so I’ve seen a few posts going around about executive dysfunction lately, specifically about the difference between executive dysfunction, procrastination, brainfog, fatigue, [insert other disabled reasons for not completing tasks]… and laziness. they’ll talk about how, fundamentally, laziness is about how you Don’t Want To Do A Task And Don’t Care, and how other reasons ultimately boil down to some sort of inability to complete the task.
and the thing is? I honestly don’t think the difference matters.
as someone who was abused and gaslit my entire academic career specifically over schoolwork I failed to do because of executive dysfunction and procrastination, I don’t think it’s helpful to talk about laziness as a thing that exists, rather than as a capitalist construct designed to blame people for not being as productive as they “could” be.
even though I identified symptoms of executive dysfunction while I was experiencing them, I had no words for what I was experiencing. so when I was asked why I didn’t do the homework dozens of times, all I could say was that I didn’t know. this wasn’t acceptable, obviously. I was told that I had to know why. was I incapable of doing the homework? I didn’t think I was. so I must be neglecting it on purpose out of laziness. eventually I internalized the message that I was a lazy person who lazily didn’t do homework because I was lazy.
I don’t remember what exactly it was that broke through the gaslighting and made me realize I was experiencing executive dysfunction, but I do know that if I’d seen these posts back when I was a teenager about the difference between laziness, which is bad, and executive dysfunction, which is value-neutral, I would have fully believed myself to be a lazy person. even if I had the symptoms of executive dysfunction right in front of me, where I could see how closely they matched with my life. I was so convinced that I was morally deficient that the option that meant I was a bad person making excuses would have seemed more right to me.
I get that there’s an impulse a lot of neurodivergent people have to lash out at the hurtful, hateful labels that were applied to them by picking another target and saying “I’m not lazy! that guy’s actually lazy!” but ultimately, this game of hot potato hurts more people than it helps, because it only helps people by letting them take a turn punching down on those who are even more vulnerable than they are.
Laziness does not exist - There was a great article on Medium about exactly this! I very much agree. It’s only logical to Not Want to do a Thing because you just know how much you are going to struggle, because that happens again and again and again. You can’t really separate motivation and executive dysfunction and apathy - they bleed into each other
