, commentators, and competitors.

All these parties train in communication, negotiation, and conflict handling skills, and schedule time and organize activities for team building, group bonding, and networking. Yet they cannot find the opportunity or humanity to listen, think, or feel, or even to exercise elementary common sense.

In March 2013, while facing the Health Select Committee to defend his record over the death of patients admitted to Stafford Hospital, the then Chief Executive of the National Health Service (NHS) Sir David Nicholson confessed to Members of Parliament that “during that period, across the NHS as a whole, patients were not the centre of the way the system operated.”

Loners

Some people actively choose to isolate themselves from the rest of society, or, at least, not to seek out social interactions. Such ‘loners’ (the very term implies abnormality and deviousness) may be on a spiritual or religious quest, or simply dislike or distrust others. Of course, not all loners actively choose to be lonely, but many do.

Timon of Athens, who lived at around the same time as Plato, began life in wealth, lavishing money upon his flattering friends and, in accordance with his noble conception of friendship, never expecting anything in return. But when he ran out of money, all his friends deserted him, reducing him to the hard toil of labouring the fields. One day, as he tilled the earth, he uncovered a pot of gold, and his old friends returned just as quickly as they had left him. Rather than take them back, he cursed them and drove them away with sticks and clods of earth. He publically declared his hatred of mankind and withdrew into the forest, where, much to his chagrin, people sought him out as some kind of holy man.

The psychology of loneliness

Did Timon feel lonely in the forest? Probably not, for loneliness is not simply a response to isolation or lack of companionship, but a response to their perceived lack.

Because Timon no longer valued his friends or their companionship, he could not have desired or missed them, even though he may have pined for a better class of man, and, in that limited sense, felt lonely.

Broadly speaking, loneliness is not an objective state of affairs, but a subjective state of mind, a function of desired and achieved levels of social interaction, and also of type or types of social interaction. Thus, lovers often feel lonely in the specific absence of their beloved, even if completely surrounded by friends and family.

Lovers who have been jilted feel far lonelier than those who are merely apart from their beloved, so it is not only social interaction in itself that matters, but also the potential for, or possibility of, social interaction.

Conversely, it is common to feel lonely within a marriage because the relationship is no longer validating or nurturing us, but instead diminishing us and holding us back. As the 19th century writer Anton Chekhov cautions, ‘if you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry.’

Ironically, marriage comes about not merely or even mostly out a desire for companionship and sexual intercourse, but also and above all from a desperate desire to escape from the loneliness that plagues us throughout our life, from a desperate desire to escape from our inescapable demons.

And so it can only be a matter of time before the loneliness resurfaces, often with a vengeance; for, ultimately, loneliness is not the experience of lacking, but rather the experience of being, and inalienable from the human condition.

Existential loneliness

On this account, loneliness is the manifestation of the conflict between our desire for meaning and the total absence of meaning from the universe, an absence that is all the more glaring in modern societies which forsake traditional and religious accounts of meaning and replace them with thin truth.

So much explains why people with a strong sense of purpose and meaning, or simply with a strong narrative, such as Nelson Mandela or St Anthony of the Desert, are protected from loneliness, irrespective of their actual social circumstances.

St Anthony of the Desert sought out loneliness precisely because he understood that it could bring him closer to the real questions and real value of life.

After spending 15 years in a tomb and 20 years in an abandoned fort in the desert of Egypt, his devotees persuaded Anthony to leave the seclusion of the fort to instruct and organize them, whence his epithet, ‘Father of All Monks’ (‘Monk’ and ‘Monastery’ derive from the Ancient Greek ‘monos’, ‘alone’).

Anthony emerged from the fort not ill and emaciated as people had been expecting but healthy and radiant, and lived to the grand old age of 105, which in the 4th century must in itself have counted as a minor miracle.

Solitude

St Anthony did not lead a life of loneliness, but one of solitude.

Loneliness is the pain of being alone, and is damaging. Solitude is the joy of being alone, and is restorative, even empowering.

Our unconscious requires solitude to process and unravel problems, so much so that our body imposes solitude upon us every night in the form of sleep. Historically, people have delivered themselves from the oppression of the other or others by entering into a trance state, a phenomenon which, as a psychiatrist, I sometimes observe in my patients.

By removing us from the distractions, constraints, and judgements visited upon us by others, solitude frees us to reconnect with ourselves and derive ideas and meaning.

The 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argues that men without solitude are mere slaves because they have no choice but to parrot culture and society. In contrast, anyone who has unmasked society naturally seeks out solitude, which becomes the guarantor of a higher level of values and achievements. In The Dawn, Nietzsche writes,

I go into solitude so as not to drink out of everybody’s cistern. When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think I really think. After a time it always seems as if they want to banish my self from myself and rob me of my soul.

Solitude delivers us from the hustlebustle of everyday life into an eternal and universal consciousness which reconnects us with our present, past, future, and deepest human nature, and also with the natural world, which quickens into our muse and companion. This lends us the depth and distance to dissociate from earthly concerns and bitter and irrational emotions, and stimulates problem-solving, creativity, and spirituality.

Solitude enables us to regulate and adjust our life, and, in so doing, to create the strength and security for deeper solitude and the meaning that guards against loneliness. Just as loneliness opens up a vicious circle, so solitude opens up a virtuous circle.

The life of St Anthony may leave the impression that aloneness is at odds with attachment. But this need not be the case, so long as the one is not pitted against the other. For the early 20th century poet Rainer Maria Rilke, the highest task of lovers is that each stands guard over the solitude of the other.

Sadly, not everyone is capable of solitude, and, for such people, aloneness merely results in loneliness. Younger people often find aloneness difficult, while more mature people may relish it and actively seek it out. So much suggests that solitude, the joy of being alone, stems from a state of maturity and inner richness.

Concluding remarks

Far from being a scourge, aloneness has an important role to play in any human life, and the capacity and ability for solitude are a pre-requisite for individuation and self-realization.

In his book of 1988, Solitude: A Return to the Self, the late psychiatrist Anthony Storr convincingly argues that,

The happiest lives are probably those in which neither interpersonal relationships nor impersonal interests are idealized as the only way to salvation. The desire and pursuit of the whole must comprehend both aspects of human nature.

References:

McPherson, M et al. (2006): Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades. American Sociological Review 71 (3): 353-75.