How to Be Compassionate to Yourself: Have a Lazy Break

Have you ever felt guilty for taking a break when there’s still work to be done? Do you want to know how to be compassionate to yourself?

Devon Price’s book, Laziness Does Not Exist, challenges the cultural belief that productivity defines your value as a person. You’ll discover how decoupling your self-worth from your accomplishments opens the door to genuine self-compassion and healthier boundaries.

Continue reading to transform your relationship with rest and productivity forever.

Deprogram Your Beliefs About Laziness

The biggest barrier to accepting that so-called laziness can be good for you is the cultural belief we discussed at the beginning of this guide— that how much you accomplish defines you. Price refutes any equivalence between your productivity, your moral character, and your worth as a person. To undo this belief, he says you’ll have to learn how to be compassionate to yourself and decouple your ideas about productivity from your self-image and your views of other people, while learning to focus on personal growth and setting boundaries around how much you can do.

(Shortform note: The mindset Price prescribes is what Brené Brown refers to as worthiness. In The Gifts of Imperfection, she defines worthiness as the conviction that you are good enough as you are, flaws and all. Brown connects worthiness to the inherent values of vulnerability, compassion, and connection with others. The opposite of worthiness is shame: the feeling that you don’t deserve to be loved because you’re not good enough—or, in the context of Price’s book, because you’re not working hard enough. Brown argues that if you cultivate worthiness in place of shame, you’ll develop inner strength, get more joy out of life, and find that you’re truly able to be yourself.)

Price says the key to overcoming the belief that how much you do equals how much you’re worth is to learn compassion, both for yourself and others. In your own life, you’ll have to come to terms with the fact that letting yourself be lazy means you won’t achieve as much—and that’s OK. You won’t be the perfect worker, the perfect parent, or the perfect friend, but those were never achievable goals, and chasing them isn’t good for your physical or mental health. Instead, Price suggests that you can strive to be as good a worker, parent, or friend as you can while still prioritizing your personal needs. This isn’t selfish—it’s self-care that pays higher dividends than spreading yourself thin and working down to the bone.

(Shortform note: The challenge in following Price’s advice to accept imperfection is that it might be painful—especially if you’ve been taught all your life to strive to do the best you can. However, even that pain can be useful, especially if you’re willing to sit with that discomfort. In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson argues that discomfort promotes growth and that letting yourself experience discomfort toughens you up while making you more empathetic towards other people’s struggles. According to Manson, letting yourself feel the pain of your imperfections doesn’t mean “giving up” on yourself. Instead, it’s an act of self-compassion that nurtures your growth as a person.)

Also, Price argues that you shouldn’t look down on those who don’t fit society’s “hard-working” standards. It’s important to acknowledge that systemic issues like racism, classism, and ableism affect what opportunities people have, what unseen struggles they face, and how much they can achieve. We’re taught to label those we believe to be underachievers as “lazy,” when instead we should ask what obstacles they have that we know nothing about. Perhaps that employee who’s chronically late is caring for an elderly parent. Perhaps a person who can’t get a job was forced to quit school for mental health reasons. Price says the “lazy” label masks a host of real problems that ought to be addressed with kindness, not scorn.

(Shortform note: Price’s examples of calling other people lazy are, in psychological terms, a result of a cognitive bias called the fundamental attribution error, in which we blame someone else’s behavior on their personality and not their circumstances. According to neuroscientific research, this error occurs during a process called “mentalization,” in which you try to guess at the other person’s thought process. When mentalizing, you focus so much on what the other person thinks and intends that you ignore external influences on their behavior. This process is mostly unconscious, so it’s hard to recognize when the error occurs. Nevertheless, it’s a bias to be aware of when judging someone else’s character by their apparent success.)

Learn to Be Lazy

To escape from the trap of measuring yourself and others in terms of accomplishments, Price suggests that you need to shift your focus from external achievements to internal growth. A crucial part of this is understanding that personal growth isn’t a competition—it’s not something you track on social media or use to compare your progress to others. Instead, it’s a gradual process of change, healing, and awareness. As you slow down to focus on your needs and rediscover who you are, you don’t have to tick off any boxes on a scorecard. Instead, just be aware of each positive step and enjoy them as they come without needing to do more.

(Shortform note: When applying Price’s advice, keep in mind that the point of slowing down and tending to your needs is not to make you more productive in the long run. In Rest Is Resistance, Tricia Hersey criticizes many popular rejuvenation techniques for doing just that—disguising productivity-boosting sessions as opportunities to rest and recharge. In particular, she cites corporate retreats as a prime example of pseudo-growth and development. Hersey says that self-care, rest, and healing aren’t things you should tend to only on special occasions, but should rather be an ongoing part of your life.)

Price says the other vital step you’ll have to take is to learn not to be ashamed of limits on your time and energy. The majority of psychologists recognize that setting boundaries is crucial for healthy relationships. Price takes this a step further to argue that you should feel free to set boundaries in every aspect of your life—how much effort you put into work, how much you’ll do to support your friends and family, and how much you’ll be involved in any activity. As suggested before, this isn’t selfish behavior. Instead, think of maintaining healthy limits as playing the long game—by tending to your own well-being, you maximize how much you can give to yourself, your loved ones, and the world at large over a long, happy lifetime.