A Year-Long Experiment in Unlaziness

I gave myself permission to do whatever I wanted in 2022. This is what happened.

I was told — directly and implicitly — two key messages about myself as a child. They are mutually exclusive. I believed both.

On one hand, I was talented, “the smart one,” nerdy, good at everything I tried. I had “so much potential.” On the other, the same people who told me I’d be famous one day — for my songwriting, or art, or books, whatever was my focus at the moment — called me lazy and disorganized and unmotivated. You have too much potential to waste an entire day playing The Sims. What kind of person does her homework but doesn’t turn it in? Aren’t you too smart to be that dumb?

These messages were engrained in me. I was convinced by the time I went to college that I should have been a child prodigy but I was too lazy to have bothered. My parents taught me — I’m not sure how intentionally, and I don’t want to know — that my job was to use my brain to become famous, or at least rich, so I could take care of them in their old age.

Naturally, by twenty-one, I felt like a failure. I’d passed my expiration date for child prodigy. I was done for. I braced myself for a life of mediocrity, when the best was already behind me and I hadn’t even done that right.

By my late twenties, when I was a mother of two and a business owner, most people who met me didn’t believe the stories I told about perpetually messy backpacks and bad grades. They met someone “so organized her spreadsheets have spreadsheets,” maybe a little Type A, always on top of things.

That image of organization I worked to maintain protected me from who I saw: not a master organizer but someone flailing — juggling so many systems that didn’t quite work for me that I needed an organizer for my organization arsenal. I kept myself in a constant state of anxiety that manifested in, essentially, a decade-long stomachache. But I got shit done. I figured that was the only way I could.

In my mind, I was still a lazy excuse for a human, waiting for the million things I kept in the balance to break, all so I could masquerade as someone competent and worthy of running my own business. I was sure without my elaborate set of yearly / quarterly / monthly / weekly / daily goals — ones I rarely accomplished to 100% — all my motivation would crumble. Instead of working, I’d take naps and play video games. If you stripped me of SMART goals and all my attempts at routines and schedules, you’d see that I was the imposter all along.

But by the end of 2021 — when I was thirty-three — I was fairly convinced I had ADHD. I had a subconscious assumption for years that all people fought habits and routines in favor of variety like I did, but their brains were just better at adapting than I was. But maybe not? Maybe ADHD was the reason I couldn’t stick to routines until and unless I felt like my life depended on it.

Which led me to an uncomfortable truth — uncomfortable simply because it went against the narrative I’d been telling myself at least since the age of twelve — what if I’m not lazy?

What if I trusted myself to be disciplined when it mattered and then do whatever I want?

There’s an old Christian saying that goes, “Love God and do what you please.” The implication is that if you love God well, your wants will change to the point that you will naturally want godly things. I don’t have any intention of getting into religion here — for all the good and harm it’s done me — but I did wonder if a similar principle could apply secularly.

Could I trust my work ethic and do what I pleased? Would it work? Would I work?

So I made 2022 a year without goals.

I didn’t set a writing goal. Not for a finished book, or words written, or hours worked. I didn’t set an income goal. I didn’t set goals for Medium, or passive income, or books read, or hours worked. Instead, I asked questions, and did my best to do what I pleased.

My experiment wasn’t perfect. I tended to make “not-goal goals” where I could sneak goals in under the radar in my questions. For instance, I didn’t set any kind of goal for Medium, but I did ask myself, “What would it look like to write ten articles per month on Medium?”

So while it wasn’t perfectly goalless, I found I never erred on the side of laziness. Not really. I listened to my brain and my body more. With help from a therapist, I tried to teach myself that it’s okay to change plans when I can’t get into the mindset of whatever I’d planned for that day. I reduced my scheduled alarms to the fewest possible instead of forcing myself onto a Pomodoro routine, and found I preferred longer chunks of work to shorter ones.

I even spent a few long lunches playing video games when work was exceedingly awesome (and thus already done) or like slogging through molasses.

But usually? I worked.

I also never got close to the end of the list of things I wanted to do. There was always a project waiting when I set one aside. I didn’t get around to either of the family-admin tasks that have been on my radar — making my recipes ADHD-friendly and creating yearly photo books — because I wanted to work and write.

Not having goals made it easier for me to take risks. Most of them didn’t pay off. I’m still glad I tried things.

I’m proud of what I’ve built on Medium, but hundreds of hours amounted to hundreds of dollars, and — fair warning — I bill out my usual work at more than $1/hour. Then again, because I entered the year goalless, I didn’t start 2022 with anything more than a hope I’d get monetized at all. Both of my publications, Building a Novel and Style Edit, were decisions I made on a whim — a manifestation of ADHD’s impulsiveness being used for good. This week, I got a notification from Medium I’m a Top Writer in Fashion. That would have never even crossed my mind to hope for a year ago.

I created — and failed at launching — a Skillshare course this fall. But despite this external failure, I still came up with the idea, separated it into segments, filmed those, worked on writing marketing copy, and more. I’m proud of the content. Refilming and re-editing it would probably take me less than 10 hours. I bet one day that project will itch and I’ll want to try again, either for Skillshare or retooling for my own website or the EFA, where I have a few other webinars. I don’t need to make it a goal. I trust Future Me will know what she wants to do with it.

I even launched an Etsy shop on impulse last week. I made an anxiety journal for my oldest and decided to share it. I am working on ADHD tools for my youngest, too. I’m doing my shop wrong — all the best articles say not to launch a shop without at least five items for sale — but I don’t particularly care. I’ll have a break between editing jobs soon enough and I will want to fill in the gaps.

I didn’t finish a book this year in any sense of the word. I’m midway through yet another Enchantress revision — okay, midway is generous — and I’ve essentially not touched my adult rom-com since NaNo ended. I haven’t wanted to. I’ve been drawing instead.

I’ll want to write again soon, though. I can feel it starting to itch.

I thought about ending this post by quantifying what I did accomplish. The words I’d written, the projects completed, the fun things I’ve done. But my failures and accidental successes feels like enough, and quantifying my work in a year I decided not to quantify things feels a little disingenuous. All I really need to take from my year is this:

I’m not lazy.

I can hyperfocus and then forget about something, but I’ll almost always come back around to it. I’ll start more things than I can finish well. The things I least expect to stick will stick hardest.

I can trust myself.

And, at the end of the day, is there a better sentence than that?