Laziness is a difficult rut to get out of, there’s no doubt about it. Sometimes, you might imagine what consistent productivity looks like—but your network television shows pull you right back into the same habit. The good news is, laziness is just that: a habit. And fortunately, by using these five helpful tips, you can kill laziness in yourself as painlessly as possible. 

5 Ways You Can Kill Laziness Today

1. Remove Distractions

Distractions are often your Achille’s heel that is contributing to your laziness. First, think about what passive activities you spend the most time on: television, video games, your smartphone, the internet, social media, etc. Honestly consider how many hours these actions consume your life each day (if you have an iPhone, you can see exactly how much time you spend on your phone, right down to the app — go into Settings, tap “Battery,” and tap on the clock icon under “Battery Usage”). For most people, they take up several hours. If this is the case for you, do yourself a favor and remove all these guilty pleasures from your environment. Instead, allow them to reward you after you work.

Also, think about other activities that could disrupt a conducive atmosphere for you. Are you truly lazy, or just overwhelmed? If you’re too absorbed with the idea of entertaining your partner, your kids, your friends, your family members, and your pets, how can you ever devote time to taking care of you? To overcome this, try creating a space in your home that is only for you. Make it a decluttered area that will motivate you—a place where you want to be productive, not feel like you have to work.

2. Think Positively

Your mind can easily be filled with negative thoughts. Guilt and self-doubt tend to plague people who are lazy. After all, if you notoriously do nothing all day, what do you have to show for your life—right? No. Remove those thoughts now. If you want to kill laziness, also kill the poor self-image you’ve created for yourself. Remind yourself that you can change your life at any moment, so why not start here and now?

In addition to removing those negative emotions, you’ve probably trained your brain to automatically think about procrastinating any task. Maybe you believe you can’t change that about yourself. However, despite that self-doubt that still weighs you down every now and then, procrastination is just a habit, too. If you’ve created this habit, you can kill it—and you can ultimately kill laziness, as well.

Throw out your cleverly-designed excuses. Stop thinking you can push this off until tomorrow, or start that task in a few hours. It won’t happen until you take action. And to take action, you must think positively. Reinforce the idea that you are competent, capable, and willing. Focus on the reward of finally achieving your goals. Your self-esteem will rise exponentially, and you’ll be in a cycle of positivity.

[RELATED: Sit Up Straight and Relax! Productivity Tips for Digital Nomads]

3. Organize Your Day

This one might seem obvious, but it can truly be difficult for some people. Taking action like this can feel like a massive step. However, organizing your day can be essential to killing your laziness. Set aside the first moments of your day—or the night before—to prepare for everything ahead of you. Consider using a planner, journal, dry erase board, or electronic calendar to keep a visual of your daily activities. Ideally, you should instill a method that can break down each day by the hour. Include your appointments, important phone calls, errands, and even habitual activities like cleaning and meal prep in your schedule.

If you feel too overwhelmed by this, repeat Step 2, and give yourself a break—without distractions. Organizing your day will help you strategize how you spend your time, and it best prepares you for success in the long run. Imagine being able to eliminate the excuse of forgetting something from your repertoire. And the more productive you are, the more organizing helps you prepare for the time that you could potentially reward yourself with in the future.

4. Break Up Large Tasks

Want to trick your mind into thinking you’re more successful than you actually are? Try breaking large tasks down into smaller ones. Sure, by now you’ve organized all that you have on your agenda for the day. But sometimes, even the most mundane tasks can seem hard to do. If this is your scenario, breaking up your large tasks will kill laziness in a heartbeat. The more tasks you accomplish—even the little ones—the more you’ll want to do. It’s inevitable. This type of motivation easily translates to productivity, and we all know productivity is the antithesis of laziness.

5. Give Yourself Deadlines

Sometimes, when you’re first getting started with the productivity grind, a specific deadline isn’t enough to motivate you. Procrastination, laziness’s ugly cousin, can easily creep up on you. If you have had the habit of putting tasks off until the last moment, giving deadlines for yourself is especially key.

This goes hand-in-hand with organizing your day. When planning, you should not only consider when a task must be done but also if you have flexibility in your calendar to get it done early. If possible, you might try giving yourself a three-hour window before a finished activity. It would be well worth having something done early instead of late. And if you establish the habit of procrastinating until your due date instead of the task’s due date, you would have all of your goals completed every time. Just make sure to be as generous as possible when allotting timeframes for yourself. If there isn’t high pressure in completing all of your asks, you have much better odds of accomplishing them instead of fearfully tossing them aside.

While the idea of killing your laziness appears to be a process, it doesn’t have to be a huge ordeal. All it really takes is a determined state of mind and some reinforced healthy habits. Preparation is most important, as it helps ensure that your goals go from unattainable to suddenly within reach. Remember to believe in yourself during each step of the way, for soon you will be achieving everything you hope to imagine.