By Kel Weinhold.

Well comrades, we have reached the moment of rebound.

If you have been following these steps (sorting, noticing, defining,etc), basically doing all the things and even seeing regular progress, it is very likely that there are things you are STILL not doing.

This is usually where the old story comes back. (i.e. the rebound)

You know the narrative: I am lazy. I have no discipline. I just need to push harder.

Can we just not?

No one wants to listen to bullshit. And calling anyone who has worked as hard as you have for so long as you have “lazy,” is spewing some major bullshit. You aren’t lazy. You are misaligned.

Laziness is a moral judgment. Misalignment is a structural problem.

When you are aligned with a piece of work, even if it is difficult, you can find a point of engagement. It may require time and effort, and maybe even outside support, but there is a pathway in.

When you are misaligned, the pathway disappears.

This is why we can be extremely productive in some areas of their life and completely stuck in others. It is not that they suddenly forgot how to work. It is that one set of tasks is aligned and the other is not.

As you are fully aware, you can force yourself through the thicket for short periods (Deadlines will do that!) but it is not sustainable. The moment the pressure lifts, your energy drops out again. It is a pattern.

What I want you to wire in is that this pattern is not a character flaw. It is a signal.*

Perhaps you are being asked to produce something you do not believe in, or to participate in a system in a way that feels off. You can comply, but it costs you more each time. (Remember projects and values change over time. You may have started in a place that you no longer inhabit.)

You can realign the work. This might mean changing the scope, redefining done, or adjusting how you approach it so that it better fits your current reality.

Perhaps the effort required no longer matches your current capacity. You may have agreed to it when you had more time and energy or when you were less in touch with your tendency to over promise!. Your life has changed, but the commitment has not.

You can contain the work. If it is required but misaligned, you set clear boundaries around how much time and energy it receives. You do it to the defined standard and no more.

Perhaps the work no longer matches your identity. You have shifted fields, changed priorities, or simply become a different version of yourself. The project belongs to a past self, and continuing it feels like wearing clothes that no longer fit.

You can release the work. If it is not required and no longer aligned, you let it go. Not someday. Not after you have suffered through it. Close the loop by removing it from your list.

And finally, perhaps the work was never aligned to begin with. You said yes because you felt you should. Because it would look good. Because someone asked. Because it’s easier for you to say yes than it is to deal with saying no.

You can “un-yes.” It’s true. You are always at choice. Of course there are consequences with every choice, but it is still a choice.

Each of these options requires honesty. Honesty can feel destabilizing if you have built your identity around being someone who can push through anything.

And here we are back at the consequence of misalignment.

If you have ever dealt with a misalignment in a moving system (think bike chains) you know the result is friction. With Works In Progress, when that friction builds up, we tend to interpret the drag as a force that needs to be overcome. We have been trained by capitalism to discipline ourselves into compliance. But, like I said, “discipline” does not solve misalignment. It just temporarily overrides it. (And beats you further into submission.)

As with most coaching advice I give, the goal of this step is not to eliminate all misalignment. That is not realistic. We work inside systems that require us to do at least some work that does not perfectly fit. No matter what the magic fix books try to sell us, life is not fully customizable.

What I am challenging you to do is to reduce unnecessary misalignment and to stop blaming yourself for the parts that remain. Work that remains may still be hard, but hopefully you’ll know why you are doing it.

So the next time you catch yourself thinking that you are lazy, pause. Look at the work in front of you. Ask where the misalignment is. More often than not, the problem is that you are trying to make yourself do something that doesn’t fit and your system is trying to get your attention.

*Side note: Everything that you have done so far has shone a light on potential misalignment:

• Your minus list is full of misalignment.
• Your avoidance is often pointing directly at misalignment.
• Your undefined version of done may be hiding misalignment by making the work feel infinite.
• Your reliance on external definitions of success may be pulling you toward work that no longer fits.
• And your fading motivation may be a response to investing energy in outcomes you cannot control.