We all have tasks that we are seldom, if ever, in the mood to tackle. Who is ever in the mood to prepare their taxes? I know I never am. And that advice about breaking down big tasks into smaller ones, while pretty sound, just doesn’t always get us over the inertia hump.
So try The 5 Minute Rule next time you find yourself avoiding a task – no matter how big or small it is. Here’s the Rule: “I only have to work for 5 minutes!”
Suppose you’ve been putting off cleaning up your home office – probably for months, if not years. Decide that you will work on it for 5 minutes! That’s all. Hey, I can stand having my teeth drilled without benefit of Novocain if I know it’s going to be over in 5 minutes!
Here’s the key to making this work. You must believe that you can actually stop in 5 minutes. You don’t have to stop – but you must know that you are free to stop. If you don’t believe that, you won’t start.
Work for 5 minutes on one small part of the task (e.g., clean out one drawer). When the 5 minutes is up, you can either keep going or stop. The idea is that 5 minutes is usually sufficient to get us over the inertia, but even when it isn’t, you have still gotten 5 minutes of work done.
If you think 5 minutes isn’t enough time to get something done, try this little test. Imagine that your mom just called to say she is in the neighborhood and will be over in 5 minutes. Now think how fast you can get that living room picked up! True, everything is crammed into drawers and closets, but you accomplished a task, probably in less than 5 minutes. So don’t discount those little bits of time; they can add up quickly to get an otherwise overwhelming task done
