Yeah, I’ve always been lazy too. Never did my homework, rarely could be bothered to do my chores, one million unfinished projects and unrealized ideas, couldn’t hold down a job for long, etc. I was completely convinced I’m just a lazy, useless, unmotivated sack of dookie, until one day, when a psychiatrist introduced me to the concept of “executive dysfunction”, something I’d never heard of before. One ADHD diagnosis and years of therapy later I am in a pretty decent spot. The most important thing is that I have become much better at being kind to myself. I was never truly lazy, I’d just spent most of my life trying to fit my square-peg self into a round-hole society and become too hopelessly burned out by trying to fulfill the round-hole expectations to do pretty much anything, ever. You mentioned your dad has ADHD, and it is apparently hereditary as fuck, so I think you should at least look into it. My mom and most of her siblings have it, some of my cousins have it, and my brother has it as well.

When I start feeling bad about being lazy, I like to think about it like there’s good lazy and bad lazy. Like, my cats are good lazy. They don’t do shit. They just fuckin lay around all day and they seem to love it. In fact, I think most animals would just fuckin lay around all day if they had the opportunity. Fuckin laying around all day seems to be the peak of existence in nature. If I’m feeling bad about getting to experience the sheer bliss of fuckin laying around all day, then it’s likely I’m not being good lazy, but rather bad lazy. Bad lazy is in fact not laziness at all, but executive dysfunction in a laziness disguise.

A big thing for me was learning that I never accepted “being tired” (mentally or physically) as a valid excuse to rest, so I’d spiral into bad laziness because I was too tired to do the thing, but couldn’t rest until I’d done the thing, so I’d try to somehow escape from the impossible contradiction by scrolling instagram reels or whatever until I either forced myself to doing the thing and hating it, or gave up on doing the thing and hating myself for being bad lazy and wasting so much time. It turns out that I can, in fact, just say “I am simply too tired right now, I will do it later”. No use trying to fit my square-peg ass into a round-hole expectation, I’ll just burn myself out again. I’ll make square holes. I can just eat a snack now and make dinner at 10PM instead. People won’t die if I don’t fold the laundry today. The shop is still open for hours, there’s no rush. Yes, honey, I know I said I’ll deal with it after work, but I need a couple of hours to rest. It doesn’t make the things any easier to do per se, but just knowing that it’s okay to be tired and that I’m “allowed” to take some time to rest takes a lot of the pressure off. I’m still learning this shit, and it’s ironically a chore in itself to remind myself to let myself rest and be good lazy when I need it.

You’re not irredeemably dysfunctional! There’s probably square holes for you as well.