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I have had quite a number of lazy, yes, lazy, career coaching clients. They know they should network and cold-contact employers but they do no more than answer a few ads, have a resume and LinkedIn profile, or maybe get more schooling. After all, as a student, they’re on the taking end—getting to learn things without having to give much back, and everything is nicely structured for them unlike in the professional work world. They also like school because grade inflation allows them to do little to get passing grades and, voila, they have a socially acceptable reason to avoid being productive.
Such clients rationalize their laziness with counselor-inspired excuses such as fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of imposing, and fear of embarrassment. Many (no, not all) therapists, counselors, and coaches dispense such explanations to, consciously or not, keep their clients liking them and thus continuing to fork over that $100+ per hour. Those explanations make clients feel good because they externalize responsibility, so those clients needn’t confront their laziness, their unwillingness to grow up and accept a measure of uncomfortability as is required for making a contribution, indeed for being a responsible adult. But the word “lazy” is not allowable in today's polite lexicon, let alone to be uttered by a paid-for source of “support.”
But having been career and personal coach to 5,300 clients over the years, I can confidently assert and deeply believe that many people really are just lazy.
There is a Grand Canyon of difference between my successful and my unsuccessful clients. Yes, intelligence (the ability to solve complex problems) is the #1 differentiator but drive is #2. Though out of fashion, "tough love" has, on average, been more effective than "support" in helping my lazy clients move forward. So here are tough-love responses to the standard excuses that my lazy clients make for their inaction:
“I’m not sure what I want to be when I grow up. I don’t want to pick the wrong thing.” There is no one right career. After just brief career exploration, a person has much more to lose by waiting for “the” career than by picking something, throwing themselves into becoming excellent at it, and adapting the career to suit their strengths.
“I’m afraid of imposing.” Emailing or phoning a brief, honest query to an employer imposes no more than when stopping someone on the street for directions. When someone stops you and asks for directions, unless you’re in a rush, do you feel put upon? Neither does that potential employer or networking contact.
“I’m afraid of embarrassing myself.” Fine, so practice on yourself, then on your friend, and then reach out to your low-priority contacts first. Fear of embarrassment doesn’t justify not networking and cold-contacting employers. Alas, those tactics are required to land a good job unless you’re a star with a difficult-to-acquire, in-demand skill set, for example, artificial intelligence programming. And if you were a star in an difficult and in-demand field, you probably wouldn’t need to pay a career counselor—Employers would be begging you to apply for good jobs.
“I’m afraid of rejection.” If you fear that rejection would confirm that you’re a loser, do you need to lower your job target at least for now? Or if that fear is irrational, feel the fear but force yourself to do it anyway. After a while, as every phobia therapist knows, you’ll get more desensitized. Or who knows? You may, more quickly than you think, get a good job offer—as long as your job target really is appropriate to your ability, skills, and the job market.
“I don’t want to sell out.” My clients who invoke that excuse proclaim that they’re an artist, socialist, whatever, and so they argue that they need to devote themselves to their art or activism. That’s feeble. Unless you’re deeply talented, work hard, and are well-connected, your visual or performing art is probably not a career but a hobby. Regarding your activism, you have two choices: Walk your talk by fighting for that rare, well-paying nonprofit job. Or like most people, make your advocacy your avocation.
The real reason job seekers are lazy
I’m not talking here about people with severe mental or physical illness. I’m talking about the garden-variety procrastinator. The core reason they do a desultory job search is that they know they won’t starve. Their parents, romantic partner, or the taxpayer will pay their bills. So they suppress that they’re parasites or fail to recognize that their life’s worth is defined by their contribution. Instead, they use the aforementioned rationalizations to justify their “need” for lazy activities: to meditate, be in nature, and/or that helicopter parenting is required, when in fact, that may hurt the child more than it helps.
Those clients' hedonistic lifestyles go beyond what they can even rationalize as productive. Atop the hiking, yoga, etc., they spend much time under the influence, playing video games, watching TV, playing sports, chatting with friends, spending lots of time having sex, playing on Facebook and Instagram, and shopping in the mall or on the Net. They are useless, no, worse than useless, because some more honorable person gives up their hard-earned money to reward their sloth.
Unless the person has a serious mental or physical illness, rarely would a person facing homelessness continue to be so inert. It’s only when their brain, if only unconsciously, calculates that their life will be more pleasant by working no more than minimally, do they choose to be lazy in looking for work—contribution or responsibility be damned.
A solution
You must keep two things top-of-mind:
1. If you don’t suffer from a major mental or physical illness, you must recognize, not suppress, that not becoming self-supporting does make you a parasite on the taxpayer or on that person you claim to love.
2. Recognize that your life’s value does depends heavily on the extent of your contribution. Even if you’re a ditch digger, you’re making a contribution, but watching Netflix, backpacking, gossiping, playing a sport, or attending drug and essential-oil-soaked shamanic dancing retreats is not contribution.
If you keep just those two things in mind, and perhaps write what Michael Edelstein calls Three-Minute-Exercises, all the typical tactics are irrelevant: time-management schemes, the Pomodoro Technique, blah-blah-blah. My successful clients and friends use none of that stuff. They know, or at least have learned, without giving it another thought, that their primary responsibility is to be productive.
I read this aloud on YouTube.
