Is complacency creeping up on you, like it does to so many of us? Are you getting overly comfortable with things? Sliding into a state of easy contentment? Blissfully unaware of your life traps or leadership derailers? Showing the signs of complacency?
Complacency can prevent you from doing the things you really want to do in life.
There are many areas in which you can become complacent. For example:
- Health and vitality (both physical and mental)
- Relationships with your spouse or partner (if applicable), family, and/or friends
- Work (potentially including not just paid work but also family caregiving, household management, and volunteering)
- Education and learning
- Service (contributions to family, friends, classmates, colleagues, community, and/or causes or places)
- Activities (e.g., play, fun, hobbies, travel, free time, vacations)
- Financial (e.g., income, assets, security, savings, investments, wealth-building, etc.)
- Personal core (including things like happiness, fulfillment, gratitude, authentic alignment, and religion or spirituality)
(Consider using my Quality of Life Assessment to evaluate where you stand in these areas.)
Quality of Life Assessment
Evaluate your quality of life in ten key areas by taking our assessment. Discover your strongest areas, and the areas that need work, then act accordingly.
How to know if you’ve fallen into the complacency trap? Here are 17 indicators.
17 Signs of Complacency
When you’re complacent, you tend to:
- Take things for granted
- Have so much routine that things feel boring or monotonous
- Start losing your ambition and initiative
- Stick to what you know instead of pushing yourself sometimes
- Stay in your comfort zone
- Start to “phone it in” at work or in relationships (e.g., poor communication or minimal effort)
- See a decline in your work output and/or quality
- Stop learning and growing
- Resist change or trying new things
- Avoid risk
- Resist input or feedback
- Miss opportunities
- Take the path of least resistance
- Put off more difficult tasks
- Stay in a job that isn’t challenging
- Give up on your aspirations and dreams
- Start to feel apathetic
The Downsides of Complacency
Comfort and satisfaction aren’t inherently bad. They’re good, up to a point.
The issue arises when you become too comfortable and complacent, losing the motivation and passion to embrace challenges and chase your dreams.
Complacency drains your drive and leads to inaction when you should be taking steps forward. It prevents necessary improvements, reduces initiative, and diminishes your sense of hope. Over time, it fosters mediocrity, closes windows of opportunity, and stalls personal growth and career progress.
You’re wise to address complacency when it arises and bring back a sense of urgency to your life and work.
“Never be passive about your life… ever, ever.”
-Robert Egger, from our LIFE Entrepreneurs interview
Tools for You
- Traps Test (Common Traps of Living) to help you identify what’s getting in the way of your happiness and quality of life
- Quality of Life Assessment to help you discover your strongest areas and the areas that need work and then act accordingly
- Leadership Derailers Assessment to help you identify what’s inhibiting your leadership effectiveness
Take the Traps Test
We all fall into traps in life. Sometimes we’re not even aware of it, and we can’t get out of traps we don’t know we’re in. Evaluate yourself with our Traps Test.
Related Articles
- “The Complacency Trap”
- “This Is How to Avoid Complacency”
- “Are You Drifting Through Life?”
- “Tired of Settling? How to Set Your Life and Work on Fire”
- “What Are You Avoiding?”
- “How Inertia Keeps Us from Making Needed Changes”
- “The Trap of Deferring Dreams and Postponing Happiness”
Reflection Questions
- Are you seeing signs of complacency in your life, work, or relationships?
- What steps will you take to regain the drive and urgency to escape this trap?
Postscript: Inspirations on Signs of Complacency and Urgency
- “Complacency keeps you living a comfortable life… not the life you desire. Challenge yourself to do something different. Then, notice the new charged quality of your life.” -Nina Amir, author and coach
- “The life you have left is a gift. Cherish it. Enjoy it now, to the fullest. Do what matters, now.” -Leo Babauta, author
- “The tragedy of life is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency; not in our doing too much, but rather in our doing too little; not in our living above our ability, but rather in our living below our capacities.” -Benjamin E. Mays, Baptist minister and civil rights leader
- “By far the biggest mistake people make when trying to change organizations is to plunge ahead without establishing a high enough sense of urgency in fellow managers and employees.” -John Kotter, professor, author, and thought leader in business, leadership, and organizational change
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Gregg Vanourek is a writer, teacher, and TEDx speaker on personal development and leadership. He is co-author of three books, including LIFE Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives (a manifesto for living with purpose and passion) and Triple Crown Leadership: Building Excellent, Ethical, and Enduring Organizations (a winner of the International Book Awards). Check out his Best Articles or get his monthly newsletter. If you found value in this article, please forward it to a friend. Every little bit helps!