Big dreams, zero drive
A personal exploration of what it feels like to dream big, but move slowly in a culture that worships speed
It’s a quiet night. You hear crickets chirp outside your cracked window as a soft, early fall breeze drifts in. A steaming mug of tea perches on the edge of your desk, and your laptop is open to a fresh Word document. All your tabs are ready, references lined up.
You’re going to do it—you’re going to write that essay.
Yet…three days after the deadline, the document is still empty.
It isn’t that you don’t care or don’t have ambition. Your notes app is crammed with book ideas, business plans, and half-baked essays, just like this one. A peek into your brain would resemble something like Wonderland. You have the dream, the vision, and the resources. So what’s missing?
This is the story of every ambitious person who can picture a glittering future but just can’t bring it into fruition—every ambitious person deemed “lazy” by society. It paralyzes you, hinders you from just starting with that first sentence. But why?
Maybe it’s a fear of failure. Psychology Today’s article on the myth of laziness delves into how anxious avoidance can cause high achievers to feel “lazy.” In our capitalist society, we’re pressured to churn out product and keep ourselves busy in order to drive the economy and perpetuate the system. We’re made to feel only as valuable as what we produce—in a system like this, fearing failure comes almost naturally. How many times have you opened a problem set just to close it immediately because you’re “not good at math?” Even with genuine interest in the topic, we can feel paralyzed by anxiety, which translates into what seems like indolence.
But even people with no interest in perfection can look “lazy.” Maybe it’s less about fear and more about our internal state—exhaustion, burnout, or just being stretched “too thin”.
Dr. Ferrara’s blog post explains the difference between burnout and laziness, highlighting that merely avoiding productivity is not the same thing as being chronically exposed to stress. It’s practically an initiation into the University of Toronto—or university in general—to be overloaded with work. Midterm season rolls around, and suddenly you’re growing grey hairs from your head, reminding yourself to take breaks. But you can’t afford that—it’s always go, go, go. Next thing you know, your history paper is due on the same day as your math test and you can’t bring yourself to write or study.
But can you think of a time when you weren’t tired and didn’t fear performance, and you still couldn’t finish that last minute assignment, even with all your plans right in front of you? Sometimes it’s not nerves or exhaustion, but the sheer weight of too many choices. We’ve all been victims of overthinking, of indecision, of self-criticism. Sometimes this whirlwind of choices and ideas can turn into T.V. static, or analysis paralysis. When you’ve looked at the question from every which way, it’s hard, almost impossible, to decide how to go about it, to decide which way is the right way. Being bombarded by all of those ideas at once can overwhelm you, and render you unable to choose at all. This can look like quitting, or giving up, or “being lazy,” but it can feel impossible to even try when you’re in such a demanding headspace.
Maybe it’s not anxiety or fatigue or overwhelm—or maybe it’s all those things at the same time. But the bottom line is, laziness is a very catch-all term for what is a very nuanced experience. It’s easy to just see something stationary and deem it unwilling to move, without considering whether or not it’s trying to, or what factors are intercepting its path.
So, maybe you’ll find yourself back at your desk, mug in hand, laptop open and empty. Maybe your mom will walk in and snap at you to study, or maybe that midnight due date will dance in front of your eyes, or maybe your own conscience will berate you for your paralysis. Maybe an observer would consider you lazy—but they don’t see the mental load, the fear, the indecision, or the exhaustion that has brought you here. And most of all, they don’t see the array of colourful aspirations and big ideas in your head.
