There is always that one thing we should do before bed, but we don’t. Or maybe we feel that there is no point because we are supposed to meet our friends in 30 minutes.
I do it all the time. I catch myself watching and waiting for water to boil. I used to think it boiled faster if I supervised it. Wrong. It takes about 5 minutes to boil, sometimes 10 if the water is cold, with or without inspection.
It’s my daily micro excuse for not doing something I should be doing. We all do it, with almost anything. You can get more done in one day by doing something small than nothing at all.
The 5-minute rule
Adopt this practice and it will change your life. I’m not kidding. Any 5-minute chunk of time you have, do something productive. The key is not to put any expectations on it. As soon as you start visualizing how to make your 5 minutes as productive as possible, you’ve lost.
Here is another thing that we do all the time. We have 5 minutes to do something, but we decide that 5 minutes is not enough to accomplish what we had in mind. We need to let that go. It doesn’t matter. That’s the big secret.
“Glory lies in the attempt to reach one’s goal and not in reaching it” — Ghandi
Here’s how it works. I get home from work, I set the water on the stove, and I crank the heat to max. I make brown rice every day. I reluctantly walk down 15 stairs to my room, grab my laptop, and bring it upstairs.
I cave a little and inspect my water. Nope, no boiling. It hasn’t even increased in temperature yet. If I was watching it I bet there would have been some progress. No matter.
I have my laptop now, I set it on my table and crack it open. I pull up the article, document, or Quora answer I was working on in the morning and I start to write. No expectations. No complaining. Just 5 minutes. It’s so easy it’s pathetic.
10 minutes go by and I realize my water is boiling. I don’t want to interrupt my flow to dump in the rice. Oh well, gotta eat. The rice has to cook, my computer is still open, my cursor flashing to get my attention.
It takes the rice 15 minutes to cook. I have successfully completed a grand total of 35 minutes of work. In 35 minutes, I finished editing my article, published it, and started working on an answer for Quora.
That’s how the 5-minute rule plays out 95% of the time. The point is, once you start reading a page or writing a sentence, it’s hard to stop. This rule is about starting. Just 5 minutes with no expectations. See how far it will take you.
‘You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will’ — Stephen King
Now you can add the 1 up rule
This is another great game I love to play. Once you graduate the 5-minute rule (trust me it will be a huge success), you can start the more advanced program. You do something to “1 up” whatever you have been working on.
Let’s say you finish your 5-minute productive session. Do something additional, something small. A cherry on top if you will.
When my rice finished boiling, I prepared and ate my dinner. My laptop was still open, and I had a fresh rush of accomplishment. After I ate, I decided that I would write one or two headlines as an idea for tomorrow’s article.
Usually, I end up writing 5–10 headlines, I have no idea why that happens. I become possessed by a force that makes me believe that I can 1 up even 1–2 article headlines. There is no telling how far it will go. It’s a deep, dark, mind-numbing rabbit hole.
In the time that it took to cook my rice and prepare dinner, I went from doing absolutely nothing to something. All I did was take 5 minutes and it cascaded into 45 minutes of productivity.
“Just do it!” — Shia LaBeouf
On some days I slip, and I flex my superpowers of making water boil faster. I stand there, glaring at the bubbles, watching my gaze pull heat from the element into the pot.
On most days, though, I allow the stove to do its job — unharassed. I take 5 minutes to do something small. Something that will help move my goals forward.
Try it yourself. Take 5 anywhere, anytime. It helps if you keep a book or a journal with you wherever you go. That way when you don’t have a laptop, you can still do something productive.
Write out ideas, thoughts from the day, or things you must remember for later. Trust me, it’s better than nothing.
“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing” — Walt Disney
All Rights Reserved for Michal Bernolak
Productivity Hub 